Author's Note: Sorry this took so long to get up. I wasn't sure if I should
leave it one chapter, but recently I've had some time to write and I liked
this storyline. Hope you enjoy it. Oh yeah...The doctor that Mac sees in
this chapter gives away a lot of information that a real one wouldn't give.
I would have made it more realistic, but it for the flow of the story I
needed it to be this way.
Thanks for all the reviews, guys.
Disclaimer: Don't own anything.
------- Harm's Apartment The Next Morning 0935 EST
The pulsing pain in my shoulder wakes me from a deep sleep, causing me to open my eyes and groan. What happened--
Oh yeah. Damn it.
Reaching up and rubbing my shoulder, I groan again and then sit up in Harm's bed. A quick glance at the space next to me tells me I was alone last night, which means that Harm slept on his couch. Damn again. He knows as well as I do that he's too tall to sleep on the couch.
Standing slowly, I try to stretch my shoulder muscles. I supress a cry of pain when a sharp, stabbing bolt stops my attempt. I blink slowly and walk out of the bedroom, the smell of coffee summoning me to the kitchen.
Harm sits at the breakfast bar, drinking coffee from a large mug and staring out the window ahead of him, his gaze fixed and steady. I wander up next to him, lying a hand on his shoulder and fighting back a sigh when he turns to look at me. His eyes are red, and he looks exhausted. He didn't sleep last night.
"Morning, Sarah." He says softly, treating me with a small, cautious smile. I take the seat next to him and reach out, taking his coffee mug from in front of him and taking a sip. It's not bad, especially for 'Harm coffee'.
"Morning. Why didn't you sleep?" I ask him, wincing slightly as my shoulder protests to any kind of movement, even the other arm putting Harm's mug back in front of him. A small frown crosses his tired face, and he gets up and walks to the main kitchen area, rummaging through a cabinet and grabbing a bottle of aspirin.
He comes back to me with a glass of water and two of the pills, all of which I down the moment he hands them to me. I take a breath after finishing the water and look at him again, raising my eyebrows.
"Are you alright?" He asks me, ignoring my question. I glare and shake my head.
"I'm fine, but you didn't answer my question. Why didn't you sleep, Harm?" I ask again, looking at him intently. He looks away from me, down into his coffee.
"I wanted to watch you." He whispers. What?
"What? Why?" I ask softly. He looks back at me, his tired, beautiful eyes boring into mine.
"Because I worry about you, Sarah. I'm worried now because I'm afraid you're going to somehow hurt yourself over this whole thing. When you sleep, you're peaceful, you've forgotten everything that bothers you, you're beautiful. So beautiful. The only bad thing about you asleep is that I can't see your eyes." The honesty with which he explains himself to me is raw and dizzying. I never would have thought that it would feel this good to be loved.
And yes, I've come to see, that's what Harm feels for me. It's love. All this time, I've been pressuring him to say the words, to tell me. But the feeling was there all along. I just couldn't see it.
"I don't want you to worry about me, Harm. I'll see a psychiatrist if you want me to." I say softly, holding his surprised gaze. He looks as if he doesn't know what I just said.
"You will? I thought you didn't want to." He says. I shake my head, reaching up and rubbing his tense upper back with the hand of my good arm. He relaxes a little.
"If you think it will help, then I'll do it. I'm open to just about anything at this point." I say. He flashes me a small smile, and my heart skips a beat.
"I do think it will help you. I've got the name of a doctor that I saw after...After Paraguay, and I think that you'll like talking to her. We'll make the call after breakfast, okay?" He says. He saw a shrink after Paraguay? I frown.
"Harm I didn't know you saw a psychiatrist after Paraguay." I say. He nods, looking away from me.
"You and I didn't speak for six months after that, Sarah. Yes, I saw a doctor." He says, still not looking at me. Shifting nervously in my seat, I allow my gaze to flicker to a picture of myself on the wall. Looking back at him, I clear my throat.
"Do you mind if I ask why?" I ask softly. He looks back at me, and shrugs. My hand is still wandering over his back. I don't think I can stop--I just love touching him.
"I was having nightmares. Awful, realistic nightmares. I would wake up screaming in the middle of the night and be unable to get back to sleep." He tells me, shocking me with his openness. I frown.
"What were they about?" I ask, now more curious than cautious. Harm sighs and looks out the window he was staring at when I came out here.
