Keryl Raist's Blog, page 12

Shards To A Whole: Chapter 303

McGee-centric character study/romance. Want to start at the beginning? Click here.


Chapter 303: October 3, 2015


He got the text from Abby as he was fueling up the car. Gibbs coming for dinner. Down to last bottle of Angry Orchard. Pick up a few six packs, two onions, and sub rolls?
Sure. He texts back.
He crashed pretty hard the night before, but at one point he was vaguely aware of the sound of voices from downstairs, and in the morning, after Abby did indeed wake him up nicely, she mentioned that Gibbs had been over for dinner and that he was likely coming back again tonight. Maybe the Palmers too.
Jimmy and Breena?
Just Jimmy and Molly. Breena’s mom’s not feeling so hot, so she’s running the front of the house today.
Serious?
Don’t think so. Breena didn’t say. Post-church Sunday dinner is still on as of now.
Okay. Back in an hour or so.


Chatting with Abby about Jeannie being sick means that it’s in his mind, so as he passes the ‘Flu Shots Here’ sign he decides to sign up for that as well. It’d be nice not to spend a week wishing he was dead.
You need me home soon? He texts to Abby.
Nah.
Okay, gonna get a flu shot, too.
Good!
They take his information, have him fill out some forms, and tell him it’ll be a twenty minute wait.
He nods and heads off, figuring he’ll wander around, get his shopping done, and that’ll be that.


Somehow, between now and the last time he was at Target, all of the Halloween stuff had come out. Which is making him think it may have been a while since he last went shopping.
Oh well. He’s here now.
And faced with a lot of really cute stuff.
Really cute.
Like, he’d been somewhat vaguely aware this time last year of the possibility that Halloween with a baby might be a whole lot more fun that Halloween with just grown-ups. (Or at least a very different flavor of fun. He and Abby have had some awfully good Halloweens.)
But, it’s hitting him, as he’s walking more and more slowly past the baby Halloween costumes, coming to a complete stop, looking at them, instead of heading to the grocery department, that, well, Kelly really needs some Halloween costumes.
Multiple ones. (After all, what tiny baby doesn’t need multiple Halloween costumes?)
Because, God, they’re just so damn cute.
And, before his brain even got involved in the conversation, he was holding a little green dragon (with shiny purple wings!) a tiny jack-o-lantern (God, it’s so cute!), and the tiniest little black cat costume he’d ever imagined owning.
And somehow a little pair of shoes (after all, just because you can’t, you know, walk, or for that matter, you spend the vast majority of your time swaddled, doesn’t mean you don’t need shoes, right?) tiny, tiny little shoes in black with little silver and purple bats on them, also ended up in the cart, next to the Halloween themed onesies. (Because, come on, obviously Kelly needs way more skull oriented baby gear, it’s not like she doesn’t have enough of that, right?)
Tim was muttering quietly to himself about how they shouldn’t let him out of the house with a credit card, blaming the flu shot for him even being in this part of the Target, as he put several of the onesies back and snagged yet another tiny pair of shoes and the Halloween themed pacifiers. (After all, she’s got to have the pumpkin and bat and black cat pacifiers to go with the costume, right?)
Okay, out of here, now, before you buy the whole damn section.


Retrieving the stuff he actually went to Target to get went pretty quick, and he was in line, not really paying attention to much of anything when the idea of the dragon costume reminded him that he’d… promised… (he’s not sure if he promised, he’s awfully sure he mentioned it, though) Abby some sort of game tonight.
But, just because his memory of saying something to her about playing with Gabe and Skye again is kind of vague doesn’t mean he didn’t make that promise.
Had been an awfully long time since he’s tied her or done much of anything along those lines…
He steps out of line and heads for the scarves.
Gabe’s a dragon/magic user/knight sort of thing. (He’s been playing with the character a bit getting more ideas of him and jotting bits down.) So… he told Abby something about Gabe being in charge tonight... That’d mean some sort of magical binding, right. So… imaginary. More just the image to keep the idea in mind than any sort of real binding.
He perused the scarves and found a few in light marbled gray. Very thin, very light, he’s not loving the texture. They aren’t silk, some sort of poly blend, but all he wants is something to tie to her wrists and ankles. Doesn’t have to be strong, just has to suggest magic.
They’ll do.
He snagged them and headed back to the line.


“Halloween’s a big deal at your house, isn’t it?” the cashier asks.
“Yep. Favorite holiday, and the day after’s our wedding anniversary. It’s a big deal.”
She nods, packing up his purchases. “Hope you have a lot of fun.”
“I think we will.”
He was in his car before, the day after’s our wedding anniversary filtered through his brain enough to realize that the week before Halloween was their anniversary, the day after is their wedding anniversary, and he’s got nothing planned, no presents purchased, and no good ideas for what he wants to do. And in that it’s October, 3rd, he’s only got twenty days to figure it out.
“Shit.”


He gets home and finds Kelly and Abby on the back porch. (In the shade.) It really is a lovely day, mid-seventies, bright blue sky, leaves starting to turn color.
Kelly’s getting some tummy time on her blanket, mostly doing what four month olds do, namely laying around trying to get her hands to go where she’s aiming them. (Abby had set a few pacifiers in her reach, and she’s sort of flailing in their general direction. Apparently picking things up is a learned skill.)
Abby was half sitting, half laying on the chaise, reading, keeping an eye on their daughter, and listening to music.
She looks up at him, smiles, sees the bags and says, “Successful shopping trip then?”
He smiles, little sheepish, little excited, and then sat next to Kelly, picking her up, and settling her in his lap, back against his tummy.
“Look, Kelly. Halloween goodies.” He shows her all of her new finery, which didn’t impress her much. But Abby seems to approve, she’s smiling, and after a few seconds sits down next to them to get a closer look.


Late afternoon, post-lunch, pre-dinner, Kelly decided it was naptime. Abby seconded that plan, and headed up to grab a bit of a snooze as well. (This was when it occurred to Tim that if he goes heading off on an assignment Abby’s on her own with Kelly all night, and while they’ve got a routine for that, not only did he head off on what should have been his night for getting the 1:00 feed, it’s also a lot harder to relax when you’re the only one on duty.)
“Sorry,” he says, having gotten to that realization when Abby was three quarters of the way up the stairs, heading to nap time.
“Huh?”
“Heading off didn’t work that well for you, did it?”
“It was a long night. And for some reason I don’t bounce back so fast now,” she says with a half-rueful smile.
“Yeah. I know that feeling. It just hit me that I should have asked—“
“You’re a cop. I know you’re gonna have nights where the job wins. I am, too. Don’t have to ask to do your job. And I don’t, either.”
He nods at that.
“What if it’s calling both of us?” he asks, realizing that they didn’t have a back-up plan for that, yet.
“Rock, paper, scissors?”
“Hope Heather can stay late?”
“Or that Breena can take another baby for a night?”
He shakes his head at that. Breena’s the absolute last person they call, at least, for the next few years. “Wouldn’t want to do that. If it’s that level of all hands on deck, that means Jimmy’ll be working, too. Two babies under two and six months pregnant, alone?”
Abby winces at that, she knows she doesn’t want to take that on if she doesn’t have to. “Penny or Sarah, then.”
“That works.” 
Kelly made an impatient noise.
“Okay, little girl.” Abby pats her bum, continuing her trip up the stairs. “Let’s get some sleep.”


