A/N: We were pretty sure that we'd heard anything; then we got the reviews for the last chapter. We found a Mac/Nate shipper and someone asking for more angst. Now we realize that this isn't reflexive of the majority of you but we felt necessary to repeat that this is going to be a longer story so more angst is coming but we decided to mix in some humour with this chapter as a reprieve.
A/N2: We know no one suggested this actress for the Peach character, but with the way the guys wrote it, we literally just couldn't think of anyone else to play the role; if you can think of someone else, the casting is subject to change but we just couldn't our apologies.
Guest Starring:
Carla Gugino as Nicole 'Peach' DiPiccio
It was around 1100 on Saturday morning; Harm was sitting in the apartment with Sergei, having a late breakfast. The two of them hadn't spent a whole heck of a lot of time together since Sergei had been brought back to the States in early February. Harm was constantly being called away on work and Sergei was having a remarkable amount of success on the Washington dating scene. This of course led Sturgis to make a few comments about Sergei, 'upstaging' his brother.
Harm was taking it all in stride though; the job that he was falling into at the Pentagon had some real interesting facets. It seemed like everyday, warning bells were going off. Everyday they picked up on some money trail or some arms deal or something that became like open smoke signals over the Sahara. It all led Harm to wonder just how much the analysts in the intelligence community had missed in the time leading up to September 11tth. That was something less then pleasant to consider.
He had just finished rinsing the dishes from breakfast in the sink when the phone rang in his apartment. "Rabb." Harm answered the phone.
"Harm? Nate Ross here, you need to get Sergei and get him down to the State Department now." Nate sounded hurried.
"Nate, what's going on?" An instant panic claimed Harm's tone.
"I can't tell you, listen you've just got to get down to the Truman Building with Sergei, alright?" Nate responded.
"Is this that important?" Harm asked.
"This imminently affects Sergei's future in this country." Nate replied before cutting his end of the connection. Harm dropped the phone back into the cradle. He had a panic stricken look on his face as he strode across the room.
"Sergei, get your stuff, we have to go, like now." Harm stated authoritatively.
"What is the matter, brother?" Sergei inquired, slightly unnerved to see his brother in such a mood.
"I just got a call we have to go down to the State Department." Within minutes, both Rabb boys were on their way down to the State Department.
1653 ZULU
HARRY S TRUMAN BUILDING
FOGGY BOTTOM, WASHINGTON DC
Harm pulled the Lexus into the parking garage where Nate Ross was waiting for him. Nate looked like anything but the stereotypical government official. He was wearing a light spring jacket over a blue "The Who" t-shirt and American Eagle blue-jeans. When Harm pulled the car into a parking space he looked right at Nate in an attempt to read his expression but that damn Marine stoicism wasn't giving anything away.
"Nate, what's up, you've got me on a five alarm panic here." Harm, Sergei and Nate started walking through the parking garage toward the front door and lobby of the Truman Building.
"It's just like I told you, Harm, something has come up which has imminent bearing on Sergei's future in this country." Nate's tone carried a grave inference as he guided them through the glass doors and through the lobby into what were the very bowels of the State Department. Harm stopped when he saw a crowd gathered in between the cubicles and Secretary of State Malcolm Anderson standing at the front of the crowd.
"Are you Sergei Zhukov, young man?" The Secretary of State inquired, looking at Sergei.
"Ye…Yes, sir." Sergei replied.
"Would you raise your right and hand and repeat after me, please?" Anderson asked and watched with a wise smile as Sergei raised his hand as he had been instructed. "I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen." Anderson stated aloud and Sergei repeated after him, if with some hesitation. "That I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same." Anderson continued and Harm looked on with pride as Sergei's English picked up and he repeated the oath with a little more fluidity. "that I will perform work of national importance under civilian direction when required by the law; and that I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; so help me God." With that Secretary Anderson concluded the Oath of Citizenship and shook Sergei's hand.
"The Oath of Citizenship? You called us down here for the Oath of Citizenship? Why couldn't he just take that at an INS office on Monday morning?" Harm asked somewhat annoyed.
