I forgot to post a disclaimer in the last chapter. I don't like surfing and I have absolutely no desire to have Tom Sellek run around in shirt-shorts for several seasons. That proves that I am not CC nor am I DP, and I have no rights of ownership to anything that I did not create in my own slightly neurotic mind.
Oh, and myweb addressdidn't show up in the last chapter's lead-in, but I believe it is posted in my profile. Please come by and check it out. Especially if you want to read the more... 'mature' chapters of this fic, starting with Chapter Three which should be coming out in a few days if all goes well.
Please let me know what you think.
I was just passing the BOQ when I heard Harm calling out my name. He was coming out of his room, dressed in his uniform and placing his cover on his head with one hand while locking his door with the other. Scully was standing with him, a small smile on her rosy lips.
"Where'd you run off to?" Harm asked as I headed over to him and the good doctor.
"Agent Mulder said he didn't want to piss off the Admiral so I was showing him where to go," I said. "Chegwidden called. We're staying here to assist on some mystery case. Courier's coming at 1200 with the details."
"Yeah, Harriet called to tell me," Harm said.
"I'd… um, I'd better go. Mulder has a tendency to enrage military personnel," Scully said apologetically, looking at me with a questioning glance. I shook my head slightly to indicate that he hadn't done anything to piss me off and she relaxed a little. "Which way to the Admiral's office?"
Harm gave her directions and Scully nodded, smiling at him fondly and rising up on her tiptoes to kiss his cheek before heading off to join her partner.
Arching an eyebrow at him, I waited for Harm to explain.
It took a minute, but he caved.
He always did.
"Dana and I met when I was about fifteen. She was about twelve, all pigtails and freckles, barely four feet tall when I was pushing six. Her father was a Commander at that time and this was after mom married Frank but before he bought the house in La Jolla, so we were still living in base housing. The Scully family moved in next door. Dana's dad was on carrier duty and wasn't around much, but Bill seemed to enjoy that 'cause he got to be the man of the house."
"I never would have guessed," I said, rolling my eyes. We were wandering toward the small office we had been given for the duration of our investigation, not in any hurry because we had a few hours to kill before we even found out what our next assignment was.
"Yeah, I know," Harm laughed. "Bill was a few years older than me. He sort of adopted me as a younger brother, pulling me into the Scully family. Then he went off to the Academy and left me in charge of everything. Melissa, the oldest daughter, was my age and mom and Maggie—Mrs. Scully—used to tease us about how we were going to end up together."
"Did you ever date?" I inquired.
"Me and Melissa? No," Harm said. "She was… I guess you could call her the black sheep of the family. She wasn't anti-military, but she didn't believe in the Navy like the rest of her family did. Sometime between when I left for Vietnam and when I came back she started getting into alternate religions, going what her dad called 'Californian' on us. She wore crystals and prayed to a goddess. We sort of drifted apart from there on out."
"How many kids were there?" I asked. I knew Harm had always wanted siblings and that he'd never had the chance. He was constantly wondering why his mother and Frank never tried to have children after they got married. Biologically speaking it would have been possible, and, from what I've learned about Harm's mother and stepfather, they both adore children.
"Four. Bill, Melissa, Dana, then the baby of the family, Charlie. He's about five years younger than me and I never really spent much time with him. I spent most of my time with Dana. And, before you ask, yes, we did date. In my senior year, after I got back from Laos," Harm said. "It ended when I went off to college. Dana was very practical about it, citing the percentages for long distance relationships and how my future in the Navy and her future in medicine would end up tearing us apart anyway. I didn't want to lose her as a friend, and I knew that would happen if we continued dating while on opposite sides of the country. It was easier to lose my girlfriend than the first person I had really been able to open up to after my dad went MIA."
I reached out and trailed my hand down his arm. Talking about his father still hurt, even after he found out the truth. Harm smiled softly and took a large step so he could open the door for me. His little gentlemanly traits like that used to bother me, they used to make me feel like he was trying to treat me like the little woman who couldn't even open a door for herself, but I quickly learned that it's just another part of who Harmon Rabb Jr is.
"Mom and Frank moved to La Jolla not long after I left for college and I made new friends and Dana made new friends and our friendship sort of fizzled out," Harm continued. "The last time I spoke to her was the day I started the Academy. I needed one of her patented pep talks complete with the infallible logic she's known for."
"Is it weird, seeing her again?" I asked. I'd run into ex's before and, even if I was completely over them, there was always a certain level of weirdness that hovered over the encounters.
"A little," Harm admitted as he unlocked the office door. "But not the way you're thinking," he added once we were safely inside where no one could see us.
"And what, pray tell, do you think I'm thinking?" I asked, tilting my head to one side and looking up at Harm playfully.