The addition of the LabRats to Abby’s domain under NCIS brought about several changes, one of which was the removal of the fuzzy lambskin rugs. The weekend before Corwin, Zelaz, and Brandt joined them, Tim took them out of the closet they hid in, lugged them to the car, and back home they and the pillows went.
The futon stayed, it’s good to have a place for tired people to crash, but the lambskin rugs are just for them, and the kind of thing they do on the rugs is really unlikely to happen now that three other people work in the lab.
Which means those rugs now live in the attic.
Part of the reason this house was so attractive to them was that upstairs there are four bedrooms. Obviously, one for them, and one for a child, one for guests, and one for, hopefully, another child at some point.
Right now, the room that would (hopefully) belong to another little McGee, is empty. They don’t use it for storage much, because Abby’s the kind of person who wants things where they belong, and temporary storage makes her itchy. So, even though it’s been pointed out to her (by Tim) that this room is a more convenient place to put things than their attic or basement, stuff ends up in the attic or basement because that’s going to be its final resting place.
However, as his girls are napping, and he’s thinking about tonight’s game, the fact that they’ve got this basically empty room just sitting there is seeming awfully nice.
By the time he hears Gibb’s car pull up, he had the lambskin rugs on the floor, scarves tucked under the edges, waiting to be pulled out, L.E.D. candles on the window sills, and his laptop in the corner, “music” picked out. 