"We got proof of his genealogy late last night, so I set this up pretty quick. Besides, how many immigrants do you know that get to have their Oath of Citizenship read to them by the Secretary of State?" Nate questioned with 'give me a break' kind of look.
"I should have known you'd pull off something extravagant like this." Harm whispered back.
"I am American now, brother!" Sergei stated joyously.
"You certainly are." Harm replied as he pulled Sergei into a hug. "That means we can get you a job now."
"I have an idea there as well." Nate interjected.
"You need a hobby." Harm turned toward his co-worker.
"Hey, just hear me out." Nate raised his hands into the surrender position. "Sergei, did you like being a Helo pilot in Russia?"
"Very much, I do even miss it from time to time." Sergei answered.
"Are you telling me that you've set it up that he can fly Helos here in the States?" Harm felt like he was going to hug the State Department official.
"Eventually. Sergei, how would you like to follow in your father's and brother's footsteps?" Nate turned toward the young Russian.
"I would like this very much." Sergei's eyes grew wide.
"You aren't talking about sending him to Annapolis?" Harm questioned.
"I sure am. He qualifies. His grades are right up there, but apparently it was hell trying to track them down. He's the son of a Naval serviceman and for my piece de resistance, I arranged the circumstances to get him a recommendation from a four star Marine Corps General; since the Navy doesn't have combat Helos." Nate explained.
"I'm going to owe you big for this, aren't I?" Harm asked.
"Just don't expect a birthday gift this year." Nate returned.
"Thank you very much, Mr. Ross." Sergei enthusiastically shook Nate's hand.
"Not a problem, kid. How would you two like to meet the team that helped get Sergei into the country?" Nate asked.
"I owe these people; I think that I'd better at least meet them." Harm agreed and the two Rabbs followed Nate through the rows of cubicles to an open mini bullpen of cubicles at the other end where sat two guys buy computers who were tossing paper airplanes back and forth at one another.
"Harm, Sergei; this is Spinner and Morley. They were my go-to guys for getting Sergei rushed through the immigration process." Nate introduced Harm to the two men.
"Derek Morley, Nate you forgot Peach." Morley shook Harm's hand.
"Alan Knox." Spinner shook Harm's hand as well.
"I didn't forget Peach; she's just not here right now. Makes no sense to introduce someone whose not there." Nate sniped back.
"Except that I'm here right now." An alto feminine voice joined in the conversation from behind Nate and Harm. Harm and Nate turned to face her. "Nicole DiPiccio." She reached out and shook Harm and Sergei's hands. "So, Hercules and Achilles have decided to step out of mythology and walk among the mortals again."
"I'm Hercules." Harm taunted in a whisper that made Nate chuckle slightly.
"Gee, Peach, with the way that you've moped around here since Nate left, I thought you'd be kissing his ass to have him back. Not to mention other parts of his anatomy." Spinner taunted with a conniving smile.
"Spinner!" Peach practically shrieked out.
"Something I should know, kiddies?" Nate looked around at his former co-workers.
"Yeah, Nate, Peach said…" Morley's voice was stopped by Peach's hand over his mouth.
"I said absolutely nothing, now why are America's new coverboys here?" Peach's tone was terse.
"Did I do something to upset you? I mean what's with the serious case of bitch-itis this morning?" Nate questioned with a furrowed brow and a very suspicious tone.
"You reprehensible, arrogant fuckwit! You think just because you and Captain America here make the cover of Time magazine, you can come in here and talk to me like that?" Peach fired back with an obvious ire in her tone.
"I guess we have a problem." Nate's tone turned an almost gravel kind of serious.
"Yeah, I guess we do." Peach shot back snidely.
"Let's see if we can't just step into my old office and sort out what it is that crawled up you this morning." Nate replied, his jaw set firm.
"Lead on, McDickhead!" Peach replied and the two of them went stamping off toward Nate's old office, the door slammed like a clap of thunder behind them.
"Are they always like that?" Harm questioned the two guys in the cubicle.
"No, this is definitely a first for them." Spinner replied with curious smirk.
