Act Your Age
A JAG oneshot

NOVEMBER 1996

1100 EST
JAG HEADQUARTERS
FALLS CHURCH, VIRGINIA

Being the Judge Advocate General was a very esteemed position, AJ was very honored to have it. But he had to admit the job had its downsides. It could be stressful at times, which made sense. The entire judicial system of the United States Navy was resting on his shoulders.

What didn't make sense was how being the Judge Advocate General sometimes made AJ feel like he was herding cats. Or managing a Kindergarten classroom. Today, JAG HQ definitely felt like a Kindergarten classroom. And just like in a Kindergarten classroom, there were only a select few who liked to act out.

Lt. Commander Rabb and Major Mackenzie were those select few-select two, rather. They were damn fine officers, so it baffled AJ that they felt the need to act like such children sometimes. He knew they'd only been working together a few months-some growing pains were expected-but AJ expected nothing like this. He expected some decorum, a crumb of maturity. He didn't expect them to be yelling at each other about absolute nonsense, loud enough for the entire office to hear.

Apparently, decorum and maturity were too much to ask. He should've known better.

"Alright."

AJ cleared his throat as he sat down across from Harm and Mac. Both of them were slouching (well, as much 'slouching' as regulation would allow) with their arms crossed. They weren't looking at each other. Harm even had himself angled away from Mac, as if he couldn't even bring himself to look at her.

"What happened?" AJ asked.

"He started it." "She started it." Harm and Mac spoke in unison. AJ sighed. He was too old for this. They were too old for this. Everyone here was too old for this.

"Could you two please speak one at a time?"

Harm and Mac finally turned to look at each other. Harm raised an eyebrow. "Do you wanna go first?" he asked, his tone patronizing.

Mac shrugged. "Doesn't matter to me. I know I'm the innocent party."

"And I'm not?"

"Considering you sandbagged me in court-"

"Mac that was last week! I thought you were over that."

"I was. Until you decided to go out of your way to irritate me in every way possible this week."

"What did I do?" Harm demanded.

Mac rolled her eyes. "Oh I don't know, exist?"

"That's rich coming from you-"

It soon became clear to AJ that he wasn't going to get a straight answer from either of them. The day had already been absurdly long for him (it was only 1100), and overhearing Rabb and Mackenzie bicker nonstop the entire morning in the bullpen was the icing on the cake.

"Lock it up, both of you," he ordered. Harm and Mac immediately faced forward.

AJ took a deep breath, trying to figure out a way he could adequately describe his frustration without using any four-letter words.

"Commander, Major," he took a deep breath. "When I took this position, I had the hopes of working with some of the best officers in our military. You two proved to me today that, apparently, I was mistaken."

Mac and Harm didn't say a word, which was a wise decision on both their parts. AJ did notice that Mac's cheeks were beginning to turn pink with embarrassment and Harm was having trouble meeting his eyes.

"I don't know what's going on between you two and I don't know why the two of you can't seem to get along," AJ continued. "I shouldn't even have to take time out of my day to reprimand the two of you like you're children. But here we are."

By this point, Mac looked completely mortified and Harm's eyes were trained on his shoes. They looked pathetic, and it was enough to make AJ feel bad. Almost enough. Harm and Mac weren't children. They were adults. They were military officers. AJ would have sympathy if they were actual children, but they weren't. Therefore, he only got more exasperated.

"I understand that asking you to act like top-notch military officers 24/7 may be too high of a request, but is requesting that you be adults too much to ask?"

"No, sir."

"Of course not, sir."

AJ took off his glasses. "Could you just act your age? For a few hours, at least?"

"Yes, sir."

"I could try, sir."

Both Mac and the Admiral turned to look at Harm. "I'll make a concerted effort, sir," he corrected.

AJ sighed again and looked at the two of them, trying to figure out what to do with the two of them. An Article 32 hearing would be a little excessive, but he didn't feel like letting them off the hook without any repercussions.

He leaned back in his chair to think, leaving Harm and Mac to wait with baited breath. Mac had a feeling that an Article 32 hearing was headed her way, whereas Harm didn't really care what happened. He just wanted to get out of there.

"I want you two to go back to your offices, and sit there," AJ finally said.

"Sir?" they asked in unison.

He nodded. "I want you two to go back to your offices, shut the door, don't talk to anyone, and for God's sake don't talk to each other."

"And do what, sir?" Harm asked slowly.

"Think about what you did."

Harm's mouth dropped open and Mac's eyes widened. "Sir, are you-" Mac started.

"Serious?" AJ asked. "Yes, Major, I am."

"Sir-"

"You're dismissed."

As Harm and Mac slowly got up and headed out of the office, AJ decided to add something else

"Oh, and write apology notes to each other."