Saturday dinner, Tim’s manning the grill. Not that it’s taking too much manning. This is a pretty simple dinner. Brats on the flames, onions and apples sliced thin and simmering in hard cider. Pretty much it’s just a good excuse to sit on the back porch, suck up the early autumn evening, share a drink with Jethro.
He’s half-way through his own cider. (Abby brought the first six-pack home last week, and he promptly decided that beer was highly overrated and hard cider was now his low-alcoholic beverage of choice.) But for the moment, he has his pressed to nose, letting the cold numb his bruises.
“Those any good?” Gibbs asks. He’s already finished his first beer.
Tim hands one to Jethro who just stares at it (hard cider with elderflower flavoring) for a second before cracking it open. He looks mildly surprised at how it tastes. “Thought it’d be sweet.”
Tim shakes his head. “Nope.” Has the flavors of apples and elderflowers without the sugar. He really likes it. “Good?”
Gibbs nods, looking thoughtful, taking another drink. “How’s your face?”
“Healing.”
Gibbs looks at one of the lounge chairs on the porch and then takes the tongs out of Tim’s hands. So he goes and sits, relaxing. The cool of the drink chases away some of the sore on his face, and Tim sits quietly for a few minutes before remembering Gibbs asking about gchat. “So, who were you chatting with?”
“Rachel.”
Tim raises an eyebrow, there’s something edgy about how Gibbs says that. “Professional chatting with Rachel?”
Gibbs glares at him, while flipping the brats. “What else?”
“Not saying there is anything else, just asking.”
“Why would you be asking?”
“All of the hairs on your body hopped up all at once when I asked and you started to growl, so I figured I hit a nerve.”
The look Gibbs gives him says lay off but his words say, “Been talking about Shannon, wanted to talk about this last week.”
“So, just giving her a heads up?”
“Yeah.”
“Nothing else?” Tim’s not feeling like digging too deep, but he doesn’t exactly want to lay off, either. He’s not sure if Gibbs is touchy because this is counseling or touchy because it’s Rachel, and he’s curious.
That gets another glare.
“And how is this last week going?”
“You’re covered in bruises, Tony’s not coming over today because we’re both still avoiding him, and I told Vance yesterday that January fifteenth was definitely my last day. I’d say between the two of us, we’ve had better ideas and better weeks.”
Tim nods at that. This week wasn’t either of their crowning glories. “So, January’s really it?” 
“Yeah…” Jethro doesn’t look at him when he says that, but Tim hears the distress in his voice.
He remembers Gibbs saying that Tony was better after the two of them talked. “And that’s why Tony was better than he was?”
“Yep.”
“Sorry.”
He shakes his head, dismissing it. “Everything ends, right?”
“Yep.”
“I had twenty-three years, that’s a good long run.”
“But not long enough.”
“No, not long enough. It’d be… easier… if I knew what came next.”
“I’d imagine. That what you’re gonna talk to Rachel about?”
“Yeah, start at least. Life beyond Boss.” That also reminds Gibbs of something. “He wasn’t thrilled about you passing the case off to Fornell without giving him a heads up. I wouldn’t have gone for that, either. Wasn’t your case to give away.” And, as the man who was the Boss for so long, Gibbs knows Tim overstepped, badly. As a Dad, as a man who’s been watching this fairly timid guy expand his goals and skills, learn to take charge of anything handed to him, and take care of it all the way through, he’s proud.
And he’s not sure which one of those Tim needs more right now.
But Tim half-smiles at him, seems to get both. “I know. And I know I’m not winning employee of the decade by doing stuff like that. He did seem pleased about dropping Fornell and Diane on you come Monday.”
Gibbs rolls his eyes and lets that go. “You’re not an employee anymore.”
He shrugs. “Maybe. I’m fairly sure I’d still run major things by, say, Vance before just doing them. But, yeah, I’m not doing the employee thing well right now, and I’ve got to get my head into treating Tony like the Team Leader, even if I’m doing a bad job at treating him like my Boss.”
That gets one of Gibbs’ I understand looks. “Ya still gotta work with him.”
“Yep. I was telling myself that on Thursday, and still screwed it by Friday afternoon. Probably a good thing I won’t be working for him much longer. Jenner’s getting really serious with IBM.”
Gibbs nods, then thinks about that, thinks about several comments along those lines he’s heard from Tim. “How do you know that?”
“While back I asked Leon about what sort of attacks I could do on the private computer accounts of the guys in Cybercrime. You remember that pile of paperwork everyone filled out a month ago, the new NCIS privacy standards, buried in there was permission for NCIS to raid your stuff. So… I hacked his email. I mean, I hacked or am in the process of hacking all of Cybercrime, seeing how good their personal defenses are, but I actually read some of Jenner’s emails in addition to just breaking in. They’re negotiating starting dates and wages now. Didn’t read the details that closely, just wanted an idea of how much longer he was going to be down there.”
“Oh.” Gibbs was looking vaguely uncomfortable at that. Tim shrugs, he was snooping and he knew it.
They hear the sound of another car pulling into Tim’s driveway, followed by the sound of doors opening and closing.
“Smells good,” Jimmy says heading toward the grill from the side yard. Must have smelled the food, and headed straight to the back. Molly’s riding his shoulders.
“Should be.” Gibbs grabs another Angry Orchard from the cooler next to the grill, and tosses it toward Jimmy, who catches it neatly and then puts Molly down. She goes tearing off for the swing set. She’s still too small to really play on it, but that has not stopped her from trying. (Tim’s thinking that next spring he’ll put some sort of small kid play stuff up. Should have a ton of them crawling around his backyard soon enough.)
Jimmy sits next to Tim. “Damn. Draga didn’t do that justice when he told us how taking down Herden went. How bad does that hurt?”
“It’s just skippy,” Tim says dryly. Of course this fucking hurts, why are you even asking? on his face.
“Pretend I’m asking you as someone who can write you a prescription for painkillers.”
Tim blinks. “Oh.”
“So, he knocked some of your brains loose as well as blacking your eyes?” Jimmy says while very gently palpating Tim’s nose and his orbitals.
“Apparently. It hurts.” Tim’s flinching at Jimmy investigation, as well. “Advil’s taking care of the worst of it. Ice is helping. I’ll live.”
“You want something stronger?” Jimmy seemed satisfied that nothing was broken.
“Nah.”  
“Where are the girls?” Jimmy asks as he gets up and leans against the deck railing, popping the top on the hard cider. (After taking a moment to read the label for the sugar content.)
“Grabbing a little shut eye right now. Abby’ll be up for dinner. Kelly probably will be, too.”
“You short a girl tonight?” Gibbs asks while Jimmy casts an approving eye on dinner as he takes a sip of the cider.
“Yeah, Breena’s got a viewing.”
“Thought her part of it was usually done by the viewing,” Gibbs says.
“It is. But Jeannie’s not feeling good, so either Breena takes front of the house or Ed does and…” And he doesn’t need to finish that sentence, Tim and Gibbs are both well aware of how you might not want Ed Slater in charge of the grieving part of your funeral. He watches Gibbs handle the sausages, keeping them moving on the flames to prevent too much in the way of flare ups, and that got Gibbs and fire together in his head. “So, did Tim tell you about his dragons?”
Gibbs looks over at Jimmy, leaning against the porch railing where he can keep an eye on Molly easy, closes his eyes, opens them slowly, flashes his best are you kidding melook at him, and Jimmy shakes his head. So he turns to Tim, who’s relaxing on the chaise, and says, “Dragons?”
Tim smiles. “Dragons. Big, mean, magical warriors. Whole clan of them spread out over a few counties of some sort of ancient magical version of Ireland.”
“Uh huh…” Gibbs looks… less than thrilled is probably the best way to put it. He can sense the guys are excited, but, really, dragons?
“That’s the next series of books,” Tim says, still grinning.
Gibbs sighs at that, and turns the sausages while saying, “Do not tell me that JL McPibbs is going to be the main dragon in this next thing.”
Jimmy and Tim laugh pretty hard at that.
“Okay, I have to remember that,” Tim says as he calms down. “JL McPibbs may have to be a throw away character of some sort. That’s too good of a name to pass up. How about Lorcan McGee, patriarch of the McGee clan?” 
Gibbs thinks about that for a moment… “I can live with that. Is Lorcan the main character?”
“This time, no.”
“Your own name?” Jimmy asks.
“Not gonna write them as Tim McGee. That’d look kind of dumb.”
“And when they find out your real name?” Jimmy asks.
“Come on. Ninety zillion fantasy books out there. And this is not going to be the next Game of Thrones. My mystery readers aren’t going to follow me to this series. If it sells as well as most books do, about five thousand people will read it.”
Jimmy keeps looking at him, they’re gonna find out, clear on his face.
“I’ll set fire to that bridge when I come to it?”
Jimmy rolls his eyes, takes another sip of his drink, and looks away, keeping his eyes on Molly. “Got a name for me?”
“Daegan McGee? Did some googling when we were stuck in traffic on the way up to Downingtown.”
“Daegan?” Jimmy’s mostly just testing that name, getting a feel for it but Tim takes his question as what does it mean.
“Means black-haired.”
Jimmy thought about that for a second, kind of liking it, and then something occurred to him, and he squints at Tim, baffled. “What color hair do you think I have?”
Tim looks at him more carefully. “It’s not black?”
“Are you color blind?” Jimmy asks, Gibbs looking between them, appearing to be pretty amused by this.
“I didn’t think so.”
“It’s dark brown.”
“Huh.” Tim keeps staring at Jimmy’s hair. And, well, now that he’s looking, yeah, it’s not black at all. Dark brown, little bit of gray, less than one percent, but enough so it’s visible, but mostly dark brown, some lighter brown highlights. Really, not black at all.
Jimmy’s flashing his so done with you back at him. “So, you’re not actually getting better at naming things, you’re just doing it in a different language?”
“Hey, you aren’t Seamus!”
Jimmy squints at that.
“That’s the Scots/Irish version of James,” Tim explains. He spends another minute looking at Jimmy more carefully. “What the hell color are your eyes? Green? Brown?”
“Hazel. For a writer, you don’t pay a lot of attention to detail.”
“I can tell you where every mole on every visible inch of Breena, Ziva, and Abby is, and probably spend a paragraph each on their eyes, but for some reason, I haven’t felt much need to pay any attention to how you look.”
“Good point.”
“Bet you don’t know what color my eyes are.”
Jimmy took another drink of his cider. “Not blue, beyond that, I don’t know. But I also don’t write stories with you in them.”
“Mine are blue. His are green. Tony’s are hazel. And this is the dumbest conversation we’ve ever had. What’s Lorcan mean?” Gibbs asks, more interested in seeing what Tim’s going to do with this than he wants to admit.
“Little fierce one.”
“Really?” Gibbs isn’t horrified by that, but he’s not loving it, either.
“Come on, you weren’t an adult when you got named. If Lorcan didn’t describe you as a baby, let alone as a baby dragon…”
“Okay, decent point…”


