Hi, everyone! Can you believe we're about four weeks away from Christmas now? Only 10 more ficlets to go after this one, so we should be done in plenty of time for Christmas. I'm really having a lot of fun writing Harm and Mac at Christmas time, and I love hearing that you're enjoying the story. Thank you all for reading and for your nice comments!
Baking
"Harm, would you like some cinnamon cookies?" Sarah called.
Harm was lying on the couch, staring blankly at the ceiling. "No."
"Are you sure?"
"Well, maybe I'll eat one."
"Good," Sarah said. "Then come help me bake them."
With a heavy sigh, Harm reached for his crutches and hobbled out into the kitchen. He stumbled as he made his way to the counter, grabbing for the arm of a chair and hissing in pain as he tried to steady himself.
"Damn it, Grandma, I can't even walk."
"Harm, you just need to be patient. This isn't something you're going to recover from right away." She handed him a spoon and a bowl filled with flour and sugar. "Now start mixing."
Sarah could see the pain on her grandson's face even as he lifted his arm to pick up the spoon. His whole body was either sore, swollen, or broken, and dark black and blue bruises ran in jagged lines down his face. But she could tell the hurt ran much deeper than that.
"You'll walk again," Sarah promised.
"Yeah, I just won't fly."
Harm's hand curled into a fist and he let out an angry growl of frustration.
His grandmother simply handed him a chunk of dough. "Here, dear. Make some cookies out of this, okay?"
He tore the dough into tiny pieces, blindly dropping them on the cookie sheet, and Sarah watched him with great concern. But she said nothing, as she knew he would have to heal on his own from the ramp strike that had broken not only his body but his heart.
Later, as she slid the last batch of cookies into the oven, Sarah turned to her grandson. "They'll need to bake for quite a while. How about you come out to the barn with me?"
"I'm not really in the mood, Grandma."
"You ever look under that old tarp in the barn?"
"No."
"Well, then come with me," Sarah said. "I want to show you something."
~*~o~*~
"You've done this before," Mac observed.
Harm grinned as he mixed the cookie batter with a wooden spoon. "And what makes you say that?"
"Oh, I don't know," Mac teased. "Maybe the fact that you don't even have to look at the recipe."
"You never forget how to make Grandma's cinnamon cookies, Mac."
Mac had to admit that she was truly impressed with the way her partner could turn flour, sugar, butter, eggs, and cinnamon into a batch of soft, creamy, melt-in-your-mouth cookies.
"Harm, you know," she mused in a silly, sweet voice, "if the whole lawyer thing doesn't work out someday, you could always become a chef."
He scoffed as he dropped teaspoons of dough onto a cookie sheet. "Right, I'm sure the admiral would love it if I changed my designator again."
Mac shrugged. "Just a suggestion."
But she couldn't hide her mischievous smile as she stole a spoonful of cookie dough out of the bowl.