Harm reached out and caressed my cheek with his calloused hand. "There is nothing between me and Dana, Meg. I've got my sights on one woman, and her hair isn't red."
I shifted nervously. Since arriving in San Diego we hadn't had any time alone together and his hand on my skin was making me feel hot and incredibly woozy. "Harm, someone could come in," I said softly, my protest weak even to my own ears.
"Let them. Half the Navy already assumes we're together anyway, and the other half doesn't care either way," Harm said. He leaned down and brushed his lips over mine. "I hate hiding this. I want to be with you without looking over my shoulder to make sure no one sees us. I want to hold you in my arms at night and make you breakfast in the morning. I want to kiss you whenever I feel like it. I want to see my ring sparkling on your finger."
"I wear it at home," I said, the weight of the diamond engagement ring that I wore on a chain around my neck suddenly becoming much greater. Harm looked incredibly hurt and I hated myself for being the cause of the pain in his eyes. "Harm, you know I want to go to the top of the tallest building and announce to the everyone who will listen that the most amazing man in the world asked me to marry him. I want to stop talking about moving in together and to just do it. I want to go shopping with the intention of buying a wedding dress, not just for an excuse to look through bridal store windows. But until we talk to the Admiral we can't announce our relationship. We owe it to him."
"I know," Harm said softly. He rested his forehead against mine and moved his hand from my cheek up to tangle itself in my hair. "I've missed you," he said tenderly. His lips found mine and I couldn't fight it even if I wanted to. His tongue slipped past my lips and I was gone, lost in the haze that always came over me when Harmon Rabb kissed me.
"You know, if we wanted to we could go off base for the evening. Have dinner. Go dancing. We haven't done that in a while," Harm suggested, his fingers toying with my hair the way he liked to when he planned on seducing me. I was so close to jumping him that his seduction was more likely to make me come than make me horny, but I appreciated the effort.
"The investigation," I protested weakly. "We don't even know what it is," I said, even though I wanted more than anything to take Harm up on his offer and forget about everything for at least a few hours.
Harm leaned down and dropped tantalizing kisses up and down my neck, his teeth nipping at my skin and his tongue smoothing over the area before moving on. I was coming apart in his arms and he knew it.
Pushing him away so that I could look into his eyes I offered a compromise in hopes that we could avoid prosecution for having sex on duty. "How about we wait for the files to come and after we know what we're dealing with we decide whether we go out for dinner and dancing or if we're going to have to find a way for you to sneak into my room tonight because if I have to go much longer without being with you I might go insane," I said. Then, before he could go all 'cocky Flyboy' on me, I pressed my fingers to his lips. "If you're a good boy I might just wear that red lace thing you like," I said. There was no point in letting him know that I already had it on under my uniform.
Harm's eyes lit up and I could feel him hardening even further against my belly. I removed my fingers from his lips and smiled coyly as I pressed myself against him shamelessly.
It took all my willpower to keep from pushing him down on the desk and having my way with him right there and then. The knowledge that I could easily push down his pants and boxers, hike up my skirt and rip off my panties, and have him inside me within a minute made me weak in the knees.
Fortunately, or maybe unfortunately, Bill chose that moment to act as our personal cold shower. He pounded on the door with his fist and called out to Harm, telling him that he knew he was in there.
We reluctantly separated and Harm sat down behind the desk to hide his arousal while I went to unlock the door.
"Bill, calm down," I said, knowing that it wouldn't do anything but needing to at least try to get the man to breathe before his head exploded all over my last clean uniform.
I don't even think he heard me, though, as he pushed past me and looked directly at Harm like he was the only hope for the future. "Get her away from him," Bill demanded.
"Who? Dana? Bill, you know as well as I do that once Dana makes her mind up about something there's no changing it. And she seems pretty happy where she is now," Harm said.
"You don't know him, Harm. He's crazy," Bill said.
"Agent Mulder seemed perfectly sane when we spoke earlier," I said, feeling the need to defend Mulder even if it was only because Bill seemed to hate the man so much.
"He thinks there are little gray men running around," Bill said.
"So does half the country," I replied. There was no point in saying that I wasn't completely adverse to the theory that there's more out in the universe than NASA has found.
"Half the country doesn't spend the government's money to hunt down these aliens," Bill replied acerbically. He turned back to Harm. "Look, I may not have liked it when you were screwing my baby sister, but you are a hell of a lot better for her than Spooky Mulder. I don't care what you have to do for or to Dana to get her away from him. Fuck her six ways from Sunday if you have to, but get Dana away from that freak," Bill said.
"I'm going to go check on those files," I said, needing to get away from Bill before I did something that would probably be detrimental to my career and would almost certainly ruin my manicure.
