Title: The Dress

Author: JAG Junkie (rondayoung@yahoo.com)

Rating: PG

Category: Plotless fluffy vignette

Disclaimer: They are (sadly) not mine. If they were, we would have seen more fun, casual times.

Summary: Harm tries to get in touch with his feminine side while he helps Mac. Takes place sometime after FWFS.

A/N: This is my belated response to Cece’s HBX challenge for May.

Mac stood on top of the coffee table and smiled down at her sailor. Never in the nine years that they worked together at JAG could she have pictured him doing this. But now that they were married, she didn’t think twice about asking him to help her hem her dress. If only his fighter jock friends could see him now: sitting on the floor measuring the hem of her dress, storing the spare straight pins between his teeth, and trying to talk to himself at the same time.

Now that she was in the Reserves, she found that she had more spare time than she was used to. Harriet had insisted she get a hobby or two, and suggested sewing. Mac had laughed off the suggestion at first, but when Harm had joked that her wardrobe would probably be better off if she stayed away from the sewing machine, she had stubbornly set out to prove that she *could* sew if she wanted to. Surprisingly, she found that she actually enjoyed it. She beamed with pride whenever she wore a homemade dress and people complimented her on it.

She was grateful for her newfound skill when they received invitations for a formal ball at the Embassy. The fact that she was seven months pregnant with twins, and big enough that people thought she was full term, was making it nearly impossible to find a flattering formal dress. Everything she tried on in the stores made her feel like she was wearing a tent. With only a few weeks left until the ball, she pulled out her sewing machine and went to work.

The dress style she had picked was loose and flowing, and therefore had a lot of material to hem. She thought about laying it out on the bed and relying on a tape measure, but that seemed like it would be cumbersome. Then she remembered standing on the coffee table as a child while her grandmother pinned the hem of a new dress-in-progress. So here she was some thirty years later, standing on the coffee table in a dress barely basted together, but this time with her husband on the floor.

Harm leaned back and stretched. “Okay, are we even now?”

She stepped down from the coffee table and went into the bedroom to look in the full-length mirror. When she saw her reflection, she stifled a giggle.

“Not even close, Harm.”

“What? But I measured!”

“You must have been pulling the fabric too much on one side.”

“No, I think you must have been standing crooked,” he countered.

She put her hands on her hips. “Marines do not ‘stand crooked’!”

He rolled his eyes, “Yeah, I know. Just like they don’t duck, either.”

Her eyes narrowed. “No, we don’t.” She glanced back in the mirror and sighed in frustration.

Just then, the sounds of a teenager coming home interrupted them.

“Hey, I’m home! Where is everyone?” Mattie shouted out.

“In here!”

“Is it safe for me to come in there?” Mattie called out, her impish smile coming through in her voice.

“Yeah, it’s safe. Just don’t accuse Mac of standing crooked.”

“Why would I do that? Oh.” Mattie covered her mouth to hide her smile when she walked into the room. “Let me guess. You tried to pin her hem for her, it came out like that,” she gestured to the bottom of the dress, “and you blamed it on Mac by claiming she was standing crooked.” She crossed her arms in challenge.

Harm looked away sheepishly and mumbled, “Yeah, something like that.”

Mattie shook her head and laughed. “Never ask a man to do a woman’s job.”

“What’s *that* supposed to mean?” Harm defensively crossed his arms as well.

Mac, seeing the opportunity to finally get her dress hemmed, quickly ushered Mattie back into the family room. “Never mind, Harm. Thanks for trying. Mattie, see if you can do a better job than this squid.”

A few minutes later, Mac’s hem was even and ready to be sewn. And Harm, who had watched Mattie intently, was dumbfounded as to why it worked so much better when she did it.

He followed Mac into the bedroom, shut the door, and watched as she started to take off the dress. “She did it the same way I did. So how come it was so crooked when I tried, but nearly perfect when she did it?”

“Face it Harm, you can’t be the best at *everything*. There will always be something that someone is better at than you. Just be glad it’s something as ‘unmanly’ as hemming a dress.” She smiled as she stepped out of the dress that was now puddled on the floor.

“Well, at least I’m good at *manly* things.” He smirked mischievously.

She raised an eyebrow suggestively. “Yes, you are. After all, you *did* get me into this predicament in the first place.”

His face clouded over in confusion. “I got us invited to the ball?”

She stepped closer and rested her hands on his shoulders, allowing her large belly to brush against him. “No, silly. I’m having to make my own dress because I’m carrying not one, but *two* of your children inside. You always were an overachiever.”

He pulled her close and nuzzled her neck. “Only the best for you, Marine.” He dropped a hand to her six and slowly walked them toward the bed.

“Harm, isn’t this how I got this way to begin with?”

His answer was lost in a tangle of lips and tongues as they fell into the bed together.

And the dress stayed forgotten on the floor all night.