AJ noticed the shocked expression Harm and Mac exchanged right before they exited his office, but he chose not to say anything. He really didn't understand why the two of them were acting so outraged; if they were going to act like children, he was going to treat them like children.

Mac was slouching at her desk, almost to the point where she was slipping out of her chair. She made sure to close the blinds before she sat down so no one could see her sulking. Marine Majors shouldn't sulk; that was kind of an unspoken rule. But right then, Mac was sulking and she did not care if Marine Majors weren't supposed to sulk.

She wasn't used to getting in trouble. Granted she had a rebellious phase in her teenage years after her mother left ('rebellious' being somewhat of an understatement), but before that she hardly ever got in trouble. In school she wasn't a suck-up or a teacher's pet, but she definitely had been a student who prided herself on being well behaved and well liked by her teachers.

That was the same attitude she had when she joined the Corps. Other than a few minor slip ups (one of them being sleeping with her CO), Mac was proud to call herself a squared away Marine, and her record reflected that. Mac wasn't trying to sound arrogant when she called herself a damn good officer; she was just telling the truth.

Mac wasn't used to getting in trouble. She didn't like getting in trouble. It embarrassed her, and this scenario was no exception. In fact, getting chewed out by the Admiral left her more mortified than usual. Probably because it was for such a silly reason.

And because it was Harm's fault. All Harm's fault.

The Admiral probably thought this was all about Harm sandbagging her in court, but really that was only the tip of the iceberg. It's true that the sandbagging had been the catalyst, but what put Harm and Mac at each other's throats was a bunch of little things snowballing into a catastrophe. For the most part it was just Harm being Harm, making some snide comments that irked Mac more than usual. He also took the last of the coffee in the break room and didn't bother to brew another pot.

That was something that shocked Mac. It was common sense. If you use up the last bit of coffee in the break room, you start brewing another pot for whoever comes after you. It was courteous. It made Mac want to email Trish (she didn't even have Trish's email) and tell her that her son was acting like he was raised by wolves.

After the coffee pot debacle, Mac-in true Mac fashion-retaliated, because her and Harm both liked getting in the last word. Then things escalated, and before either of them knew it, they were arguing loud enough for the Admiral to hear them. From behind the closed door of his office.

Now, Mac was confined to her office, in a glorified time out. She was also tasked with writing Harm an apology letter, something she couldn't even bring herself to begin. She was too busy sulking. Plus, she refused to be the one to apologize first. Mac was determined to keep her heels dug in longer than Harm.

Much to Mac's surprise, she didn't have to wait too long for Harm to give in. About fifteen minutes into her sulk session, Mac caught sight of a folded piece of paper being slid under her door. Slowly, she rose to her feet and walked over.

Crouching down, Mac picked up the piece of paper and unfolded it. The note read:

Dear Mac,
I'm sorry for making you angry. Are we still friends? (check yes or no)
-Harm

Mac stared at the note for a second, looking over Harm's cramped, slanted, lawyer-y handwriting and the two check boxes drawn at the bottom of the paper. She narrowed her eyes and crumpled the note up. She should've known better than to expect a mature apology from Harm.

She knew she wasn't supposed to, but Mac stood up and marched out of her office, making a beeline for Harm's closed door. When she yanked the door open, Harm's head jerked up in surprise.

"Did you get my note?" he asked, completely oblivious to Mac's infuriated expression.

"You call this an apology?" she demanded, holding up the crumpled piece of paper.

Harm shrugged. "I said 'sorry' didn't I?"

Mac rolled her eyes and huffed. "You know? You are by far one of the most infuriating people I've ever met."

"Well you're not exactly a ray of sunshine yourself," he replied coolly, leaning back in his desk chair. He wasn't taking this as seriously as Mac, something that made her even more angry.

"You could've at least tried," Mac insisted.

"You could've at least followed the rules," Harm retorted.

Mac's mouth dropped open. "What?"

"The Admiral told us we had to stay in our offices, he never said our apologies had to be sincere."

Without thinking twice, Mac wadded up the note into an even tighter ball and threw it at Harm. It hit Harm squarely in the chest, but considering it was a piece of paper, it didn't have much of an effect. Both of them watched the paper ball bounce dejectedly to the ground.

Harm looked at Mac with a dry expression. "Really?" he asked. "What are you going to do next, stick your tongue out at me?"

Mac did just that, sticking her tongue out at Harm as she turned on her heel and stormed out of his office.

"That's so mature of you, Major," Harm called after her. He picked up the paper ball and lobbed it after her. He missed, the ball landing squarely in the middle of his doorway.