Harm, however, took my need to leave differently. "Meg, stay," he said, his voice filled with desperation. I paused and Harm turned his attention to Bill once he was sure I wasn't going to bolt. "Bill, not only am I not going to try to break up whatever Dana and her partner have, but I'm also not going to let you do anything that might cause Dana any kind of pain. Now, if you'll excuse us, Meg and I were in the middle of something when you decided to revert to caveman status."
"No, really, we're good where we left things, sir," I said, emphasizing the sir. "I'm going to go get those files. The results of our discussion hinge on what is in there, anyway." My need to get out of there no longer stopped at my growing desire to hit Bill Scully. "You two obviously have a lot of stuff to talk about."
"Meg," Harm pleaded. It was clear that he thought I was upset with him.
"Really, Harm, we're good. I'll talk to you later. You take care of… this," I said, waving my hand vaguely in the direction of Bill, "and then you and I can deal with our aforementioned decision."
I flashed him a smile and then left, closing the door and pretending I didn't hear Bill beginning a second plea for Harm to sleep with Dana.
It was still a little early for the files to have arrived so I spent a little time wandering around and watching the planes taking off and landing again. It wasn't the same without Harm's usual running commentary and critique of each pass, but, then again, everything seemed to be different when Harm was around.
Reaching under the collar of my shirt I pulled out the white-gold chain that held my most beloved possession. My engagement ring. The band was slim and plain with a beautiful diamond perched regally on top and a pair of wings etched inside. We had already bought the wedding rings, mine matching the engagement band and Harm's being a simple gold band. Inside my wedding band was the inscription HARMON and inside Harm's was MEGAN. Even though it was usually supposed to be a surprise Harm and I had decided that enough things in our lives were uncertain and that we didn't want our marriage to become one of those things, too. Our wedding bands were in Sarah Rabb's safety deposit box up in Pennsylvania because we had gone to the jeweler there and the rings hadn't been ready by the time we had to fly back to DC. We were supposed to go back up there to pick them up a few weeks later when we both had a three day weekend but we had been sent to San Diego and hadn't left the West Coast since.
I unhooked the chain and let the ring slip off into my palm. Since Harm had given it to me three months earlier on a weekend trip to his grandmother's farm the ring had spent more time hanging around my neck than it had on my finger. And, while just knowing that Harmon Rabb Jr loved me and wanted me to be his wife was enough, sometimes I would have liked to have people gush over my ring like they did over Harriet's after Bud proposed to her.
We had talked about how and when we were going to 'come out' in out own special way, and we had yet to come to a decision other than the fact that we had to tell the Admiral first. Even though we still weren't sure how to tell him that we'd been lying to him for over a year and breaking one of the cardinal rules at in the military and, specifically, at JAG by 'fraternizing', Harm and I had instantly agreed that he needed to be the first to know. Or, second, really, since it had been impossible to hide our engagement from Harm's grandmother since she had walked out onto the porch only moment's after Harm had got down on one knee in the front garden.
An elongated shadow blocked the sun and made me snap my hand shut around the ring. "Deep thoughts, Commander?"
"Something like that," I replied, not entirely eager to speak to the woman who was standing behind me. "And I help you with something, Agent Scully?"
"I got the impression that you were none too pleased to see me with Harm before," Scully said. "And I honestly cannot understand why."
"I'm very protective of my partner, ma'am," I replied, the ring in my palm digging into my skin.
Scully sat down next to me. "I understand that. Believe me, I do. But what I don't understand is why you felt you needed to protect him from me."
"Let's just say that Commander Rabb has an issue with tunnel vision sometimes and it tends to get him in trouble."
"I have no intention of hurting Harm in any way," Scully said gently.
"I'm not sure if I believe you, but I'm more worried about your brother's actions than yours right now," I said honestly.
Scully laughed. It was low and throaty, like her voice, and I could tell she wasn't used to laughing much. "Bill is hard to figure out," she agreed. "But he's more likely to hurt Mulder than anyone else. I honestly didn't think Bill would be in port when we got here. If I knew he was on base I would have sent someone else to negotiate with the Admiral."
"How is the Navy involved in your case, anyway? If you don't mind my asking," I said.
"There's a really tenuous connection that I'm not even sure I understand. I think it's mostly because of the horny sailor stereotype that the Navy's developed that the thought Miramar even entered into the profile," Scully said. "And, lucky me, I get to be the one to tell a two-star who knew my father and called me 'little britches' when I introduced myself today that one of his guys might be a serial rapist that the FBI called out it's star profiler to track down. Sometimes I really hate that my family history is included in my personnel file. Just because I grew up around sailors doesn't mean I want to be here."