"I saw every situation in our partnership that I could have lost you to. And in every one, I wasn't able to save you, you weren't able to come back. I watched you die a hundred times, lost you a hundred times. The last in the series was you getting married to Webb, and me unable to stop you, no matter what I did. Then the series would start over and the next night I would see you getting killed in the desert when we went after your uncle Matt. It was hell." He mutters, not looking at me. My heart is thudding in my chest, my breathing is shallow.
"Harm, if I had known that what I did in Paraguay would do that to you, I would never have done it." I whisper. He looks back at me, his exhausted eyes suddenly exhausted in more ways than one. A small, sad smile crosses his handsome face.
"It's not about me today, Sarah. It's about helping you. Talking to Doctor Kratz will be good for you," he pauses. "Did you want to call Webb?" He asks, changing the subject so suddenly that I need a second to catch up. I shake my head.
"He's out of town, on assignment still. He's not due back for weeks, and I can't get ahold of him." I say, feeling his muscles tense again under my hand. He nods, his jaw clenching almost imperceptibly.
"All right. Well, what do you want for breakfast?"
---------- Dr. Kratz' Office Georgetown The Next Day
"Tell me about what happened Wednesday, Sarah."
I wince and close my eyes, rubbing my temples and shaking my head.
"No, no, can we talk about something else?" I mutter, still shaking my head. She nods, tapping her pen on her notepad.
"Okay. We can save that for later. What would you like to talk about, Sarah?" Her voice is smooth and would be soothing if I weren't so worked up right now. I sigh.
"I don't know. What kind of things do you talk about in therapy?" I ask her. Shrugging, she tosses me a small smile, obviously a carefully tailored 'calm the crazy patient' smile.
"What's important to you? Who's important to you?" She asks. A bitter laugh escapes me.
"That's a little broad, Doctor. The Marines are important to me and so are my friends." I say, holding my hands out to indicate that I'm done. "There, I talked about them."
"That's a good start. Who would you say is your best friend?" She asks. I allow another small sigh to escape, and tilt my head back to look at the ceiling.
"For a long time, I could say without hesitating that Harm was my best friend." I say softly, staring at the tiles in the ceiling above my head.
"And now?" She asks. I purse my lips, bracing myself against the tears stinging my eyes.
"I don't know. I mean, he obviously cares about me still...He took care of me when I ran to his apartment after the whole ordeal with Sedik...He cried with me. It was almost like old times, when we were closer." I whisper, looking back at the shrink sitting across from me.
"How do you feel about Harm?" Her voice is soft, pensive. It's almost as if she already knows the answer to this question.
"I care about him a lot. A lot. He has this ability to melt me, no matter how mad I am at him or how much he's hurt my feelings, he can always make it feel better. Especially when he calls me Sarah, which he doesn't do often." I say, a fond smile crossing my face as I remember last night when he called me Sarah almost every time he spoke. Doctor Kratz looks confused.
"What does he usually call you, if not Sarah?" She asks. Oh, right...
"Oh, everyone calls me by my nickname, Mac. Almost nobody calls me Sarah." I tell her. As I say it, I see her expression change, and her eyes widen.
"Ahh...So you're Mac." She says, understanding dawning in her eyes. I nod, confused.
"Yes, I am. Why?" This is so confusing. The Doctor purses her lips, then smiles softly.
"I remember when Harm would come in to me for sessions, shortly after your trip to Paraguay...I was always a little envious of you, to have a fine man such as Harm care for you so much. I really shouldn't be telling you this, but you're all he talked about." She says. I think she just broke doctor- patient confidentiality. If I weren't so pleasantly surprised and a little giddy from what she just told me, I might complain.
"I'm not sure if that's a good thing or bad...That he talked about me, I mean. Things between us hadn't been left well when he started coming to see you. I think he was hurt by what happened in Paraguay." I mutter, suddenly talking more to myself than to the doctor.
"You seem worried about something, Sarah." She comments, and I look at her. I wave a hand dismissively.
"It's just--Harm. He didn't sleep last night. He told me that he wanted to watch me, because he likes how peaceful I am when I sleep." I say, omitting the comment that he made about my being beautiful. She nods.
"He worries about you quite often. I think he dislikes being away from you, being unable to protect you. I say all of this unofficially, of course." She says. I nod.
"Yes, yes...Of course." I say, my gaze suddenly drawn to the watch on my wrist. I don't know what it is about watches...