Getting into the spirit.When Abby came down she did have Kelly with her, and she was in the little pumpkin costume. Jimmy looks at the two of them, smiles at Kelly, taking her from Abby and giving her a kiss and a little petting, before handing her over to Jethro, taking the tongs from him, (Unwritten but always followed rule at both the McGee and Palmer homes: the person with the baby is not the person standing over the stove/oven/grill, minding the food.) and then says, “So, which one of the two of you went insane on the Halloween costumes.”
Tim raises his hand as Abby sits on his lap.
Jimmy shakes his head and smiles again.
Molly comes tearing over. “Kelly!”
Gibbs kneels on the porch so she can get a good view of her cousin. “Remember, very gentle.” Molly nods seriously, and leans in to kiss Kelly. Kelly squints at her, looking confused at the noisy thing slobbering on her.
“When your baby sister comes, you’re going to have to be gentle with her, too,” Jethro says.
Kelly nods at that.
“But you know what?”
“What?”
“When she comes, she’s gonna sleep a lot, and your mommy and daddy are going to be really tired, too, so you and me, we’re gonna go out and play so everyone else can get naps. Probably take Ducky and Penny, too. That sound good?”
“Good!”
“Okay.” Gibbs looks back up to Jimmy. “What’s the official count now, ten more weeks?”
“December 14th, supposedly. Of course, Molly was supposed to show up February 1st, so we’re not holding out a lot of hope for Anna coming before Christmas.”
“What do you think, Molly, want a little baby sister for Christmas?” Abby asks.
Molly shakes her head vehemently. None of them are sure if that’s yes or no, (she’s shaking side to side and up and down) but they also know that both ‘little sister’ and ‘Christmas’ are really nebulous concepts for Molly, so mostly it’s just about making sure she’s part of the conversation.
Molly keeps looking at Kelly, and finally says, “Pumpkin?”
“Yep, it’s a pumpkin costume. For Halloween. Are you and Daddy going trick or treating?”
Molly ponders Uncle Tim’s question, while Jimmy nods. “Few houses around ours. Nothing big.” He pokes the brats again. “These are done. We eating inside or out?”
Tim shifts Abby onto the chaise and stands up. “I’ll get plates and napkins. Too nice to go in.”
“There’s a salad already made up in the fridge, too,” she adds.
“I’ll grab that, too.”


Perfect evenings may be vanishingly rare. They may not even exist. But, if you were to ask him, Tim’d tell you that sitting on his back porch, as the sun slips behind the trees in his backyard, eating dinner, enjoying a very good conversation with a group of people he loves is probably about as close as a man can get.
Sure, if everyone had been there it would have been better, but this moment here, Kelly nursing, his arm around Abby, sharing a cider with her, Molly on Jimmy’s lap, giving the tiny piece of bratwurst on the fork the big, hairy, eyeball, while Gibbs told them about taking his Kelly trick-or-treating the first time was awfully sweet.  

But moments are just moments, and they all end.
Kelly went down for the first of her night sleeps post-nursing. And not much beyond that, Molly was starting to yawn, which meant it was time for her and Jimmy to head home.
And it’s not so much that Tim wants to boot Gibbs out of their home, but he is hoping to have as much of the ten to one sleep block for playing with Abby as possible, and knows there’s some pre-game prep that needs to happen that’ll eat up some of this current seven to ten sleep cycle, so, as dinner’s winding down, he’s sending off not very subtle see-you-in-the-morning signals to Gibbs.
“Can I leave you two to clear up?” Abby asks, standing up from the table, stretching.
“Sure,” Tim replies.
“Good, want to get a shower.”
“We’re on it.” Tim says, watching Gibbs already stacking up plates. Now, normally, if say, Gibbs wasn’t the third person here, he’d just sign what he wants to say to Abby, or maybe say it silently. But, of course, that doesn’t work with Gibbs.
So, Tim grabs the salad bowl, follows her into the house, plunks it on the kitchen table and follows her to the bottom of the steps. As she rests her hand on the bannister, he lays his hand on hers and says very quietly, while kissing her throat just below her ear, “Get all cleaned up, okay?”
She smiles brightly at that, knowing what ‘all cleaned up’ means. Then says, also quietly, while kissing his lips. “Yes, Lord Gabriel.”
He gently pats her tush, and she heads up.


“I was thinking…” Tim says as he and Gibbs load the dishwasher.
“Yeah, I noticed,” Gibbs says dryly. “I’m heading home soon.”
Tim smirks and begins to scrub out the cast iron pan the apples and onions had been cooking in. “Well, yeah, thinking about that, too. But I know you’d already gotten that message, so that wasn’t what I was going to talk to you about.”
“Okay.”
“Thinking about retiring. What was Franks doing? You told me he had more irons in the fire than anyone guessed. Obviously, he wasn’t just lying on the sand sucking down the cervezas. If whatever it was kept him going, maybe…”
“Maybe it’d be good enough for me?” That wasn’t a bad idea. What the hell was Franks doing? ‘Trust me, Probie, you’re way better off not knowin’,’ was all Franks would say about it. Gibbs knew better than to ask if it was legal, answer like that meant no, it wasn’t. But it was Mike, so legal or not, it wasn’t immoral.
“Or give you an idea of where to look next.”
Gibbs shrugs, that wasn’t an insane idea. Could talk to Amira, maybe she’d have a clue… He could head down to Mexico and have a chat with Camilla, she might be able to shed a bit of light on the story. (Or, maybe not go down to Mexico, going to Mexico might not be the best idea he’s ever had.)
Could open that box, the box he’d been assuming contained every skeleton in every closet that NCIS or NIS ever built. What Franks had been doing might be in there.

Gibbs nods, not saying much, but definitely thinking. 

Shards To A Whole: Chapter 301

McGee-centric character study/romance. Want to start at the beginning? Click here.

Chapter 301: Inevitable


When he gets home, he opens up his computer, not really sure what he wants to do.

Not true.

Not really comfortable with what he wants to do.

What he wants to do is call Rachel up and just talk to her. Well, what he'd really like to do is actually see her, share a cup of coffee, and talk to her. But he knows that's a bad plan. They are, as she made very clear, not dating. Technically, she's not actually a friend. He can't just call her up at 8:53 on a Thursday night just to talk because he had a bad day.

But, God, he wants to. She'd sip her coffee, listen attentively, ask good questions, help him sort out his head in a way that woodworking just doesn't.

In a way that isn't lonely.

But he can't ask her to come over. Can't suggest going to her. This little fantasy of talking to her, her on his sofa, listening to him, is already dangerously close to over the line, and actually seeking her out would be way over the line.

So he won't.

But he can email, and ask to shift this week's assignment. In that it's October and his thirty-sixth wedding anniversary is creeping up on him, he's supposed to be coming up with a plan for what he's going to do to mark the day.

He can ask to put that off, right? That's within bounds, right?

So, he opens his email account, and begins to hit the compose button when he looks to his contact list on the left and sees the little green dot next to Rachel Cranston.

He's aware of those dots. Noticed them before. But he doesn't know what they mean.

He pulls out his phone and flashes a text to Tim. What's the little green dot next to someone's name on gmail mean?

Three minutes later he gets back I'm fine, too. Thanks for asking. How are you?

He rolls his eyes. Frustrated. I don't know what the green dot means.

It means the person's online.

So if I send an email they'll get it immediately?

Yeah. Or you can chat with them.

How's that work?

Double click on the name, little box pops up, type. Who you talking to? Tony?

No. Already talked to Tony.

How's he doing?

Better than he was two hours ago.

???

Tomorrow or the next day.

Probably Saturday, not sure when I'm getting back.

Back? Where are you?

Tracked down a lead in PA. Snagged Draga, heading north. Traffic on the beltway means we're just hitting the middle of Maryland right now.

