Chapter Two:
Someone Old, Someone New

APRIL 16TH, 1998

2100 EST
APARTMENT OF HARMON RABB
WASHINGTON DC

Two days after their initial briefing, Webb came by to give Harm and Mac more details about their task. Both of them felt weird referring to it as a mission because they still weren't entirely sure what they were…doing yet. Webb was there to enlighten them, but Harm and Mac weren't getting their hopes up. Nothing with Webb went the way it should. Ever.

"Here are your files."

Webb presented Harm and Mac with two overstuffed files, watching as both of their eyes widened. They were sitting at Harm's counter, eating delivery pizza because Harm didn't have time to make them something beforehand. He probably would've cooked if it was just him and Mac, but Harm deemed Webb undeserving of the effort needed for a home cooked meal.

Mac reached out to take her file. When she tried to lift it with one hand, she was surprised by its weight. Taking it in both hands, Mac heaved it into her lap. When she went to open it, half of its contents almost spilled out. Harm observed all of this happen; he turned to look over at Webb with raised eyebrows.

"Are you sure these are our files and not the government secrets you've been trying to protect?" Harm asked as he picked up his own file.

"Very funny," Webb said, dabbing at a spot of grease on his tie. When the stain proved too stubborn to get out with a paper towel, Webb left it alone in defeat. "Can we get started?"

"Sure...where do we start?" Mac gingerly re-opened her file, being extra careful to keep the contents from spilling out again.

"Don't worry about looking through those yet, those are just details you can go over later on your own time," Webb straightened his tie, frowning at the stain, and stood up. "You two are going to be playing the parts of Derek and Cheryl Houston. You met in 1990 and were married in 1993."

"Is that all?" Harm asked, his tone hopeful. He was hoping this working dinner would be a short one.

"Hell no, Rabb. There's a ton more," Webb replied. "You two are going to have to memorize-or at least get familiar with-everything in your files."

Both Harm and Mac peered down at the files, their eyes widening in unison. "All of this?" Harm asked.

"Can we at least get a summary?" Mac flipped through a handful of the papers, a frown forming across her face. She had never been good at memorization; in school she had been a terrible test taker.

"Fine," Webb conceded begrudgingly, acting as if they'd asked him to do a backflip. "Which one of you wants to be first?"

"Ladies first," Harm said before Mac could protest. She was too busy looking at something on the paper, her frown deepening

"Something's wrong with this," Mac held up the paper. "It says here that I'm a-Cheryl Houston is a blonde."

"Yeah…" Webb replied with a shrug. It was clear by his tone that he didn't see the issue. "She is."

Mac blinked at him, wondering if he'd suddenly gone color blind. "Clayton, I'm not blonde."

"You will be," he replied, in a sure tone that made the pit of Mac's stomach drop out.

Harm and Mac exchanged wide-eyed glances. Mac's hands instantly went up to run her fingers through her brown hair in a manner that was almost protective. She knew that she would be getting dragged into this mess, but she didn't think her hair would get caught in the crossfire.

Without saying a word to each other, Harm and Mac instinctively knew they were both thinking the exact same thing. What the hell have we gotten ourselves into?

"I don't have to dye my hair, do I?" Harm asked.

Mac and Harm were still in a state of disbelief for a while after Webb left, with Harm just being marginally thankful that he wouldn't also have to dye his hair. They spent quite a lot of time in silence, looking over their files to try and get to know Derek and Cheryl. Neither of them had the slightest idea of how they could pull this off. They were lawyers, not actors; they couldn't be expected to put on entirely new personas flawlessly at the drop of a hat, could they? Not to mention, Derek and Cheryl seemed like the farthest removed from Harm and Mac as they could be; there was little to no overlap to be found.

Apparently Webb believed they could pull it off. Maybe he saw something in them that they couldn't, or maybe he just needed two people willing to do his dirty work; who knew.

"Do you think this is a good idea?" Harm looked up from his stack of papers. Deciding to try and add a little humor, he added. "Cheryl?"

