Author's Note:
Okay, I'm hoping that some are enjoying this one. I know that it isn't my typical fic because there is going to be angst that you haven't seen before, but go with me on it, and I think you might enjoy it. These two have lots of baggage and lots of issues they need to get through to make things work... so let them get through it! Enjoy and review if you would like...
Okay, maybe not perfect.
"I don't understand why we can't get my things moved at the same time. They are technically our things."
"I understand that, but my orders are going to be taken out of your computer in a matter of days anyways. I'm telling you that we are going to be at Great Lakes Naval Base."
"Yes, I know that there aren't any Marine detachments there, but my fiancé is going to be there, so I'm going to be there."
"No we are not married yet."
"You've got to be kidding me!" she finally screams in frustration and disconnects the call.
Harm is watching this from across the room and finally steps in to see what exactly the call entailed as she throws the phone onto the couch and it bounces onto the floor.
"So?" he asks, inching his way into the room.
"While your change of orders was processed and they are ready to go, mine are not. This means that movers are coming to my place Monday to move my things to San Diego."
"But you're not going to San Diego." He says with a smile on his face and then immediately frowns at her glare.
"I'm well aware of that, and I tried to explain to them that I was going with you to Great Lakes. They don't seem to understand that."
"You turned in papers to General Creswell and he said that he was going to take care of things this morning. It shouldn't be a problem."
"Agreed. And then when I said that you were my fiancé, he then informs me that unless we are married, the Navy isn't going to ship my things with your things once they know I've resigned."
"Oh."
"Yeah, oh. Harm, I have all my stuff in boxes, sitting in my apartment ready to move somewhere. Varese is coming by the end of next week to move in to my apartment and you are shipping off on Wednesday. Where exactly does that leave me?"
Clearly Mac's frustration level had peaked, and he was not used to this reaction. She doesn't lose her cool like this, and he realizes then that maybe he needs to try to clear up things on his end to make this work.
"Mac… Sarah, calm down." He says, grabbing on to her shoulders and rubbing up and down in a comforting gesture. "We will get this all figured out."
"How?"
"I'm going to call right now." He says picking up the abused phone from the floor where she had dropped it after her call.
After a few minutes of automated menus, he finally reaches who he needs to talk to.
"Yes, this is Captain Harmon Rabb. I understand that you are moving my things to Great Lakes and are coming to pick up on Tuesday?"
"That's great, but I have a situation here. My fiancé is in the Marine Corps and her orders have been cancelled as she has resigned her commission as of this morning, and her things need to go with my things to Great Lakes. Who do we have to talk to for that to happen?"
"I was unaware of that policy. I thought that they would ship out one last time."
"Is there anything that we can do in the next forty eight hours to make this happen?"
"Get married… okay, How about this? You put the order through to have Colonel Sarah MacKenzie's items shipped with mine, and we will take care of the rest." He says, disconnecting the call and looking up to see a shocked Marine staring at him.
"What did you just do?" she asks in disbelief.
"I got them to get your stuff shipped with mine?" he replies in more of a question than a statement.
"By agreeing to do what?"
"Get married."
"Harm!"
"Well, we were going to get married anyway… why not tomorrow?" he says with a bit of a laugh that was clearly the wrong thing to do in the moment.
"You have got to be kidding me."
With that, she walks out of his apartment, taking her jacket and keys with her. Clearly she wasn't as excited as he was for this development.
Two hours later, the knock on his door causes him to nearly sprint to answer.
"Mac, I'm sorry." He says, flinging it open to see Sturgis instead of the woman he loves.
"You should be saying that to me, you know…"
"Why?" Harm says with a squint of his eyes.
"I'm not ready for a roommate, and your fiancé just called my girlfriend to tell her that she won't be able to move in at all. Apparently Mac is staying in Washington?"
"No she's not…" he says, grabbing his coat and leaving Sturgis standing at his open door in search of Sarah MacKenzie.
When he shows up at the door, she knows that it's him. She knows that he's there to talk and make things better. She just doesn't know what that means for her.
"Mac… I want you with me… I'm sorry." He says when she cracks her door open.
When she gestures for him to come in, he puts his head down in a sheepish way and enters the apartment.
"Maybe this isn't a good idea." She says quietly as she shuts the door.
"What isn't a good idea?"
Sitting down on the couch and waiting for him to sit across from her, she says something that he wasn't expecting to hear, "You and me… us. Harm, maybe there really is a reason why we've spent the last nine years not being with each other."
"Mac, how can you say that?"
"This is just all happening too fast, Harm. Think about this… if that deadline hadn't popped up. If the General hadn't told us that we would be halfway around the world from each other, would this have happened?"
"Eventually… God I hope so."