"Dude, did Peach just call him a fuckwit?" Morley joked, having obviously come late to the joke.
"Wait; what about that time with Petra Triescu?" Spinner turned away from Harm toward Morley.
"Shit, I forgot all about that. Nate and Peach were inches from a knock down, drag out, street fight for weeks after that." Morley was laughing quite openly.
"Care to elaborate, gentlemen?" Harm asked looking from Morley to Spinner awaiting an explanation.
"Petra Triescu is like the Heidi Klum of the diplomat world. Completely unattainable for most men. Nate is nothing if not humble, so he'd normally never go after her. Anyway, about eighteen months ago, or so, we were all at this big summit with countries hoping to join NATO and Petra was there as part of the Latvian delegation. Nate gets a few glasses of wine in him, not enough to make him drunk or anything but just enough to lower his inhibitions. Morley here dares him to go ask Petra for a dance, well one thing leads to another and they end up in his hotel room, later that night. Well, a few hours later, Peach goes knocking on Nate's door to go over notes for the conference the next morning and when Nate comes to the door, he opens it enough that Peach can look in and see Petra lying naked on top of the covers. Well, she basically retreated into a shell for the rest of the conference until we all got back here when she blew up at him." Spinner informed Harm with a comical smile and a few hand gestures.
"Why was she pissed? Were they dating at the time or something?" Now it was Harm's turn to look confused.
"No, Peach is just like completely in love with the guy. None of us understand it, either, because none of us have any indication that Nate's ever even given her a second look. I mean, she's pretty damn good looking but Nate either doesn't notice or doesn't care." Morley explained in what Harm was beginning to recognize as his southern California, surfer way.
"I'm sure he notices. Maybe, I don't know, maybe he's afraid of screwing up being friends with her or maybe he's just afraid of hurting her." Harm had to pause for a minute, those excuses sounded way too familiar.
"Or maybe he's Nathan Ross and he just works too goddamn hard to look beyond his computer screen." Spinner joked.
"Yeah, okay Mr. MIT, can decode Cyrillic and Arabic encryptions in under ten minutes." Morley shot back. "Hey, Spinner, you still got that microphone in Nate's old office?"
"Hey, yeah, I forgot all about that. We never took that out after Nate left." Spinner turned toward his computer and punched in a few keys and Media Player came up with a live feed over the speakers of the wireless microphone in Nate's old office.
"Jesus Christ, normally you can be pretty nice, but this takes the fucking cake. Did you go from zero to bitch in the time it took you to wake up this morning?" The voice was Nate's and it was carrying a little more edge then Harm was used to hearing.
"Ten bucks, she slaps him." Spinner stated.
"Fifteen." Morley replied and shook Spinner's hand.
"They really talk to each other like that?" Harm questioned, his eyes wider than saucers.
"These two have a policy of complete and utter honesty with each other that would scare the crap out of most people." Spinner replied absently as he turned his attention back to the green sound spectrum on the screen.
"What's the matter Nate? No petite, big-breasted Eastern European women in your bed when you woke up this morning?" Peach's voiced was tainted with sarcasm.
"You're faulting me for having sex? Maybe that's your problem, not getting any Peach? Pity, might loosen you up!" Nate shot back with an almost taunting tone.
"Oh, this just got personal." Morley stated with a mock grimace.
"That boy's gonna get slapped." Harm added.
"Does Mr. Ross have a death wish, brother?" Sergei asked.
"It would seem that way." Harm responded.
"My sex life is none of your business!" Peach shouted back at a level that almost negated the use of the microphone to be heard.
"But apparently mine is your business? Can't have it both ways. So is that your problem, Nicole? Your bed just a little too cold at night?" Nate retorted, her comment having thrown him on the defensive.
"Contrary to popular belief, Nathan, not everything is solved with a little bit of slap and tickle." Peach was returning fire still but the conviction in her voice was deadening.
"Don't bullshit me, Nicole, I know you too well. If this wasn't about sex, you wouldn't keep talking about it, just like you wouldn't be staring at my crotch right now." Nate's voice took on a tone of smugness, like he knew he was going to triumph.