"Very funny, Derek," Mac rolled her eyes. "What do you think?"

He shrugged. "It'll definitely be interesting."

Mac smirked. "So you think it's a bad idea?"

"I never said that."

"You meant it."

Harm stuck his tongue out at Mac, and she laughed, sticking her own out in return. It was something about dealing with Webb that made them both act a little extra childish. He had such a stick up his ass that it was fun not to take him seriously. Plus Harm and Mac always liked joking around; Webb just happened to be a particularly easy target.

Once their laughter died down, Harm caught Mac looking at him thoughtfully. "We're going to be married," she said. "Isn't that crazy?"

"What?" Harm asked. "You don't think we'd make a good couple?"

Mac shrugged. She stood up and walked over to where Harm was sitting. Peeking over his shoulder, she looked down at his file. "We definitely have our moments," she said. Her gaze turned from the file to look at him. "Like you said, it'll be interesting."

"Why do you think Webb chose us to do this?"

"Because we're the only ones who are reckless enough to want to do it."

Harm's brow furrowed. "Who are you calling reckless?"

"You know who," Mac fished one paper out of Harm's file to get a closer look. Harm frowned at what he believed to be an invasion of privacy, and his eyes traveled across the counter to Mac's file.

"Can you hand me your file?" he asked. "While you're getting to know your husband, I want to get to know my wife."

Long after Mac left Harm remained seated at his kitchen counter, looking over the papers, files, and folders Webb had given him. He was trying to piece together the life of Derek Houston, and how he could squeeze himself into that life in the span of a couple of weeks. Of course, Derek Houston didn't exist. Harm couldn't tell if that made his job easier or harder. On the one hand, he had the liberty to do whatever he wanted with the persona-within the bounds of the information in the files, of course, but, he had no template or more than a few pages of bulky paragraphs. The bulk of what Webb had given Harm and Mac was information about the assignment itself and the location-a small, quaint suburb outside of Richmond.

Granted, Webb did make sure to include enough obscure information to make sure Derek Houston seemed to be enough of a real person as a fake person could seem to be. He was born Hartford Connecticut in December 1962 and was the middle son of three boys. He was the star quarterback of his highschool football team (Harm, who had been a pitcher in high school felt somewhat cheated by this) and had gone to University of Pennsylvania on practically a full-ride scholarship. Then, after taking two years off to join the Peace Corps, he went to Harvard for law school, where he met the love of his life, Cheryl Allman, who would later become Cheryl Houston when the two of them married in 1993.

In addition, Derek's favorite color was red and his favorite food was spaghetti. Webb mentioned something about adding quirky details - it made the identities feel more "real," or something like that.

"So I don't even get to keep my own favorite food?"

"No."

According to Webb, people could get their cover blown over the smallest things. Harm tried to insist that spaghetti was a pretty common favorite food, but Webb had dug his heels in. The more Harm thought it, the more he felt like he had entered the set of some cringey spy movie from the 60's.

He also found himself getting jealous, something he immediately snuffed out by stuffing the files back into the folder and hopping into the shower. Derek Houston wasn't real; being jealous of him would be like being jealous of a fictional character. Indeed, it wasn't so much that Harm was jealous of Derek, just the idea of him.

Visions of wedding bands and white picket fences had been daunting Harmon Rabb Jr. for years. As he got older, the number of his bachelor friends dwindled down until only a handful remained. Everyone he'd been friends with in high school was married now-some of them had also divorced, but they'd nevertheless been married at some point. The bulk of his friends from the academy were settled down as well, and some of the people he knew from law school had already been married when he met them.

Harm was now finding himself as one of the last men standing with 'freedom,' which he admitted was nice sometimes, but other times it wasn't so nice. It was awkward at times, especially when he ran into someone he hadn't seen in awhile and had to go through the whole, "Yep, I'm still not married yet," and the "Nope, I'm not seeing anyone right now." His replies were always answered with the same thing; a few polite words accompanied by raised eyebrows.