Gibbs is glad to hear he's got a lead, more happy yet that he's following it, but then something else hits him. Did you tell Tony you found a lead?

There's a minute where nothing comes up on his phone, and then one word flashes up. Shit. Two minutes later: Done. Have gotten permission to go to PA and hunt down lead. I wouldn't mind if he thought I worked this late in the lab and just left.

Gibbs shakes his head. Ziva's right, Tim needs to go. He's beyond ready. There's taking initiative, and then there's you're in charge on your own. He knows he wouldn't be thrilled if Tim just ran off, snagging another agent, on his watch without at least a heads up as to what's going on.

Good plan. He types. Tony doesn't need to know, this soon after the two of them blowing up, that Tim's on his own.

So, who you want to chat with?

Tomorrow. Dinner. Your place. Hate texting.

No problem. See you then.

He double clicks on Rachel's name and a little box did appear in the lower right corner of his screen. Sort of like texting then, but at least for this he's got a real keyboard.

So… how do you start this?

Hi

He's feeling stupidly off balance waiting for the response. Half-afraid that he's intruding on her, half-nervous that she just won't respond, but mostly feeling foolish that he's so out of sorts he can't wait until Monday and just talk to her then.

Hello Jethro.

He feels like he can hear her voice as those words pop up on his screen.

Now what?

Can I change my assignment for this week?

Having trouble?

No… Not like that. Lot happened this week. Wanna talk about it.

That's not a problem. How about you send me an email, get me up to date, and we can hit the ground running on Monday?

That sounds good.

The screen stays blank and he's not sure how to sign off for this.

He types goodnight but deletes it before hitting enter.

I'll have it in your inbox by tomorrow. That he does hit enter for.

And a few seconds later he gets back. Looking forward to it. See you Monday.

It took him close to three hours to get it all out and it's probably the most… real… thing he's ever tried to put into words.

It's rambling, and doesn't make a ton of sense, but the swings are there, that resignation he had before Tim gave him the out, the elation of getting another year, the desperate grab for more time, feeling like shit for pulling it on Tony, guilt for that, ripping it up, burning the bridge, and now this just sort of numb, terrified hopelessness.

Not knowing what to do, what comes, next.

Being scared by that, too.

How he's afraid he needs more than just the kids and grandkids. How he's afraid that until he finds it, he'll be clinging to them so hard they'll get sick of him. That he's afraid there isn't more, not for him.

That he doesn't know who he is if he's not a cop.

That getting booted out is so fucking unfair. It'd be one thing if he couldn't do the job anymore, but he's getting shelved because he's… inconvenient and expensive. And he's angry at it. Angry at Tony right now, even though he probably shouldn't be. Tony's more than within his rights to want his job, he's earned it, he's put the time in, and Gibbs' clock has almost zeroed out so suddenly adding more time wasn't fair, either.

But running out when you can still do it… He's good at his job. He's probably one of the best at his job, but being the best, or near best, doesn't matter, because it's not a meritocracy. That makes him want to rage.

But mostly, through all of it, is scared. For almost twenty-three years he's always known what he was going to do the next day. He was going to get up, grab a shower, throw on some clean clothing, and then do the job. And maybe nothing else would be stable, or make sense, or make him feel good, but that's always been there.

And come January 16th, it won't be.

But sitting in front of his computer won't solve it. Nothing'll solve it. The clock won't go backwards, and it keeps running forward, closer to tomorrow. So he heads to bed. Might as well try to get some sleep.

It's not like he usually springs out of bed with a song in his heart and joy in his soul. It's more like he sort of grumbles his way out. His team… he sighs… Tony's team, knows he's about as much fun as a splinter under your fingernail until he's got some coffee in him, and stomping out of his nice comfortable bed, and usually fairly pleasant dreams, does nothing to make that any better.

But he's fairly reliable about wake up, get up, get showered, get dressed, eat, and out the house. He doesn't laze around in bed. He doesn't linger in the shower. He's a Marine, and Marines are up, in, out, and done. (Shannon used to have a rather off-color joke about that, one he had appreciated greatly. Though back in those days, he didn't go sprinting out of bed right after waking up if he didn't have work. In fact, before Kelly, on several occasions, they didn't make it out of bed for anything but food and the bathroom. He misses those days.)

He doesn't have an alarm.

Doesn't need one.

His body knows when to get up, and it doesn't matter when he went to bed, he's up when he needs to be.

But this morning, he's just… laying there, not really feeling like it's worth getting up.

And the little mental pep talk (bad guys to get, people to arrest, lives to save) isn't exactly revving his engine. He finally wills himself out of bed by the sheer fact that if he's late to work and doesn't give them a reason for it, they'll send out the Mounties to go find him.

And lying in bed in a bad mood is nothing he wants to expound on, let alone why he's in the bad mood.

He gets in after Tony and Ziva, and both of them are at their desks reading up on something. No Tim or Draga, so they must still be in PA working that lead.

"We got Mason and his lawyer in?" Gibbs asks.

Tony nods toward Ziva who is reading up on Tim and Draga's notes. "They'll be in a ten. McGeek and TechSupport Mark II are both grilling Eva Flanders, the bookkeeper at Herden's Titanium Works. Should get a report back in an hour or so about them moving up the food chain. Ziva's playing catch up for talking with Mason and his lawyer. You're going to go in there with her, look menacing, and if any of her questions get to him, make a note of it. We'll send McGee and Draga in on the second run."

"I can do that."

And he did. Because he loves the job. Because doing it feels right. And even if he's not the Boss, the rhythms of a case, of paperwork, of puzzles to solve and people to save are his life.

He's sitting next to Ziva, keeping a close eye on Mason, and as he does it he feels his silence coming back. Not that he'd ever gotten particularly talky at work, but the shield of no words will help keep fear and sorrow, not tamed down, but hidden.

It'll help get the job done, and if he can only do it for two and half more months, he'll do it as much, as fully, and as well as he can.

But he can't talk about it, because if he does, it'll show through his voice.

The end is near, and he can't pretend that it isn't.

Next

Shards To A Whole: Chapter 300

McGee-centric character study/romance. Want to start at the beginning? Click here.

Chapter 300: The Right Thing


Ziva, Draga, and Gibbs all watched Tony head through the bullpen to his desk.

He sat down, drug his chair into the center, and said, "Report."

All three of them sat there, still staring at him.

"Is there a problem?"

"No, Boss," Draga said, scooting into the center, Ziva and Gibbs following a second later.

"Are you okay?" Ziva asked. Doesn't take a trained investigator to see sad and angry on him.

"I'm fine."

She and Gibbs nodded, looking at each other, tucking that away for things to be talked about later. But they also know that right now is not the time to ask about it.

