Title: After Dinner Coffee

Author: lska
Summary: Post-All Ye Faithful story.
Rating: PG-13 for one or two bad words.
Prompt: Your luck is about to change.


********************

December 24, 2002

Little kids keep scorecards in their heads. Ask almost anyone under the age of ten, and he'd be able to rattle off rankings of Christmases past like a stockbroker or a sports junkie. Bicycles and computer games and cousins and cookies pushed certain years toward the top of the list, but there were always those wild-card factors, like "the year we were snowed in for three days and built a snow-fort in the backyard," or "the time Daddy gave you a necklace and made you cry," or "the year we burnt the ham and the firemen had to come in their truck and they gave me a hat."

Harm hadn't been one of those kids; by the time he was six Christmas had taken on enough baggage to weigh down the so-called "season of joy" for the rest of his life. And yet this year the wild-card factors were coming together almost enough to push it right to the top of the list. He had gotten the chance to fly home in an F-14 instead of a transport; he'd made sure the Toys for Tots shipment got in all right; and then there was the warm, welcoming family atmosphere at the Roberts, not to mention Mac's glowing smile across the table as they clinked glasses.

Okay, it wasn't exactly heaven, and by most people's standards it probably wasn't much, but for him it was more than he usually let himself imagine. Only a few things conspired to keep this year out of the record books, such as the absence of Sergei and the tangled mess he'd left behind when he went back to Russia. Lack of resolution was becoming an unwelcome theme in his life.

The evening passed quickly after dinner in a pleasant haze of carol-singing and hot chocolate. Everyone seemed to have a Christmas story they wanted to tell him - another baby born in the Admiral's office, another little one on the way for Bud and Harriet, something about three Arab dignitaries… Soon it was nearing little AJ's bedtime. Sturgis was going to meet his father, Admiral Chegwidden and Meredith had their own plans, and the Roberts would of course want some time as a family before it got too late.

Mac smiled again as Harm helped her on with her coat in the buzz of the foyer, recognizing the lines of fatigue on his face. "Long day, huh?" she asked quietly, tugging on her leather driving gloves.

"Let's just say it was a lot longer than it had to be," he said, searching for his own cover from among several on the hat-rack.

"Mmm," Mac acknowledged.

Harm broke away from his search and looked down, but she seemed pre-occupied with her gloves.

The general round of good-byes and good-nights down the walkway was followed by another short one at her car, as everyone else pulled away. Mac paused with her hand on the door handle. "I'm glad you made it," she said, looking up at him with her friendly, dark eyes that held a layer of reticence he couldn't quite decipher.

"Me too. I wouldn't have missed it." He wanted to take a step closer, to seek out her warmth, to figure out a way to keep the evening from ending. But he didn't know how to do that without tipping his hand, and somehow, he still wasn't ready to do that.

Mac shivered, pulling the sleeves of her long wool coat tighter around her wrists. "I guess we'd better get on the road, too."

"Guess so," he agreed. It was too cold for her to be standing around outside. "Night, Mac. Merry Christmas."

"Merry Christmas," she repeated, leaning up to catch his kiss on her cheek. Her skin was soft and warm, but there had been something aloof about her manner all evening. Before he could put his finger on it, she had pulled away from him and was starting her car.

He found himself knocking on her window.

"Yes?" she asked as she rolled it down, somehow managing to look both amused and annoyed.

He bent down, fingers curled over the window frame. "Drive safe, okay? It's getting icy out there."

"Will do," she promised with a wink.

Harm shook his head as he stood and watched her drive away. Whenever they talked recently, it seemed like she was waiting for him to say something, but he'd be damned if he could figure out what.

He thought of the picture he'd left for her. He'd struggled with the gift, wanting to show her what she meant to him without scaring her off. It was safe; too safe, maybe, for a man like himself who knew the importance of taking risks. In the air, risks kept him on the edge. The specter of failure, of death made you vital. Hell, he'd felt that rush when he'd flown earlier that day.