Harm kicked the paper out of the way and shut the door, returning to his chair and sitting down with a sigh. He wasn't really sure what made him and Mac get so aggravated with each other that day. I should check the weather, he thought to himself, it could be a full moon. Or Mercury could be in some kind of retrograde.

In hindsight, Harm probably could've written a more elaborate apology, but he didn't think his apology was bad. It was short and to the point. He even added checkboxes for convenience. It was a good apology, but apparently it wasn't up to Mac's standards.

That was part of Mac's problem, in Harm's opinion. She had impossibly high standards and got uptight way too easily about stuff that didn't matter. Like coffee pots. I should tell her that the next time she calls me infuriating, Harm thought.

Maybe it was because she was a Marine, but Mac took things too seriously. She was even taking this punishment dealt to them by the Admiral too seriously. If she could just relax sometimes, they wouldn't lock horns so often. It was that simple. She was making it out to be rocket science.

So what if he forgot to start brewing another pot of coffee in the break room after finishing the first one? It wasn't the end of the world. No one else complained (granted, Mac was the only other person in the break room when he did that, but still)

Sure, he made some offhand comments, but he was just teasing. And as for him 'sandbagging' her in court-that just got blown way out of proportion. He would even go as far as to say it was slander. Mac slandered his good name.

Harm drummed his fingers on his desk in thought, trying to think of a way he could win Mac back over. Even though he believed she'd overreacted, he didn't like her being mad at him. They'd only been working together three months, it was important for them to start off on the right foot. They were partners; they were supposed to get along. Not only that, but Harm wanted to be friends with Mac.

An idea suddenly came to Harm, and it was something better than writing a note.

Mac was back in her office. She wasn't sulking anymore, but she still couldn't bring herself to write her apology letter to Harm. She was beginning to believe he didn't even deserve an apology from her, when her phone suddenly rang.

She picked up on the second ring. "Hello, this is Major Mackenzie speaking."

"Mac, please don't hang up."

"Harm-"

"Can we just talk? Please?"

She sighed. "Why can't you just come to my office?"

"The Admiral told us we couldn't leave our offices, remember? Plus, I don't want you throwing anything else at me."

Mac didn't even notice herself smiling. "I hope you're calling to apologize."

"I am."

"So…?" Mac left the question open-ended, waiting for Harm's response.

"I'm sorry for not fixing the coffee pot for you in the break room, and I'm sorry for irritating you when I knew you were already irritated. In hindsight, it was not very wise of me, and I apologize," he paused, "Was that sincere?"

"Yes," Mac said, smiling again without noticing. "That was sincere. I forgive you."

"Okay, so where's my apology?"

Mac laughed. "Where's your patience?"

"Apologizing is a two way street, I'm just making sure you hold up your end of the deal."

"Okay," Mac took a deep breath. "I'm sorry for making snide comments and overreacting about the coffee pot situation. Do you forgive me?"

"You forgot something."

Mac frowned. "What did I forget?"

"The part where you slandered my name."

"Slandered? When did I slander you?"

"As I recall, a week ago today you accused me of 'sandbagging' you in court. I would like an apology for that."

"I'm not apologizing for telling the truth."

"Fine," Harm said nonchalantly, "I'll just go to the Admiral and tell him that you're not apologizing to me."

"Oh, so you're a tattletale now?"

"We're already in time out like children, I may as well go big or go home."

"No, you don't need to do that," Mac told him hastily. She wouldn't put it past Harm to go to the Admiral, if for no other reason than to make her life worse. "I'm sorry for accusing you of sandbagging me in court last week. But, technically,I already apologized for that when I came to your loft with takeout last Saturday."

"You could come to my loft with takeout this weekend."

Mac laughed. "You just want me to buy you food."

"Perhaps."

"So, do you forgive me?"

"Sure, Marine. I forgive you."

Mac smiled. Back when they were on better terms, they'd started calling each other 'Marine' and 'Sailor' as a joke, but the nicknames ended up sticking. "Should we still write the apology notes?" she asked.

"Probably. We should have it in writing that we're capable of getting along."

Dear Mac,

I'm really sorry for making you upset earlier. I'm also sorry for my first apology not being sincere. You're the best partner I've ever had, and I don't want to mess that up by going out of my way to irritate you. I promise I'll bring you coffee for the next week to make up for everything. If that's not good enough, I'll buy you your own personal coffee pot. I promise to try my best to get along with you, even though you're infuriating sometimes. (it's a good kind of infuriating, though)

-Harm

Dear Harm,
I'm really sorry for what happened today. I kind of overreacted and I apologize. I hope you can forgive me.
Are we still friends? (check yes or no)
-Mac

P.S-I can still bring takeout to your loft this weekend, if you want.

Another re-upload! Thanks for reading!

-Harper