So, Tony, having declared himself "fine" and requesting a report, Draga launched into pretty much the same report Tim had. Then Ziva added what she had found going through the VA joint registry, and how there were close to 5000 artificial joints that had been purchased multiple times, and God alone knew what else. Joints, pins, heart valves, things that go and stay inside bodies have serial numbers, but literally thousands of other devices get used on a daily basis by the VA, and without physically going to the warehouses and hospitals and counting up inventories to go with purchase orders, there's just no way to tell if the amount of stuff purchased is even remotely like the amount of stuff in the stores.

Gibbs explained that he had overseen Mason's processing and that his lawyer was due in tomorrow morning, and as of this point said lawyer appeared to be paid for by Mason, (he found him in the phone book) but that he'd get on checking that out. (Okay, he's actually already checked that out, but he's waiting to be told to do it to produce said information. Another hour or so and he'll volunteer that Meyers, Briggs, and Meyers is, as best as he can tell, in no way related to any of the companies they're investigating.)

"McGee's rechecking the financials, looking for an actual person who paid Mason," Tony said, not looking toward McGee's desk, not expecting him to come near unless he has a breakthrough.

The other three nod at that. The problem with these companies is that they're huge. Somehow, somewhere an invoice shows up for services rendered by Mason, and someone in Accounts Payable handles it, but when you're talking about a company with five hundred employees it's awfully hard to find exactly who is making sure things like this happens.

"Until we've got more to go on, finish up the paperwork on the Finely case."

They nod at that, too, and go back to work.

The LabRats kept shooting Tim curious looks as he worked next to Abby. Not every day their boss's husband showed up and then decided to commandeer a lab computer. But neither of them said anything about it to them. (Though he did, briefly, by sign, get her up to date on what was going on.) So they didn't ask.

He was sorting through Mason's financials, hunting down every company that was paying him, looking for one that might be small enough to actually locate a specific person who had to take responsibility for agreeing to pay his invoice.

So far, no dice. The fact that he appeared to be providing legitimate web work and IT services didn't make this job any easier.

About an hour into it, while he was cross checking company web sites with IRS filings, looking for the right target, Gibbs headed in, Caf-Pow in hand for Abby, and a cup of coffee for him.

Abby accepted the Caf-Pow and the kiss on her cheek while pipetting something into the vials they use for Major Mass Spec. "Don't have any updates, yet."

"I know." He turned to look at Tim, placing the coffee cup next to him.

Tim took it, sipped it, and stood up, stretching a bit. He eyed the door and Gibbs got that look. Neither of them need to have this conversation with the LabRats lurking.

When they were outside, Tim leaning against the south wall of NCIS, sipping his coffee, Gibbs facing him, both of them sucking up a bit of October sunshine, Tim said, "I'd say we managed to screw that particular pooch in every direction a pooch can be screwed in."

"Fubar."

"Yep." He took another sip of his coffee. Then he closed his eyes, let his head drop against the brick wall, felt the sun warm on his skin. "It's not done, yet. Leon's looking into it. I can still make it go away."

"You probably should."

He opened his eyes and looked into Gibbs' seeing the doubt, fear, and uncertainty there. "Do you want me to?"

"No."

But wanting isn't having and sometimes we shouldn't get the things we want. "Should I? Really?"

Gibbs closed his eyes, and Tim can see the pain there. "Yes."

"I'll let Leon know. Gotta win back a ton of brownie points on this, so I won't have time to fix the data for a bit, but when this case is put to bed, I'll do it."

"Okay."

"Sorry, Jethro."

"Why are you sorry?"

"I got your hopes up. Back when this was inevitable, you were better with it."

"Nah. Just doing a better job of hiding it. You don't bitch about the things you can't change."

Tim nods.

"I'm grateful, Tim, even if it didn't work."

Four hours later, he was home, doing what he always did when he had a bad day. Woodworking and bourbon was always good for clarity and peace in the past. But, as he's carefully stroking the first layer of the maple stain onto Anna Palmer's crib, Gibbs isn't feeling particularly calm or clear.

Been a long time since he's been so torn between what he wants and 'the right thing to do.' Last time he felt this torn between want and right, he was looking at his new redheaded probie thinking about at least half a dozen x-rated things he wanted to do with and to her.

At least then he knew it wasn't right.

This time he's not nearly so sure.

He knows he can do the job.

He knows he can do it way better than anyone else Tony can get to replace him. That's just a given. No fresh-out-of-FLETC, wet-behind-the-ears, newbie (that's what Tim calls them, right?) can match his twenty plus years.

He just can't.

And honestly, anyone who'd be willing to transfer into their team, even with experience, won't be as good. Not bad, certainly. Different, of course. But he clears more cases, more quickly, with a higher conviction rate than anyone else in NCIS.

That's his team, working his rules, doing it his way…

Except it's not. Not anymore.

Because it's Tony's team, and letting him run it is the right thing to do. He's ready for his own team. He can run it. He's good at his job and knows the way to make it work. He's ready.

And he doesn't need Gibbs staring over his shoulder.

Because while it's true that sticking around for another year may be the right thing for Gibbs, it's not the right thing for Tony.

And it's not selfish to want his own team. It's not bad or wrong or anything else. And Gibbs knows he's got to go for it to really be Tony's.

Because that's just the way it is.

But if he goes, people will die. Cases won't get solved as quick. Tony's good, he's solid, his instincts are sound, but he doesn't have Gibbs' gut. He just doesn't. And soon, Tony and Ziva will have two probies, and that's a lot of untested, un-experienced, un… everything, to have on your team and watching your back.

Which means some of those people who may die may be Tony or Ziva, because he won't be there, watching their backs, and anyone who replaces him won't be as good.

He hears his front door open, followed by heavy, quick steps, searching the upstairs from the sound of it. Not Tony, he's too pissed to chat tonight. Too heavy to be Jimmy or Tim, who might want to have a chat with him, touch base and see what's up. Not Draga, Draga doesn't come here, not yet. Ducky would have headed straight to the basement, so not him. Likewise, Fornell would have headed straight down, too.

He catches a faint scent of coffee and whatever that cologne Leon wears is.

"In the basement, Leon."

A second later he hears the first step on his stairs.

"Do you even use the rest of the house?"

"On occasion."

Leon looks over the crib and smiles. "Newest baby Palmer?"

"Anna. She's supposed to be on the outside middle of December. Want to get this done by Halloween."

"Good plan." He faces Gibbs, leaning against the workbench. "So… What's this bull McGee's telling me about you being born in 1960?"

Gibbs stares at the ceiling and sighs. "A bad idea."

"Uh huh," Vance says in that exceptionally understated way of his. "I understand DiNozzo and McGee had a conference this afternoon as to the suitability of this plan, and worked on reinforcing proper respect regarding the chain of command?"

"Something like that."

"And is the chain of command in place?"

"I think so. Tim'll be up to tell you not to go forward on the new birthdate thing soon, but right now he's putting in his 110% to try and make it up to Tony."