But somehow on the ground, the risks seemed too great to bear the consequences. And just because he knew what he wanted didn't mean he understood what *she* wanted after all this time, let alone how to get it. Standing with Tom Boone at the wall earlier, he'd had a sense of how easy it would be to go through life leaving that puzzle unsolved, always pushing his career forward, but never making much more than a passing connection with a woman. That way of life was clearly within his reach, if he was willing to settle for it.

The glow from dinner was wearing off as Harm started up his car. He almost wished he hadn't visited the wall already, so he would have someplace to go instead of feeling so adrift.

He drove around aimlessly, taking in the extravagant winter lights and watching as displays were turned off, one-by-one, as the hour grew later. Though he hadn't consciously driven there, the mall came into view again in the passenger side window. Each of the monuments was backlit with tremendous wattage. Stone was cold and lonely, but it lasted.

"Okay, Rabb, this depressing shit stops here," he said to himself, turning his car to head back through the district.

His phone beeped in his bag a few stoplights later, indicating he had a message to pick up. It was probably his mother. It wasn't so late on the west coast. He felt a twinge of guilt for not having called earlier. He fumbled around for it, managing with all the finesse of a fighter pilot to dig it out of his bag and enter all the right codes without crashing into anything.

"You have - one - new - message," the computerized operator told him, but it wasn't his mother's voice that followed. "Hey, not home yet, huh? Well, we're all here now, um, except for you. Still haven't had dinner, though, so, hoping to see you soon. Assuming everything's okay."

She hadn't said much, but the pauses and uplifts in her voice-- Harm had her number dialed before he knew what he was doing. Him flying back in a rush to be there for Christmas dinner-- And since he hadn't mentioned getting her message, she must have thought that he'd heard it and not even acknowledged it. Her distance throughout the evening, like she'd done something foolish, something to be ashamed of--

The phone rang twice before she picked it up. "MacKenzie."

He kept his voice low. "Just wanted to let you know that I got in okay."

She was quiet a moment. "Sorry about that."

"Don't be."

He expected half expected some defensive comment to cover, but she just took another moment to absorb his words before asking, "Are you on your way to see your dad?"

"No, I went earlier with Admiral Boone."

She laughed softly. "This must have something to do with your missing wings?"

"That's right, I never told you that story."

"You promised," she said, but she wasn't scolding. It was her Telephone Voice that he'd heard her use with countless boyfriends and lovers. (Okay, he could number them all, but that didn't mean he was going to.) And right now she was using it on him.

"I did, didn't I?" He pulled up to a red light, and though it was a quiet night, the sounds of the city were all around him in the revving of engines, the sound of voices on the sidewalk, the honking of distant horns.

"Are you still in the car?" Mac asked.

"Yeah." Why did he think she knew exactly where he was, exactly what he was doing?

Her voice was cell-phone distant, but gently cajoling in his ear. "Come over. I just put on some coffee and was about to crack open some case files."

Something tight loosened in his chest with the invitation. "I'll come over for coffee, but you better put the work away," he bargained.

"Deal. Drive safe." She clicked off.

"Will do," he said to himself in the quiet of his car. He took a left towards Georgetown, refusing to confront that little voice in the back of his head that was asking if he knew what he was doing.

Twenty minutes later he was sitting on her couch, watching her bubble over with laughter, valiantly attempting not to spill her coffee. "Jennifer Lopez? And they bought it?"

"Being at sea for extended periods can do strange things to men's heads." He nudged her. "C'mon, what are you waiting for? That's your cue."

She smiled, her mouth a secretive smirk at the rim of her mug. "But what does this have to do with your wings?" she asked, eying the empty place on his suit breast.

And so the story of his visit to the wall spilled out, replete with a crusty old sea-dog, ringing bells, and the small miracles of Christmas. God help him if this wasn't becoming one too, in the warm safe-haven of her apartment. True to Mac's character, there were only a handful of decorations around the room: a small tree, a few scented candles, some pine boughs. In the glow of the fireplace, though, it was near perfection, just the right touches to make him feel at home.