He knew what they were thinking. How could he not be settled down yet? He was Harm.

"They probably think I'm secretly some kind of serial killer," Harm muttered, gazing at his distorted expression in the microwave door. It didn't bother him, being thirty-five with no romantic prospects on the horizon. Of course it didn't bother him that he'd been dumped by Annie Pendry and didn't even get a chance to properly say goodbye to Josh. Of course his mother finally pulling the, "So, when am I getting some grandkids?" card that past Christmas didn't bother him.

I have a good career, Harm told himself, I've been plenty successful. I have a nice car, I play golf on the weekends. I have friends. I have...Bud...and Mac-

Standing up from the stool at the counter, Harm was met with his silent, empty, loft. He paused for a moment, looking around at how still and silent everything was.

At least it's newly-renovated, Harm thought, and I did it all by myself, too.

2345 EST

APARTMENT OF SARAH MACKENZIE

GEORGETOWN

Mac hadn't been sleeping well, so she decided to spend her time getting to know Cheryl Allman Houston, the woman she would be becoming sometime in the foreseeable future. As she looked over the papers and files, Mac couldn't help but wonder what she had done to get on Webb's bad side. From what she'd seen, Harm didn't have to dye his hair a different color or pick up a new accent for her new persona. Webb must've had more faith in Mac's abilities - something she would've taken as a compliment if it didn't mean so much extra work.

I would call him sexist if I thought that would hurt his feelings, she thought bitterly.

Major Sarah Mackenzie was from Flagstaff, Arizona. However, Cheryl Allman Houston was from Covington, Georgia. Taking that into account, along with the blonde hair, Mac was looking at becoming Dolly Parton Jr. She'd already called Harriet and asked if she could borrow her VHS of Steel Magnolias so she could get the accent down right.

Vocal training and hair color aside, Mac wasn't really sure about how she'd get along as Cheryl. Cheryl had been a cheerleader, and prom queen, and later vice president for her sorority (sorority!) chapter. Now she was taking a break from being a lawyer to become a happy little homemaker in a new, shiny suburb in Anywhere, USA.

According to the notes, Derek and Cheryl were "very eager to start a family." There was no instruction how Harm and Mac were supposed to interpret that information, though.

Suffice it to say, she was the complete antithesis of Mac. Cheryl Houston was everything Sarah Mackenzie wasn't. There was no problem with that; Mac never viewed herself as the gold standard when it came to women. The idea of Cheryl was something Mac viewed as unattainable -like the second hand Barbie dolls she used to play with when she was little.

Mac had always wanted a 'normal' life with the husband, the white picket fence, that whole shebang, but she never thought she would get it. She got a glimmer of it with Dalton, but then all of that went away. First with the gradual crumbling down of their relationship, then with the finality of a gunshot.

She still had nightmares about it. Seeing the blood pump from the wound on Dalton's chest, watching it seep through her fingers as she tried to stop the wound. It wouldn't stop, no matter what Mac did, she couldn't get the blood to stop. Then she would wake up, heart pounding, covered in sweat, rubbing her hands to try and rid them of the imaginary blood.

Once she calmed down, Mac's mind began to wander. Her mind would go back to being trapped in Detective Coster's basement, what would've happened if Harm hadn't been able to get to her in time, and what could've happened after, if she hadn't been able to pull herself back together and get back on the wagon.

Yeah, having a life like Cheryl's seemed almost laughable.

Sleep was practically a stranger to Mac now, and she hoped Harm would be able to put up with her tossing and turning.

Goodness, it's certainly been a minute with this story, hasn't it? Very glad to be back in action though! Thank you for the patience! It's been a hectic past couple of months for me, and writing unfortunately had to take a back burner.

I am very excited to be back though, with this story specifically. With this one...I don't know, I just like this one alot.

Thanks for reading! Look forward to seeing what you guys think of this update!

-Harper