The digitally butchered tune of Outkast's song 'Hey Ya' pierces the thick silence in the room, and I reach into my purse and grab my cell phone. I look at the doctor questioningly, but she nods and waves a hand. Flipping the phone open, I answer it.
"Hello?"
'Sarah, where are you? I tried calling JAG and Coates said you took a sick day,' Clayton Webb asks, sounding worried...or suspicious.
"I'm at the doctor." I say simply. I'm still a little angry with him for not being there for me.
'I heard about what happened last night. When are you going to be out of the doctor, so we can get together and talk?' I take a deep breath.
"I'm supposed to be done in about a half hour and I'm going to Harm's afterward. Where are you, anyway?" I ask.
'I'm at your apartment. Why the hell are you going to Rabb's? What's he got to do with this?' He asks. A sharp burst of anger floods through me.
"Clay, Harm was there for me last night when I needed him. You weren't even in the country! Jesus, what did you want me to do? Wait for you to get back before talking to someone?" I pause, "I have to go, Clay. I'll call you later."
'Sarah--'
I snap the phone shut, dropping it back in my purse. Glancing up at the doctor, I can't help but notice her curious expression.
"That was--this man that I'm seeing." I try to explain, fumbling my words. She nods.
"Clayton Webb?" She asks. I nod, frowning a little.
"How did you know?" I ask. She purses her lips and glances away from me.
"He's the one that took you out from under Harm's nose. That's how Harm described it anyway." I nod.
"Yeah, he's the one." I mutter, looking away from her. She looks at me for a moment, then something inside of me snaps.
"Look, it's not that I don't love Harm, okay? I do--I'm so in love with him. It just wouldn't work. We both make things too diffucult, and we somehow get hurt every time we...It just wouldn't work." I mutter, looking at the woman across from me and challenging her to argue with me. She raises an eyebrow.
"I wasn't accusing you of not loving Harm, Sarah. But while we're talking about him, I'd like to ask you; why do you think things are like that between the two of you?" She says, tilting her head to the side as she awaits my answer. I sigh.
"Honestly?" I say, my voice so quiet I can barely hear myself. She nods.
"Please." She says. Tilting my head back and looking at the ceiling, I bite my lower lip.
"I think we're both just afraid...Probably for the same reasons. I don't think that either of us could stand losing the other, which is why we're afraid to get into something that might eventually not work out, you know?" I try to make her understand, and she nods.
"I think I do."
---------
Thanks for all the reviews, guys.
Disclaimer: Don't own anything.
------- Harm's Apartment The Next Morning 0935 EST
The pulsing pain in my shoulder wakes me from a deep sleep, causing me to open my eyes and groan. What happened--
Oh yeah. Damn it.
Reaching up and rubbing my shoulder, I groan again and then sit up in Harm's bed. A quick glance at the space next to me tells me I was alone last night, which means that Harm slept on his couch. Damn again. He knows as well as I do that he's too tall to sleep on the couch.
Standing slowly, I try to stretch my shoulder muscles. I supress a cry of pain when a sharp, stabbing bolt stops my attempt. I blink slowly and walk out of the bedroom, the smell of coffee summoning me to the kitchen.
Harm sits at the breakfast bar, drinking coffee from a large mug and staring out the window ahead of him, his gaze fixed and steady. I wander up next to him, lying a hand on his shoulder and fighting back a sigh when he turns to look at me. His eyes are red, and he looks exhausted. He didn't sleep last night.
"Morning, Sarah." He says softly, treating me with a small, cautious smile. I take the seat next to him and reach out, taking his coffee mug from in front of him and taking a sip. It's not bad, especially for 'Harm coffee'.
"Morning. Why didn't you sleep?" I ask him, wincing slightly as my shoulder protests to any kind of movement, even the other arm putting Harm's mug back in front of him. A small frown crosses his tired face, and he gets up and walks to the main kitchen area, rummaging through a cabinet and grabbing a bottle of aspirin.
He comes back to me with a glass of water and two of the pills, all of which I down the moment he hands them to me. I take a breath after finishing the water and look at him again, raising my eyebrows.
"Are you alright?" He asks me, ignoring my question. I glare and shake my head.
"I'm fine, but you didn't answer my question. Why didn't you sleep, Harm?" I ask again, looking at him intently. He looks away from me, down into his coffee.
"I wanted to watch you." He whispers. What?
"What? Why?" I ask softly. He looks back at me, his tired, beautiful eyes boring into mine.
