Author: Jaggie 107
Subject: HBX Challenge - April 08 : Time, Space and Continuums

Disclaimer : JAG characters belong to DPB, CBS and Paramount – and I hope all parties will allow me to have fun for a little while, and replace them all when I'm done. Thank you.

A/N - Taken from the Dream Team episode (S10); when Harm rebuffs Mac’s concern for him it just screamed out for a rewrite! (I mean even DJE looked embarrassed saying the lines/doing the scenes!) So, here’s my contribution for April, and I’ll go back to the drawing board to work on a belated March story. (RL has thrown a few curve balls this year already, including laryngitis, so while I have to remain ‘silent’ verbally, I can at least talk to myself in my head and think of a storyline or three…!)

TIME, SPACE AND CONTINUUMS

HBX Challenge Lines – April 2008

Harm: Have you noticed we're beginning to think a lot alike?
Mac: (agreeing) That's something isn't it.
Harm: How do you account for that?
Mac: Er...A rip in the time/space continuum.

(The Promised Land)


MAC’S APARTMENT, 1930 HOURS

“Hey…” Harm stood at the other side of her door as Mac pulled it open, having heard the knocking.

“I…hi…” Mac managed, and then clammed up, surprise overtaking her power of speech.

Of the two of them, Harm was the one who had initiated the idea to come to her and so he spoke again.

“I…um…came to apologize, for earlier today and before, at the hospital. Mac, I…”

Mac managed a hint of a smile he remembered; not the strained one of recent times, but one that reminded him of a time when they really were best friends and would do anything for each other.

“Would you like to come in?”

“I…ah…I’m on my way, to Blacksburg. I just wondered if you would still like to go see Mattie? I mean, I wondered if you’d like to come with me…to see her.”

“You didn’t seem to want me near earlier,” Mac responded, her eyes clouding over at the reminder of his rebuff at JAG.

“I was being an ass.” Harm was still standing at Mac’s door, and one of her neighbors was taking an interest in the impromptu conversation, and in Harm!

“That’s quite an admission, Harm,” Mac found her voice again as she stepped back and Harm followed her into the apartment but remained standing near the door.

“It’s the truth. It was also the truth that I wasn’t giving you payback; I just have so much going on, and I reacted. Badly.”

“Have you eaten yet?” Mac asked, turning her head toward the kitchen as the microwave oven timer ‘dinged’. Harm followed her gaze then brought his eyes back to her face, and a smile tilted his lips.

“I was actually going to offer to feed you, too…” he murmured, and Mac smiled in response.

“Beltway burgers?”

“I was thinking more of hospital food,” Harm began, but saw Mac’s nose wrinkle in distaste. “But I could spring for a burger…it just wouldn’t be Beltway, at least not tonight.”

“It’s not the food I object to, I just don’t have a good history with hospital cafeterias. I tend to spend more time avoiding terrorists in hospitals,” and with that statement Mac took them straight back to the beginning of their working relationship and the growing attraction between them.

Harm knew from the look on Mac’s face that they had both been in the same place, if only in their memories. Mac mentally shook herself and then turned to go into her bedroom.

“Will you dump the junk from the microwave? I’ll go change and then we can get on the road.” Harm grinned at the instructions given.

“Have you noticed we're beginning to think a lot alike?” he called out, heading for the kitchen to do as he was asked, but Mac hadn’t heard him. When she returned to the lounge, dressed in jeans and a high neck jumper, she made no reference to what he had said, so he didn’t say anything more.


ON THE WAY TO BLACKSBURG…


“So, how’re you getting on with Vukovic?” Mac asked the question, turning in her seat slightly to face Harm and watch his reaction. It came fast, and made her laugh.

“He’s an ass,” Harm snorted derisively, and then laughed as Mac answered his observation with one of her own.

“History seems to repeat itself. You get landed with Vukovic, same as I got stuck with Singer.”

“Funny, huh?”

“Oh, yeah,” Mac nodded, and her smile reached her eyes as she looked at Harm.

“What?” Harm felt a little self-conscious under Mac’s continued stare.

“Nothing…I… I was just thinking that it’s been a long time since we’ve been this comfortable together.”

“Have you noticed we're beginning to think a lot alike?” Harm said the words, and then realized he’d repeated exactly what he’d said earlier in her apartment. Mac watched him turn his head away and then looked back at her with a sheepish smile.

“What?” Mac asked, so Harm told her what he’d said earlier. “Harm, I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you then. But you’re right, we are…thinking a lot alike. That’s something, isn’t it?”

Harm nodded in agreement, adding, ”How do you account for that?” Mac laughed, her response immediate.

”A rip in the time/space continuum?”

Now it was Harm’s turn to laugh, pointing a finger at her in a gesture that was familiar.

“You’ve been spending too much time with Bud. You’re starting to think like him too!”

They were still laughing when Harm turned into the hospital grounds and parked the SUV. Before Harm could reach for the door handle Mac had caught his attention, reaching to put her hand on his arm. At the point of contact his skin seemed to burn, even through the layers of material. His gaze lifted from her hand to her eyes, and Mac spoke softly.

“Thank you, for letting me in. I…” Mac paused, searching for the right words. At the sight of tears in her eyes that threatened to spill over, Harm groaned and tunneled a hand under the fall of Mac’s hair before touching his lips to hers softly. As Harm drew back he and Mac looked at each other in stunned silence, and then she spoke.

“Have you noticed we're beginning to think a lot alike?”