"Harm, you and I don't act like this! My stupid comment and then you propose? We haven't even gone on a date! We… don't do matters of the heart impulsively… we stuff them down until one of us does something stupid and the other has to pick up the pieces of it. And a coin flip to decide who is going to resign? What were we thinking with all that? It makes no sense whatsoever!"
"It makes perfect sense to me." He says simply, shaking his head that she could think all this after all these years.
"Why?"
He wipes over his face with his hands, trying to collect himself as he stands to pace the living room in a nervous gesture that didn't go unnoticed by her.
"Because it was fate, Mac. It was fate that you came into my life, because there have been a number of things these past nine years that I wouldn't have made it through without you, Sarah. You walked into my life this reminder of someone that I knew and loved and turned into this person, this beautiful woman that I couldn't live without. You have been with me every step of the way, and even though the two of us tried to be with other people, we always gravitated toward each other. You have always been the first person I think of when I wake up in the morning… just thinking about what you were doing in that moment. This is a mess of a situation, and I get that. I get that we have not gone about this in any remotely conventional way, but since when have you and I stuck to anything conventional? We're best when we're going at it on the fly, Mac, and I don't think this is going to be any different."
"Before people get married, Harm… before they get engaged, they sit down and they talk about things… they talk about the future and about what they want—"
"God, Mac! We've done that! A great career, a good man, and loads of comfortable shoes. That's what you said you want."
"There's more than that, Harm."
"I know… you want a family." He says and puts a hand up to stop her from commenting on the statement. "and I don't know and I don't care what that family is to you… whether it is just you and me or we decide to try for a baby or adopt or foster… you will have that family in me. You want someone who loves you like I love you, but you want so badly to love them back just as much, which I know is why you and Brumby didn't walk down the aisle. I feel how much you love me… I feel it in the way you look at me, in the way we kiss, and in the way you know me. I've never had that before, and I know you haven't either. You want a life that you love and that you share with someone else. I don't think I've ever wanted to have that with someone. That's why this is going to work."
What can you say to that? He laid it all out on the line for her to see and he was right. He was right about all of it, and she didn't know how to respond.
It was finally all out in the open and the fear crept up and out of her as she formulated her response, "I don't want to lose this, Harm. I don't want to lose this feeling I have now, really knowing that you love me the way that I've needed. I'm just so worried that we don't have our footing and it's all going to slip out from under us."
"It might. Hell, Mac… it has before, and we're still here."
She just stares at him awhile, wondering how this was going to work, wondering if she could finally trust him after years of dancing around the whole idea.
"I wish there was just some way to know that this was going to work. Some way to know that everything was going to be perfect down the line."
"Mac, nothing about either of us is perfect, so it just won't be… but it will be us."
"I'm scared of all of it."
"Why?"
"The stability of it all… or maybe the instability. I'm not going to have anything when we get there. I won't have a job or friends or anything to stick to. But then I'm going to have you… here always and that's just not something that I'm used to."
"Aside from my flying stint, when have we been away from each other, Mac?"
"That's not what I mean. I mean being together in the day to day… our lives. We were always with each other for work, and occasionally together as friends, but never like what we are proposing to do now."
"And if we don't try it… knowing how much we love each other, we aren't going to be able to live with ourselves."
"And that's why I got mad at you. You just told some guy that we were going to get married in the next 48 hours and I don't want that."
"You don't want to get married?" he says, his brow furrowing.
"I do, but I liked this idea of the engagement. It wasn't something that was final. We could take some time to get into all the things that we need to before actually getting married. We could get used to each other."
"Like a trial period, you mean?"
"Does that make sense?"
"It does in a way, but I feel like you and I have been so much to each other that I don't need a trial period with you, Mac. I know that you are the one that I'm supposed to be with for the rest of my life. I'm sorry that you doubt it."
"I don't doubt that I love you and that I want to be with you. I just doubt the circumstances. If we were going to work out, then why did it take so long?"
"Sarah… maybe everything… everything that has happened to us before now… it has led us to this moment. We had to get through all of that to get here."
"So what do we do now?" she asks, throwing her hands up in question.
"We move all your boxes over to my place, make sure they are labeled with my name and act like they're mine."
"That's going to take hours…"
"I'll call Sturgis… I'm sure that he will be more than willing to help. You're leaving a lot of your furniture anyway, so it won't be as bad as you think. I don't have that much stuff anyways, so it will be easily believed."
"And when the movers show up on Monday to my place?"
"Tell them that a group already came to take care of it. You know how horrible Navy shipping is. I'll be lucky to see this stuff within a month in Illinois. That's why they say to pack at least that much stuff to last you in case they lose something in transit or it takes a while to get the container. They won't know that someone didn't really come."
"And what about getting married?"