"Because I worry about you, Sarah. I'm worried now because I'm afraid you're going to somehow hurt yourself over this whole thing. When you sleep, you're peaceful, you've forgotten everything that bothers you, you're beautiful. So beautiful. The only bad thing about you asleep is that I can't see your eyes." The honesty with which he explains himself to me is raw and dizzying. I never would have thought that it would feel this good to be loved.
And yes, I've come to see, that's what Harm feels for me. It's love. All this time, I've been pressuring him to say the words, to tell me. But the feeling was there all along. I just couldn't see it.
"I don't want you to worry about me, Harm. I'll see a psychiatrist if you want me to." I say softly, holding his surprised gaze. He looks as if he doesn't know what I just said.
"You will? I thought you didn't want to." He says. I shake my head, reaching up and rubbing his tense upper back with the hand of my good arm. He relaxes a little.
"If you think it will help, then I'll do it. I'm open to just about anything at this point." I say. He flashes me a small smile, and my heart skips a beat.
"I do think it will help you. I've got the name of a doctor that I saw after...After Paraguay, and I think that you'll like talking to her. We'll make the call after breakfast, okay?" He says. He saw a shrink after Paraguay? I frown.
"Harm I didn't know you saw a psychiatrist after Paraguay." I say. He nods, looking away from me.
"You and I didn't speak for six months after that, Sarah. Yes, I saw a doctor." He says, still not looking at me. Shifting nervously in my seat, I allow my gaze to flicker to a picture of myself on the wall. Looking back at him, I clear my throat.
"Do you mind if I ask why?" I ask softly. He looks back at me, and shrugs. My hand is still wandering over his back. I don't think I can stop--I just love touching him.
"I was having nightmares. Awful, realistic nightmares. I would wake up screaming in the middle of the night and be unable to get back to sleep." He tells me, shocking me with his openness. I frown.
"What were they about?" I ask, now more curious than cautious. Harm sighs and looks out the window he was staring at when I came out here.
"I saw every situation in our partnership that I could have lost you to. And in every one, I wasn't able to save you, you weren't able to come back. I watched you die a hundred times, lost you a hundred times. The last in the series was you getting married to Webb, and me unable to stop you, no matter what I did. Then the series would start over and the next night I would see you getting killed in the desert when we went after your uncle Matt. It was hell." He mutters, not looking at me. My heart is thudding in my chest, my breathing is shallow.
"Harm, if I had known that what I did in Paraguay would do that to you, I would never have done it." I whisper. He looks back at me, his exhausted eyes suddenly exhausted in more ways than one. A small, sad smile crosses his handsome face.
"It's not about me today, Sarah. It's about helping you. Talking to Doctor Kratz will be good for you," he pauses. "Did you want to call Webb?" He asks, changing the subject so suddenly that I need a second to catch up. I shake my head.
"He's out of town, on assignment still. He's not due back for weeks, and I can't get ahold of him." I say, feeling his muscles tense again under my hand. He nods, his jaw clenching almost imperceptibly.
"All right. Well, what do you want for breakfast?"
---------- Dr. Kratz' Office Georgetown The Next Day
"Tell me about what happened Wednesday, Sarah."
I wince and close my eyes, rubbing my temples and shaking my head.
"No, no, can we talk about something else?" I mutter, still shaking my head. She nods, tapping her pen on her notepad.
"Okay. We can save that for later. What would you like to talk about, Sarah?" Her voice is smooth and would be soothing if I weren't so worked up right now. I sigh.
"I don't know. What kind of things do you talk about in therapy?" I ask her. Shrugging, she tosses me a small smile, obviously a carefully tailored 'calm the crazy patient' smile.
"What's important to you? Who's important to you?" She asks. A bitter laugh escapes me.
"That's a little broad, Doctor. The Marines are important to me and so are my friends." I say, holding my hands out to indicate that I'm done. "There, I talked about them."
"That's a good start. Who would you say is your best friend?" She asks. I allow another small sigh to escape, and tilt my head back to look at the ceiling.
"For a long time, I could say without hesitating that Harm was my best friend." I say softly, staring at the tiles in the ceiling above my head.
"And now?" She asks. I purse my lips, bracing myself against the tears stinging my eyes.
"I don't know. I mean, he obviously cares about me still...He took care of me when I ran to his apartment after the whole ordeal with Sedik...He cried with me. It was almost like old times, when we were closer." I whisper, looking back at the shrink sitting across from me.