"Good." Leon took a form out of his jacket pocket and unfolded it on Gibbs workbench, then poured himself a drink. "1087 B. It's filled out and signed."

Gibbs looked at it, the form that allows for exceptions to the mandatory retirement age.

"Thought you couldn't get one of these if you had more than twenty years in."

"You usually can't, but in that I'm the guy who okays them…"

Gibbs nods, and Leon nudged he document. "No need for McGee to go and perjure himself to get you another year."

"Thanks, Leon."

Leon shook his head. "There's a whole ball of strings attached to that, Jethro."

"I know."

"Do you?"

"I do now."

Leon took another sip of his drink. "Is DiNozzo ready? You two just pulled the rug out from under him, and he didn't have a clue until after."

"He's ready."

Vance nods. He taps the form. "If he's ready…" You don't need to stick around is loud and clear.

"I know. He can do it. He'll do it well. But…"

Vance nods at that, too. He's fifty, and'll hit twenty years in in '16. He knows that as Director his job doesn't have a get-out-of-town date attached to it, but he also knows that in the next five years he's going to start getting hints along those lines. "Date on the form is October 15th. Don't need it back until then. Take it. Think. Talk to him."

Gibbs nods.

"Jethro, there's more to NCIS than just hot cases. We need recruiters. We need instructors. We have a whole team going through cold cases in DC alone. We need translators. You speak what, four languages?"

"More."

"You wanna run classes on sniper skills or tactical assessment or interrogation technique; I'll set you up for it. Things are still unstable in Crimea, you want to finish up the Shannon, head to the Black Sea, find a nice port city, hang out, read newspapers, and keep your ear to the ground, I'll send you."

"Spying mission on my own?"

"Passive intel gathering. Just feet on the ground seeing what's going on, but yeah, I'll send you. You do speak Russian, right?"

"Da."

"Wouldn't be like your cloak and dagger days. More like retired tourist keeping an eye on things, but, you want it, we can do it."

Gibbs looks at the crib and shakes his head. "I need to be closer to home. A week or two, fine, but I can't miss my girls for too long."

Leon smiles at that. "Know that feeling." He takes one more sip. "Even if January is the end of your days as Team Leader, it doesn't have to be the end of your days being useful."

Gibbs shrugs at that. "Pushing paper doesn't do it, ya know?"

"Yeah. I know." It had taken a full half year for Leon to get used to not jumping up to handle field assignments. "But it's not useless, either. And we do need talent scouts, and we do need people who have been there and done that to teach the younger ones."

Gibbs just looks at Leon, getting across exactly how much that's not what he wants to be doing.

Leon nods at that, he gets it. "So, let me see these newly discovered documents. I poked around on the computer records he built you, and they're clean."

Gibbs led Leon upstairs, and showed him his "new" birth certificate, first driver's license, first report card, and a few other odds and ends.

Leon studied them carefully. "Good work. Where'd he get the paper?"

"They're the originals. Abby lifted the old ink and made new ink to match it. Tim's better at copying handwriting, and owns the typewriter for the rest."

"Yes, I know how good he is at copying other people's handwriting. Especially DiNozzo's and yours."

"Thinking of an assignment for him?"

"Not right now. We've got people who do this when I want it official. But it's good to know that if I ever don't want it official, I've got someone who can do this."

"According to Abby, unless the exact right bit of the paper gets carbon dated, there's no way to tell it's forged."

Leon nods, then stands up. "You get some quiet time tomorrow, head over to HR and take a look at what all we've got going on that you don't need to be under fifty-seven for."

"Okay."

Before he and Ziva got together, Tony was never much of a bath guy. There were probably several reasons for this, but most of them could be distilled into this, none of the things he liked doing outside a bath could be done in it.

Can't watch movies in the tub, can't watch the game, can't pick up women, can't dance, you probably could play the guitar, but it'd be really bad for your guitar.

So, though the apartment he lived in at the time had a killer bathroom with a very nice tub, he never bothered to use it.

Ziva's place didn't have a particularly good bathtub. Kind of small, and it took forever to fill because the faucet was too tiny. But Ziva did like baths. She liked filling up the tub with hot water, fragrant oils or salts, and settling in to read for an hour or so.

And when they got together, taking advantage of his tub was something she enjoyed.

And from there, Tony found that he enjoyed sharing a bath with her.

And the worse the day was, the more stressed he was, the more he appreciated being able to fill up the tub, add the bath salts, (sandalwood and jasmine, pleasantly fragrant, doesn't make him feel like he smells like a flower shop after) and settle in to talk with her.

Add in the fact that their current place had a Jacuzzi tub, and yeah, happy muscles relaxing and trying to let go of the day.

He was already in the water, laying back, trying to get himself calm. She sat on the edge of their tub, twisting her hair up into a knot. "Are you going to tell me about it?"

"What's there to tell? Papa Smurf is scared. Brainy Smurf is desperate for Daddy to pat him on the head. Put the two of them together and I get screwed."

"Tony." She smiles sadly at him.

"I think I've got McGee handled. When we left he was still hunting down leads. For a few more days at least, I think he'll be putting in the extra to try and make me smile." Ziva drops her robe on the floor, and slips into the water, settling so that she's sitting between his legs, back against his chest, head resting on his shoulder. He kisses her temple. "Lord… the thing with Gibbs is such a mess."

She smiles gently at that, too. "This is fixable."

He shakes his head. "Not by me. I can't spend another year working for him, and I can't cut his head off. 'It's like dying,' he actually said that to me. How am I supposed to make him leave after that?"

Ziva shrugs, she doesn't know how he can do it. She does know that he needs to do it, because he's right, he can't work for Gibbs for another year. "We talked a little. I told him he can't stay unless you really are the Boss, and he thought about it. Didn't jump in and give me an immediate I-can-do-it answer."

He thinks about that and says, "I need to talk to Vance in the morning."

"Why?"

"Tell him I'm keeping Gibbs."

She winced slightly at that.

"Too little, too late?"

She nods. "Perhaps something along the lines of you've got your mutineers in hand and are in control again and that anything that doesn't go through you is to be immediately reported to you and that you'll handle it?"

He shakes his head again. "That's the thing about a mutiny. Even if you do get it under control again, anything you do about it reminds the higher ups that you lost control."

"Ignore it? Pretend it didn't happen?"

"I don't think that looks like in charge either."

She turned in his arms, and reached up to kiss him.

Gibbs stared at the form on the workbench.

"It's like dying."

He probably shouldn't have said that to Tony. That was beyond a low blow. But…

But it's also the most honest thing he's said about retiring. It's not like dying. It is dying. 'Leroy Jethro Gibbs, NCIS.' 'Gibbs, NCIS'

He doesn't spend time doing cop things. He is a cop. That's… not his whole life, but it's so damn close. At least ten hours a day, five days a week, and most weeks it's probably closer to nine hours six days. He thinks of cases when he's not working them, he works them until he drops or solves them, he hasn't taken a vacation since his last honeymoon. Hasn't taken a break since he left with Franks, and even with that, he was driving Franks buggy, fixing everything that wasn't nailed down.

