"So this is it," Mrs. Smith said "Here are the keys to the house. You have full access to the house from now on and can move in this afternoon if you want to."
Mac and Harm reached out to the keys and took them together. They had just signed the contract and now the house was really theirs.
"It's been a pleasure doing business with you," the real estate agent said and though Harm and Mac hadn't really heard what she said, they were in such an aw that this had finally happened, they got up from their chairs and shook hands with Mrs. Smith and then left the building.
"So what do we do now?" Harm asked once they were sitting in the car.
"How about we go by the Chinese restaurant and pick up some take out and then we make a picnic in our house?" Mac said and thought about how the words our and house fitted so well together.
"Why don't we go by the apartments on the way and get a mattress and some other things and we can spend the night in our house as well?" Harm really liked those two words too.
"Sounds even better," Mac agreed.
An hour later they were sitting on their 'bed' eating noodles with vegetables and in Mac's case beef. They didn't talk so much. There was really no need. On the way over Harm had called Sturgis and asked him if he wanted to help them move some of the things over from the apartments to the house tomorrow. They had decided to really move into the house as soon as possible.
Their first call had been to the owner of the building with the apartments and cancelled Mac's flat. Since their was two months period of notice, there wasn't a real hurry to get the things out of the apartment so they could start by moving the most important things and then continue to take little by little. The owner, who wasn't the same as the one who had sold the apartment to Harm in the first place, had also wanted to buy Harm's apartment so they wouldn't have to spend any time trying to get rid of it. With the money he would get from the apartment they would be able to pay off a big part of their loan from the bank right away.
They had put the mattress in their new bedroom. Just sitting on it they already knew that getting the bed there tomorrow was the highest priority. It was a good thing tomorrow was a Saturday and that they didn't have any really demanding cases on their tables, so they could spend the whole next day and the day after trying to get as much as possible in order.
Any thoughts of them learning to do more new-couple-things in the time that Mattie was away were gone. Between moving out of the apartments, moving into the house and working, there wouldn't be much time for other things. Both of them realized that they weren't really sad about that. The joy over the fact that they were making a lasting home for their family of three was much bigger. They didn't even consider the fact that they had only really been seeing each other for three weeks and had already bought a house together. They had been preparing for this relationship for so many years that nothing could feel like moving too fast.
The next day they went out and rented a small truck that would take the furniture. First they loaded the three beds and while Sturgis and Harm left to take them to the house Mac stayed behind and packed down her clothes and the things from the apartment that she absolutely needed. She had just started to take off the legs of the table in her and in Harm's kitchen so it would be easier to transport, when Harm and Sturgis returned. They had just left the things inside the door and gone back for the next run. Quickly they were realizing that packing the things into boxes before you started driving them over was a really good plan, but it was too late to do anything about it now anyway.
Six o'clock, after having just a short break for lunch they had actually moved more then what they had thought they would from the apartments. There was still some of the kitchen stuff that needed to be completely wrapped, but wouldn't take up too much space transporting, and lots of their books and some other things they didn't need right away left to get over to the house. And of course those of Mac's things that were still in storage. They had just brought the most essential things and were going to do the rest some night when they had gotten a little in order in the house.
They were finally all at the house at once and were working on getting the beds upstairs. After a while they could land Harm's in their bedroom, but first of all they needed to take out the small mattress, that they had stayed on last night.
"So which one of you stayed here last night?" Sturgis asked when he caught sight of the mattress.
"Both," Mac answered without thinking.
"Oh really," Sturgis noted with raised eyebrows.
"Eh yeah,,, I had an inflatable in my bedroom. I had to bring it back to my friend."
"Oh OK," Sturgis said, but it was rather obvious that he didn't believe her, but wasn't going to comment on it.
When both of the beds were upstairs there was a knock on the door.
Mac quite excitedly went to open up curious to see if it might be any of their new neighbors. She broke out in a smile when she saw Varese standing on the other side of the door loaded with pizza-cartons.
"I thought you might be hungry, so I went directly from the airport to the pizza place and then over here. Sturgis called me and said he was here helping you move into the house."
"Oh, that's so nice of you. We were just starting to wonder what we were going to do about dinner."
"Then I got here just in time."
The voice of Varese had gotten Harm and Sturgis out of the kitchen where they had been trying to get the kitchen table together again. Sturgis didn't try to hide how happy he was to see Varese. She had promptly dumped the pizzas on Mac and the couple had greeted each other.
Harm and Mac tried not to look too much and just started walking out to the kitchen, to try to find some knives and possibly forks and plates to use for the pizzas. They realized that their stomachs weren't going to wait until they had gotten the table together and decided that they'd have the pizzas out in the backyard and hoped Sturgis and Varese would like that idea as well. Mac went to get something out for them to sit on and soon they were all four of them gathered on a blanket on the green grass behind Harm and Mac's house.
After the pizzas they continued to work getting the furniture that they had needed to take apart back together. The next day and the next weekend Harm and Mac spent as much time as they possibly could packing the rest of the things in their old apartments into boxes and get them over to the house. Unfortunately work was getting rather busy for them and they needed to use a lot of their free time preparing for cases instead of getting their house together.
TBC