| Subject: Christmas Nigh; Adeste Fi! - Part 2/25 |
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Teacup
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Date Posted: 06:38:38 07/02/07 Mon
In reply to:
Teacup (aka Ever-Xmas)
's message, "Christmas Nigh; Adeste Fi!" on 23:51:19 06/30/07 Sat
Christmas Nigh; Adeste Fi!
Part 2
Later that evening, Harm parked the Lexus near his apartment and quickly made his way to the other side of the car to open the door for his passenger.
This startled Mac, who had not intended to get out. “I thought you were just going to run up and grab some things?” she asked.
“Come up for a few minutes,” he invited. “Since I’m here, I want to change out of my uniform. No sense you waiting in the cold.”
Harm offered Mac a hand, which, after removing her seatbelt, she accepted.
“Thank you,” she said, wondering if Harm felt the same jolt of electricity and warmth as she did when their hands touched.
It seemed to Mac to be a good Christmas Eve, now that she knew Harm had made his way back home safely. She couldn’t help her worrying earlier in the day that something might have gone wrong during Harm’s flight back from the carrier.
Ever since Harm nearly died a year and a half earlier, when he had to punch out in a storm and was nearly lost to the sea and hypothermia, she guessed she’d always be nervous when he got in the cockpit of a Navy jet. But fortunately, that particular stress had ended for tonight when Harm walked in to join them for dinner.
After eating at the Roberts’ new house, the JAG gang had all gone together to the evening church service. Chaplain Turner was not there this year, but the preacher tonight had been no less inspiring. The topic this Christmas Eve had been faith.
Mac had ridden to the chapel with Harm in his SUV. After the service, Harm insisted on driving Mac back to her apartment, saying that the weather was turning bad. As far as he was concerned, it was unsafe for her to be driving her corvette on the freezing roads. He didn’t want her spinning out and crashing into a tree or something. She could pick her car up from Bud’s and Harriet’s another day.
However, Harm wanted to stop by his apartment first. He still had some presents for Mac, and with his delayed trip home from the carrier he didn’t have time to pick them up earlier. He got Mac to agree to make the stop and then head to her place to exchange their remaining gifts.
As they walked down Harm’s hallway to his door, Mac asked, “So, are you ever gonna tell me how you lost your wings?”
The missing pin from his uniform had been the second thing Mac had noticed when Harm joined them at the dinner table earlier that evening. The first had been that he looked safe and sound.
“I didn’t lose them,” he said.
“Don’t tell me you managed to upset ‘the powers that be,’ and they yanked your flight status?” Mac asked, only half-joking.
Harm laughed. “Almost. Closer than I’d like to admit.” He thought about the CAG aboard the USS Coral Sea who threatened to do just that if Harm tried any stunts on the flight back. The weather balloon incident could have cost him.
As Harm opened the door to his apartment, he continued, “… But, no, … I believe my flight status is still intact. … I gave the wings to someone who deserved them.”
He proceeded to tell Mac about the young pilot at the Wall who had missed the graduation ceremony from the Naval Air Training Command and, thus, had not yet gotten his wings. He had come to D.C. instead to help and support a friend who was on suicide watch.
Harm believed the young man shouldn’t have to wait to be given wings. He’d earned them in more ways than one.
Mac looked at Harm with admiration and a smile. “You’re a good man,” she declared.
Harm chuckled. “Yeah, me and Charlie Brown.”
Glancing over at a corner of Harm’s apartment, Mac replied, “Is that what inspired what you’re calling a Christmas tree this year?” She walked over to take a closer look at the rather pathetic looking, greenish, sticky thing that was nearly falling over. Its only addition was a string of lights.
Harm began to protest, “Hey, it’s a perfectly respectable - ”
“- twig?” supplied Mac with amusement.
“It just needs some lovin’,” Harm countered. He hadn’t had a chance to decorate the tree yet, and his trip to the carrier had left the poor thing abandoned for a few days.
“You’ve always been a sucker for lost causes,” Mac noted as she fingered a small branch of the tree, only to have several needles fall off in her hand.
“Not lost causes … Just things that need to be given a chance.” Harm picked up a pair of scissors that he’d left out when he was wrapping presents, and he clipped off the dead, and now bare, branch. “All things in life that are really worth having … take a little work,” he declared.
Mac pursed her lips in thought for a second. “I’d have to agree with that.”
“You should,” said Harm. “You’ve taken on your share of the ostensibly impossible.”
“Yeah, I’ve put up with you for how many years?” she joked.
“Come on, you love having me around,” insisted Harm with his cocky attitude and humor.
Mac shot him a look that said ‘you’re full of yourself.’
However, she then took on a more serious expression, showing that she really did agree with his statement. Hoping that she hadn’t revealed too much, Mac quickly looked away, but doing so simply clued Harm in to how much he really did mean to her.
That reminded him that he had found out that Mac had been nervous about him flying earlier that day. He knew that Mac probably felt a little uneasy every time he got to pilot a jet. He wished she felt more comfortable with it, because it was never his intention to give her any extra anxiety.
“I’m sorry I worried you today,” he said gently.
“Who said I was worried?” Mac lightly tried to deny it.
“Coates mentioned something.”
“I just told her you were giving me cause for a headache, – nothing that doesn’t happen most everyday,” she figuratively ribbed him.
“So you weren’t worried?”
“About you? Flying a plane? What possible reason could I have to be worried?” she teased sarcastically.
Harm quietly stated, “You sounded worried on the message you left on my phone.”