"That's what it is with me isn't it? I'm the one woman in the world that doesn't live for Nate Ross and his fabulous body!" Peach's voice was back a forceful vengeance…then she realized the context in which she had used the word 'fabulous'.
"Fabulous? Really? I think you just lost the argument, Peach." Nate sniped almost masterfully.
"Fuck you." Peach shot weakly. Then they heard the one sentence that every guy wants to say after a woman says those words to him but very few men have ever successfully gotten out.
"Yeah, you'd like to." Nate spat out and the line went silent. The cubicle was silent too. Every guy had probably thought those words at some point in his life but none of them dared say them. Now, Nate Ross had and something was going to come of it. After a few seconds of tension thicker then an English fog, the sound of an open palm hitting a cheek at a high speed could be heard.
"Fifteen bucks, please." Spinner extended his hand to Morley who placed the money in it. "Thank you."
"Saw that coming. Why did you bet?" Harm questioned.
"Nate can normally talk his way out of tight spots." Morley explained. Nate came walking out of the office rubbing his very red left cheek. He looked over to find everyone looking up at him kind of like they were hiding something.
"Spinner, you had the microphone on, didn't you?" Nate asked.
"Uh……what microphone, boss?" Spinner covered weakly.
"Busted." Sergei joked and the guys couldn't help but laugh.
"Come on, Nate, we'll go back to my apartment and ice down your cheek with a Coors." Harm gave Nate a pat on the back as he, Sergei and the beaten Assistant Secretary of State walked back out to the parking garage.
1806 ZULU
HARM'S APARTMENT
NORTH OF UNION STATION
Harm and Nate went to work on the renovations in Sergei's room. Today they had to put the insulation in the newly constructed walls before they could lay the outer shell of the walls and do any painting. "So, Nate, what's the real deal with you and Peach, you two didn't sleep together did you?"
"No. I wouldn't mind, I mean, I'm sure it would be fantastic, you saw her body. It's just that it would be hard to reconcile doing that and then not trying again the next morning at work." Nate joked as he negotiated the insulation around the wiring. "But look who I'm talking too, you know what I'm going through, you've had to work with not only Mac but Meg for the better part of the last decade."
"Hey, our situations aren't that similar. The women I worked with weren't in love with me." Harm protested.
"Do you need a shovel for all that bullshit?" Nate returned. "Meg is so in love with you, I'm honestly surprised that she hasn't blown you in public yet."
"Hey, that was uncalled for." Harm stopped what he was doing.
"But true. As for Mac, well I'm so goddamn confused when it comes to where you and her stand that trying to figure it out would probably take a map of the stars and several glasses of very potent gin." Nate joked light-heartedly.
"We're not that screwed up." Harm protested and Nate tossed him a glare that said 'oh really?' "How much do you know?"
"I know about Sydney, Norfolk, her engagement party and the mistletoe from Christmas this year for sure but I think there might be a few underlying currents I've yet to fill in." Nate smiled smugly.
"I can't bullshit you then, huh?" Harm deadpanned.
"Not if you tried." Nate returned as they finished with the insulation.
"Can we just agree that the less said about Mac's and my relationship, the better?" Harm suggested.
"Agreed." Nate nodded lightly as Harm walked over to the fridge to get them each another beer.
"So, what do you think is toughest part about working with a beautiful woman? Seeing them after having a sex dream about them, or getting caught fantasizing about them while they're talking to you?" Harm laughed lightly as he asked the question.
"Definitely got to be the dreams. They become like PTSD flashbacks. One minute you're talking by the coffee machine, the next you just see that picture of her in the dream the night before on your kitchen table." Nate answered.
"Or on your desk at work." Harm added.
"The back seat of your car." Nate sounded almost introspective.
"The shower." They both said simultaneously. "I swear every man in the world has had that fantasy." Harm laughed boisterously.
"No doubt. Then there's the awkward moment where you're caught thinking about the dream and you hear the words: 'you haven't been listening to a word I've said'; that kind of gets weird." Nate popped the cap off his beer.