"Tomorrow, you and I are going ring shopping because I want to put a ring on that finger so you understand that this is final. There aren't any legal documents, but I want the world and you to know that I want you to be my wife more than I think I've ever wanted anything. Then we are going to get settled at Great Lakes and we go from there."
"And that's okay with you?"
"Mac… it means that I get you, so I'm more than okay." He says, taking her hand in his as he kneels down at her feet while she sits on the couch.
"This isn't going to be easy, is it?"
"No… but I never thought that it would be easy. Loving you… easiest thing I ever started doing. It's all the other stuff that goes with that love that I think is hard."
"You mean like actually telling me that you're in love with me."
"Hey, Marine, you didn't open your mouth once." He counters.
"Oh sure, Mr. 'did you know they wrote eternity on this bridge'… I put myself out there and you rejected me."
"And you turned around and got engaged to Brumby…"
"And you kissed me at my engagement party!"
"But you called it off and ran anyways… I had to chase you to the middle of the ocean."
She stops to think then, hearing them go back and forth with their tales of woe with the other. This was the most complicated relationship she's ever been in. At the same time, it made them into what they are today.
"We really are a mess, aren't we?" she finally says.
"Would you take it all back if you could?"
"None of it." She says, shaking her head.
"All right, then let's call Sturgis."
Hours later, and well into the evening, Mac is laying down in her bed and Harm plops down next to her and lets out a long sigh. Harm's apartment was full of boxes and his bed was boxed up. He was originally going to stay in a hotel but Mac had suggested that they just spend the few nights here instead, since her bed was something that was staying for Varese.
"I'm exhausted." She says, moving herself under the covers and turning to sleep.
When she turns, he wraps his arms around her middle, and they lay there for awhile until Harm asks if she is still awake. He could feel her tense underneath his arms, but couldn't see why.
"You know me…"
"Insomnia?" He asks, squeezing her a bit tighter.
"That's part of it."
"The other part?"
"You and me in a bed together." She says, turning so she can face him.
"We've slept together before, Mac." He scoffs.
"No, actually we haven't. The one time that we started to sleep in the same bed was in Paraguay and we got interrupted by Webb and then by our own stupidity."
"Oh, yes, I remember that first interruption well, as I believe we were about to kiss… something like this." he replies, letting his lips fall to hers in a natural gesture.
After a good long while, she lets out a sigh and a whimper that tells him that he's doing exactly what he should be, but her words that follow, stop him. "Harm, should we be doing this?"
"Hmm?" he says, lifting his lips from her neck and wondering why they would consider stopping at this point.
"I'm just… we just talked about how everything has gone so fast between the two of us and this, and I don't know that we should… um…"
"Mac, if you can't say it, or you're even questioning it, we shouldn't do it." He says, turning to lay on his back with an exasperated sigh.
"I'm sorry. It's not like I'm the blushing virgin, but you and me… we've just waited so long, and…"
"You want it to be perfect?"
"I wouldn't say perfect, but I guess I just don't want it to be after we've been disgusting and sweaty and moving after a really stressful day. I want us to be settled and… ready." She says, turning to face him and propping her head up on her elbow much like that night in Paraguay.
He looks over to her and realized that she may be right about it all, but then thinks about his current situation. "Well, then I'm going to take a cold shower… and I'll be back."
She looks at his retreating back and wonders if she should call him back to her. In the end, she decides that they don't need rushed and tired, they need an entire charged evening for each other. As she thinks about what that evening would entail, her whole body flushes, and she's not aware when he comes back into the room.
"Mac? You okay?" he says, laying back in the bed and turning to her with concern, "You look flushed."
"Hmm? Oh… yeah, I'm fine… I'm just…" and with that she kisses him in a way that lets him know exactly what she had been thinking about. "I want you to know that I want it just as bad as you, but the timing should be better than this."
"After 'cooling off', I agree with you."
"You do?"
"I do… but I was thinking about the fact that we are putting a lot of pressure on each other with these expectations we have."
"What do you mean?"
"Our first night together, buying our first place together, all this big stuff that we already have made in our heads."
"Can I be totally honest with you?"
"I hope." He says, opening his arms for her to lean in and lay her head on his chest while they talk for the rest of the evening.
"Okay… the perfect example is this. I feel so at home right here in your arms. It's perfect and I know that I'm meant to be here, but I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop or I'm waiting for someone to come along and tell us that we need to break it off."
"Why?"
"Because that has always been there. It's like I told you that night before we got orders changed and you proposed. There is always something… work, searching for your father, another woman… I know that those things are past, but when you've had them working against you for nine years, you get used to not being able to accomplish much."
"Well, we're going to have to deal with that then, and get through the fact that we are finally here. It's a good feeling, don't you think?"
"It is… I'm just worried."
Fears put out there, the pair settle in for the evening, and surprisingly in Mac's case they have a peaceful slumber.