"How do you feel about Harm?" Her voice is soft, pensive. It's almost as if she already knows the answer to this question.
"I care about him a lot. A lot. He has this ability to melt me, no matter how mad I am at him or how much he's hurt my feelings, he can always make it feel better. Especially when he calls me Sarah, which he doesn't do often." I say, a fond smile crossing my face as I remember last night when he called me Sarah almost every time he spoke. Doctor Kratz looks confused.
"What does he usually call you, if not Sarah?" She asks. Oh, right...
"Oh, everyone calls me by my nickname, Mac. Almost nobody calls me Sarah." I tell her. As I say it, I see her expression change, and her eyes widen.
"Ahh...So you're Mac." She says, understanding dawning in her eyes. I nod, confused.
"Yes, I am. Why?" This is so confusing. The Doctor purses her lips, then smiles softly.
"I remember when Harm would come in to me for sessions, shortly after your trip to Paraguay...I was always a little envious of you, to have a fine man such as Harm care for you so much. I really shouldn't be telling you this, but you're all he talked about." She says. I think she just broke doctor- patient confidentiality. If I weren't so pleasantly surprised and a little giddy from what she just told me, I might complain.
"I'm not sure if that's a good thing or bad...That he talked about me, I mean. Things between us hadn't been left well when he started coming to see you. I think he was hurt by what happened in Paraguay." I mutter, suddenly talking more to myself than to the doctor.
"You seem worried about something, Sarah." She comments, and I look at her. I wave a hand dismissively.
"It's just--Harm. He didn't sleep last night. He told me that he wanted to watch me, because he likes how peaceful I am when I sleep." I say, omitting the comment that he made about my being beautiful. She nods.
"He worries about you quite often. I think he dislikes being away from you, being unable to protect you. I say all of this unofficially, of course." She says. I nod.
"Yes, yes...Of course." I say, my gaze suddenly drawn to the watch on my wrist. I don't know what it is about watches...
The digitally butchered tune of Outkast's song 'Hey Ya' pierces the thick silence in the room, and I reach into my purse and grab my cell phone. I look at the doctor questioningly, but she nods and waves a hand. Flipping the phone open, I answer it.
"Hello?"
'Sarah, where are you? I tried calling JAG and Coates said you took a sick day,' Clayton Webb asks, sounding worried...or suspicious.
"I'm at the doctor." I say simply. I'm still a little angry with him for not being there for me.
'I heard about what happened last night. When are you going to be out of the doctor, so we can get together and talk?' I take a deep breath.
"I'm supposed to be done in about a half hour and I'm going to Harm's afterward. Where are you, anyway?" I ask.
'I'm at your apartment. Why the hell are you going to Rabb's? What's he got to do with this?' He asks. A sharp burst of anger floods through me.
"Clay, Harm was there for me last night when I needed him. You weren't even in the country! Jesus, what did you want me to do? Wait for you to get back before talking to someone?" I pause, "I have to go, Clay. I'll call you later."
'Sarah--'
I snap the phone shut, dropping it back in my purse. Glancing up at the doctor, I can't help but notice her curious expression.
"That was--this man that I'm seeing." I try to explain, fumbling my words. She nods.
"Clayton Webb?" She asks. I nod, frowning a little.
"How did you know?" I ask. She purses her lips and glances away from me.
"He's the one that took you out from under Harm's nose. That's how Harm described it anyway." I nod.
"Yeah, he's the one." I mutter, looking away from her. She looks at me for a moment, then something inside of me snaps.
"Look, it's not that I don't love Harm, okay? I do--I'm so in love with him. It just wouldn't work. We both make things too diffucult, and we somehow get hurt every time we...It just wouldn't work." I mutter, looking at the woman across from me and challenging her to argue with me. She raises an eyebrow.
"I wasn't accusing you of not loving Harm, Sarah. But while we're talking about him, I'd like to ask you; why do you think things are like that between the two of you?" She says, tilting her head to the side as she awaits my answer. I sigh.
"Honestly?" I say, my voice so quiet I can barely hear myself. She nods.
"Please." She says. Tilting my head back and looking at the ceiling, I bite my lower lip.
"I think we're both just afraid...Probably for the same reasons. I don't think that either of us could stand losing the other, which is why we're afraid to get into something that might eventually not work out, you know?" I try to make her understand, and she nods.
"I think I do."
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