"If I had nickel every time…" Harm started.
"I hear ya, we'd both be very rich men." Nate and Harm chuckled slightly.
"To working with beautiful women." Harm raised his beer bottle.
"I'll drink to that." Nate clinked his beer bottle against Harm's. The two of them sat there drinking and watching baseball for the rest of the afternoon. They never did finish the wall.
1348 ZULU
THE PENTAGON
ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA
"You egotistical son of a bitch!" Peach came bursting into the Three Wise Men office to confront Nate. Nate looked from Mike to Harm.
"You two know Peach, right?" He deadpanned before lifting his eyes to meet her. "Good morning, Peach."
"Don't good morning me, you took Spinner and Morley from the State Department and attached them to your staff here. I want to know why you needed them so damn badly." Peach was now pissed off enough to be in what Nate had dubbed her 'demanding dominatrix' mood. He knew he had to diffuse this little time bomb.
"Morley, despite his obvious limitations is one of the best historical investigators in the game and Spinner is a master of Cyrillic and Arabic encryptions, I need both of them in the line of work I'm doing." Nate supplied as he tossed a manila folder on to his desk. "In answer to your next question, I didn't request to have you transferred because you're a negotiator and so am I, so having you here would be an exercise in redundancy. You're better served at State."
"Would you two gentlemen please leave, I don't want you to see anything that you might have to testify to." Peach said with a grim tone.
"Yeah, I was just going to go make out a living will." Mike got up out of his chair and sprinted for the door.
"And I was going to thank God that I don't feel the need to say stupid things." Harm too left the office. He and Mike walked through the outer office past Harm's yeoman and out into the hallways of the Pentagon. "That's the second time in three days, they argue enough to be married."
"Funny you should say that." Mike chuckled. "I've known Nate since he started working at the State Department. Actually, earlier, there were a few times that the Company called on him and his sniper rifle while he was in the Corps. Anyway, it's never been proven but there was always suspicion that the reason that Nate's first marriage went to shit was because his wife thought he was sleeping with Peach."
"Wait; Nate was married?" Harm reeled back in shock.
"Doesn't exactly seem the type, huh? Yeah, well, Nate busted his ass his first few years at State and got promoted pretty rapidly. After a few years they gave him his own team. Peach was assigned as his junior negotiator. They were close. Hell, I'm not ashamed to admit that even I thought they were sleeping together. I know better now, of course."
Suddenly Harm had a whole new understanding of Mic Brumby and it kind of made him queasy. He kind of understood that with how close he and Mac were, even when they were fighting, it was no wonder that someone could get the impression that he'd obviously gotten.
"Yeah, well, after Nate got divorced, that's when they got really close. We were all kind of on the 'it could happen any day now' watch for years. It was annoying as fuck. I had Spinner updating me with daily emails. Then about two years ago, the whole Petra Triescu thing happened. It was funny because it wasn't the first time that Nate and Petra had sex it was just the first time that they got caught." Mike stated and Harm's eyes went wide.
"You mean that they just have sex, they just get together and fuck like bunny rabbits for a while then go back to their lives?" Harm questioned in disbelief.
"Yeah, they're fuckbuddies. They first met about five years ago when the Latvian President visited Washington. After a date, they realized that they weren't emotionally compatible but physically they could set off a smoke detector. So, they set up a few rules. They can only have sex if they're in the same city on work and if they're not in a relationship with anyone else, other then that, it's all fair game. Anyway, after Peach found out about Petra she got kind of bitchy for a while and then things kind of smoothed out. I'd give my left nut to know what set her off this time." Mike chortled slightly.
A few silent minutes later, Peach came storming out of the office on the verge of tears and she headed one way down the hallways of the Pentagon. A few seconds later, Nate came walking out in a tirade of his own and he headed down the hallways in the opposite direction.
"Where do you think you're going?" Harm asked, catching Nate by the sleeve of his coat.
"To Quantico, I'm going to get drunk at the O Club, then go out on to the sniper range and shoot something." Nate replied.