There had been highs and lows that day; spending time with his father's old buddy, watching the tailhook fall off the C-2, nearly missing Christmas dinner… But it was all background noise compared to the comforting familiarity of her company, with none of her demons in evidence. None except, perhaps, the one taunting her that she might lose him. And even that one seemed to have disappeared for the night, leaving only the heart-breakingly transparent message on his voicemail that he hadn't been able to delete.

"It wasn't going to happen again, you know," he found himself saying.

"Harm?"

"It wasn't, not today." He picked up her hand and turned it over between his, so that the palm was facing up.

She blushed cranberry red. "I wasn't worried."

"Good," he said, not believing her at all.

"Besides, with the luck you've had, you should be able to fly every day of the rest of your life without so much as a check engine light."

"I don't believe in luck, Mac, I believe in skill," he batted back at her.

"That's what you keep saying, but I think you're a pretty lucky guy."

"Oh? How so?"

"Well, just take today," she said, pulling her hand back and settling into the sofa. "You started out the day with the prospect of a Christmas dinner from the ship's galley, and you ended up riding a tomcat home and playing angel to a fellow pilot."

"And an hour ago I was driving around by myself in the cold." He stared past the photo he'd given her, laid out on the coffee table, past his own shoeless feet hiked up next to it, and into the glow of the fire.

Mac ducked her sight back down towards her coffee cup. "You're always welcome here. With or without a prisoner in tow."

"You know, it's hard to believe that was just last year I was shopping her around to any brig that would take her. Petty Officer Coates should keep things from getting too sedate around the office."

She rolled her eyes at him. "I thought that was your job, unless you really are mellowing out in your old age. But I'm glad to see things coming together for the petty officer. She's proof that a lot can change in a year."

"And so's Bud," Harm pointed out solemnly. With the risks he took and the stunts he so often got away with, it was difficult to think of Bud's accident without a some guilt, or the vague, eerie feeling of someone walking over his own grave.

"And Harriet, for that matter, with the new house and the baby on the way," Mac said, with a hint of wistfulness in her voice.

"And the Admiral," Harm threw in. "His life will never be the same, now that Meredith crash landed in it."

"Hell, even Loren Singer," Mac snorted. Harm swallowed hard, but she didn't seem to notice. She picked up her coffee again, growing more contemplative. "Everyone else's life is moving forward, for better or for worse, and mine is just stuck in neutral. It's difficult not to notice things like that at this time of year."

"Well, what gear do you want to be in, Mac?"

Mac looked over at him with a raised eyebrow, and Harm realized that what had come out of his mouth had the potential to sound like distraction-by-sleazy-innuendo. That was what Mac seemed prepared for. But it wasn't what he'd meant, though he couldn't keep a touch of mischief out of his eyes.

She set down her coffee and sat back to face him more fully, frowning. "Anything in a forward direction would be my preference, even if it was just first or second gear."

"But you're not averse to faster speeds?"

"Okay, now you're making fun of me."

Harm put a hand on her arm. "No, humor me, Mac. I think we might have finally found a metaphor I can work with."

Mac sighed. "I don't have a problem with speed," she said, turning her face up to his and locking his gaze. "It's the barrel rolls that get me."

He brought his hand up gently, brushing over the collar of her silk pajamas, stroking the side of her neck and cupping her chin. "And what if I promised a smooth and steady ride?"

"There's always turbulence, Harm. Nobody can control the weather," she said with a hint of regret, though she didn't pull away from his touch.

Harm was washed over with the sense memory of every other time she had been in his arms - the warmth, the anticipation, the clean sweet, smell of her skin. The deep longing in her eyes, and inevitably the pain and the impossibility of it all. That same push-and-pull between hope and resignation was lurking there now. "The Navy's best scientists are working on it."