“You got that?” Mac questioned with surprise. “And you didn’t call me back?” Now she sounded offended that he had ignored her instead of immediately calling to ease her concern.
“I didn’t get it until I was almost at Bud and Harriet’s,” he explained. “It seemed silly to call when I was right outside.”
“Oh.” That seemed to placate her.
“But you weren’t worried?” he asked, noting that she had been, but not rubbing it in.
“Not at all,” she stated confidently, aware that Harm knew she was lying. She just wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of her admission.
It was easier to give him a hard time, which she proceeded to do. “… I just thought it was very inconsiderate of you to be late when Bud and Harriet had gone through so much trouble to have this dinner tonight.”
“Not to mention the efforts of Mr. Egg Noggins,” Harm added.
Mac burrowed her eyebrows in confusion, but her face relaxed once she interpreted Harm’s humor. “You’re referring to Warrant Officer Greg Scoggins?”
“I think he liked you,” Harm pointed out.
“What’s not to like?” she quipped.
“He was flirting with you.”
“Was he?” Mac asked with mock ignorance. She knew that after the warrant officer had a few drinks – yes, of eggnog, he had made one or two remarks indicating that he thought she was attractive.
Despite the preposterousness that Mac would consider something with the man, regulations aside even, she couldn’t help but wonder if Harm was acting a little jealous.
“You flirted back,” Harm evenly stated. He meant it as evidence of her awareness, but it really confirmed his apparent jealousy. Either way, it momentarily offended Mac as it was entirely unfounded.
“The extent of my interaction with the man was a few exchanges during dinner - since he was seated next to me, - wishing him a merry Christmas, and thanking him for the food,” she objected with annoyance.
“Exactly,” agreed Harm. “He could have easily seen all that as flirting.”
Mac rolled her eyes. This conversation was getting ridiculous.
“Well, it’s a good thing he had a sudden burst of generosity,” she said, “… or we wouldn’t have had anything to eat tonight. Could have been a very sad Christmas.”
“I don’t know about that,” Harm said seriously and softly. There was no trace of arrogance or jealousy in his words. His statement had nothing to do with the warrant officer. There was no sign of humor either. “Food’s not nearly as important as the company,” he explained.
Their eyes met, and they shared a special moment in appreciation of their makeshift JAG family, … and more importantly, of each other.
Finally, Mac broke the silence. “Well, it all worked out. … We got food; … he got company. … Thirteenth setting for a stranger seemed appropriate on tonight of all nights.”
“Why’s that?”
“When I was little,” explained Mac, “before everything got entirely too bad in my house, I remember my grandpa insisting that we put an extra place setting out at Christmas Eve dinner … for anyone who happened by.
“Some old story about a stranger visiting. If one came by on that night, you should welcome him as if you were welcoming Christ … You just might be.”
“Interesting,” said Harm.
“And we put a candle in the window to welcome anyone caught out on the cold, dark, and possibly snowy night. For anyone seeking shelter … like the Holy Family was that night when there was no room at the inn.”
Harm was captivated watching Mac recall one of the few positive things from her childhood.
“Speaking of weather,” Mac came back to the present, looking out Harm’s window. “It’s snowing harder. We should get going before it gets too bad.” She joked, “Else I might have to stay here tonight.”
“Would that be so bad?” asked Harm.
Mac smiled. “I suppose I’ve slept in far worse places than your couch, … but -”
“Who said you’d have to take the couch? I just put fresh sheets on my bed before I left for the Coral Sea. No cooties.”
For just a second, Mac entertained the idea that she wouldn’t mind Harm sharing some of his ‘cooties’ with her. As soon as that thought crossed her mind she quickly reined it in.
“I don’t have my PJs,” she said as an objection to the idea. It was lame, but all she could come up with to avoid anymore of this conversation.
“That wasn’t a problem in Russia,” Harm pointed out with a grin.
Mac didn’t understand, and the look she gave him told him so.
He quoted to her the line she had given him, one that he would remember until the day he died. “‘What pajamas?’”
There was only one thing on that evening long ago that floored Harm more than Mac’s utterance of those words. … And that was when she emerged in her nightgown. That sight had caused him some very inappropriate urges that he was forced to battle throughout the night.
At the recounted words, Mac also recalled how the two of them ended up having to share a room in Russia. Her response had occurred after he told her to use the bathroom to change into her pajamas. ‘What pajamas?’ she had countered. Well, after all, she didn’t have PJs with her in that far off country. She had a lovely, white nightgown.
Mac smirked as she remembered the interaction. And the look on his face. Now that, unlike anything with the warrant officer tonight, had been her flirting. Too bad that flirting between her and Harm was, at best, just a game between them.
“So Colonel,” Harm interrupted her thoughts, “What pajamas will you be sleeping in tonight? … Cowboys?”
“No,” Mac answered, recalling his visit to her and Chloe the year before when she’d been sporting her cowboy flannels.
“Too bad,” said Harm. “I like those.” And there was his lady-killer grin.
‘Too bad, indeed,’ thought Mac. Too bad this flirting was just a game. She was so in love with the man in front of her, but she didn’t think he’d ever return the sentiment to the same degree. He’d never risk a relationship. Yep, to him, flirting with her was nothing more than some silly reindeer game.
-------
TBC ...
A/N: If you are so inclined, I think you’re safe to mention some of the Christmas references in reviews. – There are so many in this story that I don’t think you’ll ruin anything for anyone who might be keeping their own ‘list’. A number of them are blatantly obvious anyhow.
Anyway, I’d love to know how you like this so far.
~Teacup
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