There was so much bitterness in her voice that I felt the urge to move away from her, but I didn't.
"Not exactly the trip to Sea World people assume you're making when you say you're going to San Diego, huh?" I said more than somewhat sympathetically.
Scully smiled a tiny smile and then turned to watch a pair of F-14's taking off. "It still terrifies me when I see those things," she said. "Thinking Harm might be in the cockpit… I think him being a pilot is part of why I hate flying."
"If it makes you feel any better the only thing he flies right now is his Stearman, and even that he doesn't get up in the air all that much anymore," I said. Memories of flights with Harm in 'Sarah' brought a smile to my lips and my fingers tightened around the ring. I was itching to slip it on my finger and let people assume whatever they wanted to but it wasn't just my decision to make and I did want Harm to be on board with whatever I did regarding our relationship. "Of course that doesn't stop him from wanting to be catapulted off a carrier deck like that," I added as another pair of Tomcats headed off into the wide expanse of blue sky that was both their playground and office space.
"Nothing would," Scully said softly.
I had to agree with her on that one.
We were silent for a minute and then Scully spoke again. "How long after I left to find Mulder did Bill track you guys down?" she asked.
"Excuse me?"
"I know Bill and I know he thinks he's trying to protect me from the horrors that he thinks Mulder inflicts upon me, and I'm positive that he would go to Harm. I just want to know how much damage my brother has done."
I smiled softly. "It took him about twenty minutes," I said before relaying an edited version of the part of the conversation I had witnessed. "I could tell it was making Harm uncomfortable, talking about all that with me there, and I was about two seconds away from attacking Bill and risking a Court Marshall so I left them alone and came out here. But it's not like Harm's going to do anything. For one he's not going to take orders from Bill. Not to mention that Harm obviously has a great respect for you. And neither one of us has seen Mulder do anything to you, good, bad, or indifferent, so as far as I'm concerned it's none of our business."
Scully took a full two minutes to determine whether I was being genuine or if I was just trying to tell her what she evidently wanted to hear. I could tell that Dana Scully had a lot of trust issues and, if even half the stories I'd heard about the exploits of the agents of the X-Files, I could easily understand why.
"Thank you," she said at length. Her phone rang and she pulled it out of her shoulder bag and answered it with a slightly clipped, "Scully." The other person spoke for a minute and then she sighed softly. "You're sure? How long ago? Okay, do you have the chief medical examiner's office number handy? Good. I'll give him a call and make the arrangements. I don't want this to turn into some local-federal turf war, especially since you haven't had any written complains against you sent in to Skinner in at least two months. If you keep up this good behavior we might actually get heat in the office in time for winter this year. I'm taking the car so you'll have to find a cab if you need to leave the base, okay? Good. And try to stay away from Bill. Bye, Mulder," Scully said, a smile on her lips. I recognized that smile. I wear it every time Harm says something cute. Scully turned to me. "I have to go. Our serial rapist just escalated to murder."
I nodded and pulled out a card from the clip in the back of my notepad. "Harm and I are probably going to be in town for a while. The extension for the office is on the back. We should all go get dinner one night… if there's time, I mean."
"I'd like that," Scully said, tucking the card into her day planner. "Um… you wouldn't happen to know if Harm's mother still lives in the area, would you?" she asked, tucking her hair behind her ears. "I'd like to see her. It's been a long time."
"Trish and Frank moved to La Jolla a few years after they got married," I replied. I gave her the address and phone number of both the house and the gallery from memory, averting my eyes from her questioning gaze as she wrote the information down. "But if you could wait until the morning to call her, that'd be great. Harm's gonna be in enough trouble when Trish finds out that he's been here for as long as we have without calling her."
Scully nodded and offered up a half-smile before taking her leave. I stayed where I was, watching the familiar rush and protocol that comes with life on a base, for another half an hour before getting up and heading to the Public Affairs office to see if the files had arrived. They had, and I lugged the two document boxes across the base and down to our loaner office, hoping that Bill would be gone by the time I got there.
Harm was just coming out of the office when I got there and he took one of the boxes from me without a word. We put them down in the office and I closed the door and looked at Harm. "So, where'd you hide the body?" I asked. "Let me guess. In an empty tube attached to the missile rails on an F-14."
"Cute," Harm said. I smiled in return. "So, where'd you go?" he asked.
"I watched flight ops for a while," I said. "Wasn't the same without your commentary, but at least I didn't have to worry about you being the one wearing a F-14 like a pair of pantyhose."
Smiling, Harm opened one of the boxes. It was full of files. I hadn't expected anything else, but it was something else altogether to actually see the stack that was part one of two.
TBC...