Mac laughed, still unsure, but she brought her hands up to cover his. Her fingers eased between his, interlacing. "Harm, why now? Why not last week, or a month ago? Things have been good with us lately, there hasn't been any drama, but at the same time you've been distant. I don't want to do anything you'll regret because you were lonely on Christmas." Her words were vaguely accusatory, but even as they bit at him, Harm had to acknowledge that she was really protecting herself.

"I am lonely, Mac," he admitted honestly. "But it's more than that. You know it always has been."

"I know there have always been reasons for us to back away, too."

"You can find a reason for anything. We both know how to argue each side of a case. But that doesn't change the fact that the truth only lies on one side."

"But, why now?" she repeated. It could have been a demand, but Harm responded to the vulnerability he read between the lines.

"I spent the whole day with Tom Boone today," he said. "A man for whom I have all the respect in the world. But when the tailhook fell off that plane this morning, he just turned to me and said, 'So, have you ever spent Christmas on a carrier?' Like it didn't matter to him one way or the other, if we made it back today, tomorrow, or next week.

"And I realized that it mattered to me, Mac. I have spent Christmas at sea before. It used to be home to me, but it isn't anymore. I wanted to be home. I wanted to be with the people I care about, the people I… the people I love. That's why I rushed back, and I'm sorry if that scares you, but it's just too damn bad, because I think I finally understand that it's pointless to risk life and limb to get myself back here if we're not going to take that extra risk to get to where we really want to be."

When he paused for breath, she hadn't pulled away from him, which Harm took as a good sign. "Are you finished?" she asked, her eyes were bright and sharp.

He took a deep breath. "Yes."

She squeezed his hands, sending an electric surge of hope through him. "Are you saying what I think you're saying?"

Harm raised his eyebrows and flashed her a very familiar smile. "Buckle up, marine."


********************


Mac's eyes drifted open first the next morning, a happy grin slowly growing as she realized where she was, and why she wasn't alone.

But regardless of the circumstances, it was impossible to stay in bed too long on Christmas morning. Carefully she managed to slip out from his embrace and from under the heavy winter covers. Harm shifted and grumbled in his sleep, but he didn't wake. He had been exhausted.

Mac smiled with indulgence -- and some amount of disbelief -- at the sight of his large, well-formed presence in her bed. She grabbed her robe and pulled it tightly around her as she made her way through the apartment. The fire had died down while they slept, and the rooms had grown frigid, but the heat of the man who was there with her had certainly helped compensate.

They still had knots to untangle, but from the moment Harm had shown up at her door the night before -- tall, tired, and dusted with snow -- Mac had felt that something essential had shifted in their favor. Somehow, the spark of honest communication between them had been caught and nurtured without raging out of control. That alone was more than they had managed in quite some time. It was their Christmas miracle.

She had hope that it was only the start. Not everything that needed to be cleared up could be addressed in one evening, and the parts of their natures that had tripped them up in the past were still with them. But if they could go forward as they had started, Mac knew they wouldn't need luck.

For now, at least, they knew they were talking on the same frequency. And it was a frequency that prescribed lots of kisses, she remembered, with a happy tremble that had nothing to do with the chill in the morning air.

As she made her way towards the kitchen, Mac's eye lit on something lying on the coffee table. Next to Harm's uniform jacket and discarded tie were several pieces of festive wrapping paper. It took her pre-caffeinated mind a moment to understand that some time during the night, Harm must have opened the package she'd left for him under her little tree.

The dark leather of the picture frame had called out to her when she was shopping in Georgetown earlier in the month. Its rich, smooth grain reminded her of Harm's masculinity and his appreciation for life's small luxuries. She had figured that it would go well in his modern apartment with whatever picture he chose to put in it.

But now, she could see that nestled inside the frame was the photo of the two of them in the rugged desert of Afghanistan.

Mac smiled, set it upright on the table, and went into the kitchen to get the morning started. If she was the type to count Christmases, she'd have to admit that this one was shaping up to be a record-breaker.