"Booze and high-powered rifles? You're not about to live Charlton Heston's dream afternoon. Come on, you can get just as drunk here in DC. Besides, if we get enough liquor in you, you might tell us what happened in there." Harm guided Nate toward the door and his Lexus.
"Never happen." Nate quipped.
12 BEERS LATER……
"You know what she had the nerve to say? She had the nerve to say that I was just getting back at her for being angry about the Petra thing." Nate slurred.
"Were you?" Harm questioned trying to contain his laughter at his very drunk friend.
"Hell no, I told her the truth when you guys were in the room. I told her that she was just pissed that I invited Petra instead of her." Nate informed them.
"Yeah, buddy, you really have to learn that everything that pops into your head, doesn't have to come out of your mouth." Mike jested as Nate leaned further over the bar.
"She stood there like a deer in headlights." Nate started laughing hysterically. "I asked her why every fight we've had in the last two years seems to centre on that night and she….." Nate's laughter grew even louder. "You know what she said?"
"No, what?" Harm was on the edge of his seat. It was like living in a soap opera.
"She said, it was the first time that I ever acted immature about something work related." Nate informed his friends.
"Bullshit! What about that day you took all that Viagra before work and walked around with a raging hard on all day without hiding it? That was some funny immature shit, you made what $1300 off that bet?" Mike couldn't help but laugh at just the memory of the event.
"I forgot all about that. Damn, that day was funny. I was lucky that I rarely had to leave my office. Or how about the time I brought in the paintball gun and shot her in the ass?" Nate and Mike almost fell off their barstools they were laughing so hard. "Just marking my territory!"
"Don't forget the time you snapped her bra in front of the President of Mexico." Mike added.
"See, I do plenty of immature shit when I think the office could use some laughs." The alcohol was really starting to work on Nate's system now.
"The best though was when you put that 'honking makes me horny' bumper sticker on her car. Then, every time she tore it off, you'd put a new one on before you left work that day. I remember, you kept that up for like three months." Mike and Harm looked over to see Nate passed out on the bar.
"He really do all that stuff?" Harm asked Mike who was helping him ease Nate off the barstool and take him out to the car.
"Oh yeah, he's a ball of laughs if he's properly motivated. Nate has this inner frat boy that tends to come out once in a while. Like when he's drunk, or when he's horny, or when he's repressing." The two men carried him across the bar, stretcher style. "Becky almost threw a hairy canary when I told her that Nate was going to be my best man. Which reminds me, are you coming to the wedding next week?"
"Yeah, you didn't get my RSVP?" Harm questioned.
"Just making sure." Mike answered as he opened the door of the car and tossed Nate inside. "You wanna come to the bachelor party, it promises to be a lot of fun with Nate planning it."
"Sounds like fun." Harm added.
"What do we do with him now?" Mike inquired looking at his friend who was sprawled out across the backseat.
"Take him back to his apartment and call Mac, she's got this miracle hangover cure that I've needed a few times, she'll nurse him back to health." Harm suggested.
"You're suggesting that Mac take care of Nate in this state?" Mike almost dropped dead from surprise.
"She's qualified, besides I've learned that I can trust that Nate's not going to try anything with Mac." Harm closed the door of the car and the two guys dropped Nate off at home.
0121 ZULU
NATE ROSS' APARTMENT
PENTAGON CITY, VIRGINIA
Nate was laying sprawled out on the couch being gently stirred by his shoulder. He dragged his eyelids open to see Mac above him. "I'm either dreaming or still drunk. Help me decided." Nate joked as he opened his eyelids the whole way. Mac pinched his cheek. "Alright, I'm obviously awake." Nate sat up on the couch too fast and the throbbing in his temples increased greatly. "I want to die." He whined.
"Drink this." Mac pushed a cup of orangeish-purplish liquid into Nate's face.
"This tastes like motor oil." Nate remarked after choking down the last of the liquid.
"Well this is what you get for drinking your own weight in beer." Mac thumped him soundly on the back.
"What is with women and hitting today?" Nate questioned aloud and Mac chuckled as she headed into the kitchen.