He's a cop. He's been a cop for twenty-two years, twenty-three years four days before he retires. If he retires. He touches the form again. Another year. Three hundred and sixty five more days until he has to… become something else.

If he can.

He knows retired military. He knows retired doctors and lawyers and farmers and accountants and… and just about everything.

But he doesn't know a lot of retired cops. Because the ones he made friends with, the ones he liked, they lived the job. It was their end all and be all and when they weren't on the job, there wasn't anything else.

And when they retired, they died, and not in the metaphorical sense of the men they used to be shriveled up and vanished, but in the literal within a year their wives/kids stuck them in a box and buried them sense.

The guys he knows that are still around are like Mike; they burned out on it. They left by choice. They didn't get booted out. The ones who were forced out, they didn't do so well.

Because when your whole life is the job, you just don't keep going when it's gone.

So, his whole life can't be the job.

His fingers trace over the form. The right thing to do. What he wants to do. The right thing for him, or the right thing in general. He can remember the version of him Mike showed him, the one who did the 'right thing' and let Hernandez go. That broken shell of a man, living on bourbon and hate.

But that was the 'right thing.' Just not the right thing for him.

But this time it's not just about the right thing for him. It's the right thing for Tony, and by extension, Ziva, too. It's the right thing for his kids.

But it feels like throwing himself on his own funeral pyre.

Gibbs knocked on the door to Tony and Ziva's place. It's not too late, but not exactly early, either.

Ziva opened it a few seconds later, in her bathrobe, and looked mildly surprised to see him.

"Can I see him?"

"I'll check."

She headed off to their bedroom, and he heard quiet voices. Two minutes later she was back, and nodded again. But he can see she's wary, so he smiles a little at her, letting her know that Tony won't regret this.

Tony's sitting on their bed in a pair of shorts. Yankees are playing on the TV, but he's got it on mute. Gibbs knows they do that. Tony watches the games on silent while Ziva reads.

Tony looks him up and down, also wary. "Gibbs."

He held up the form. "1087 B, filled out by Vance. He's given me until the 15th to hand it back in." Gibbs turned his back to Tony, so he can't see his face, can't see the pain of this. Then he ripped the form into little pieces, flicked on the switch that turned on the gas fireplace in their room, and dropped the bits. He swallowed once, and then twice, opened his mouth, and then closed it, not sure if his voice would hold. Two more seconds, the sound of the rushing flames and the smell of burnt paper filling the room. Then he was sure he could get a few more words out. "January 15th. That'll be my last day."

Tony nods at that, and Gibbs heads out, he doesn't want to talk, and he doesn't think Tony does either.

Ziva follows him to the door and hugs him as he gets ready to head off, holds him close for a long minute, then reaches up on her tip toes to kiss his forehead.

He burrows his face against her shoulder, and stands close to her, not sure what happens next, but eventually he pulls back and head out of their home back toward his own, feeling hollow, aching from the sense of nothing left to do.

The fact that it's the right thing doesn't make it any easier.

Shards To A Whole: Chapter 299

McGee-centric character study/romance. Want to start at the beginning? Click here.

Chapter 299: A Discussion

Tim's not at his desk when Gibbs gets back up. Ziva is. Draga's not.

She's looking pretty calm, so either she doesn't know what's going on, or it's not bothering her. Probably doesn't know.

"He give you any trouble?" Gibbs asks about the suspect.

Ziva flashes Gibbs her, no not at all, don't be silly look.

Gibbs nods at that. Good to know collecting the suspect went well. And since they tracked him through tech stuff that Tim and Draga handled, they were probably interrogating him.

"Draga and Tim in interrogation?"

"Yes. Where is Tony?"

"Don't know."

Now she's sending him her curious look. Always be reachable, make sure someone knows where you are, those are bedrock for their team, and Gibbs above and beyond everyone else usually knows where everyone is.

Gibbs holds his phone so she can see he's texting on it. He sent a quick message to Tim about what just happened.

"Gibbs?" Now she's starting to look a bit worried and nervous.

So he starts at the beginning. They're in the bullpen in the middle of the office, so he tells the 'official' version, but she knows well enough to know that's bullshit and why he's lying, and the bit where he mentions how McGee was 'helping him find the right documents' to prove how old he really is lets her know exactly what happened.

He looks fairly sheepish as he gets done with the telling, and he can see she's torn. Half-pissed at him for not treating Tony with more respect, half-understanding that desperate need to be useful and to save lives and do the job.

Of all of them, she's the one who gets that need the most. She's the one, like him, with the dark red blood on her ledger, trying to erase it one solved crime at a time. It never washes out, and what Ari did wasn't her fault, any more than what happened to Shannon and Kelly was his, but in the end, that doesn't matter, the red is still there, and only one thing eases the ache of it.

"Why didn't you go to him? He would have been fine with it if you had just told him."

Gibbs isn't entirely sure of that, but he does know that Tony would have been a whole hell of a lot better with it if they had asked him.

"Honestly didn't think to."

"Because you're the Boss and the Boss doesn't ask."

"Yeah."

She mutters something, low and quiet, and possibly not English, while shaking her head. Then says in her normal tone, "You cannot stay if he's not the Boss. A few months isn't a problem. A year is."

"Thirty-eight," he says quietly.

"No Gibbs. Your lead, your case, no." She shakes her head. "No your rules. It's his and it gets done his way and he runs it how he likes, and if you are going to stay, you need to show the proper respect for that."

"And you'd know something about that?" he asks, realizing at some point Ziva must have had this conversation with herself, must have made the decision that Tony could be her husband and her boss.

"Yes. I would. So, can you do that, or do you have to go? We know McGee has to go. He's ready for his own team, and they are both stepping on each other's feet. Especially this last month... But that will happen, sooner than later."

Gibbs nods, he wants to say that he can do it, that he can jump in and surrender the team and whatever it is he needs to do to stay, but… But he realizes he needs to really think about it. Three leaders on one team is two too many, but two isn't much better, and certainly isn't fair to Tony.

"I'll know soon."

"Good enough. Maybe… you might talk to Rachel about it?"

They tend to skirt around the fact that he sees her, just like they don't much talk about the marriage counseling that Tony and Ziva are doing, but he nods nonetheless. Talking to Rachel about it probably is a good idea.

Tim felt his phone buzz. Just once. Probably Gibbs or Tony letting him know he was up. He doesn't check his phone. In interrogation, get buzzed twice and that means pull it out and look, once means get 'round to it when you can.

Draga's taking lead on this interrogation, not his first time, but he likely hasn't hit ten yet, either. Tim's chilling in the corner, staring down at Ralph Mason, intentionally looking bored, making sure Ralph feels like they've got him dead to rights and this is just about getting the paperwork filled out. (Which, as far as Ralph is concerned, is true. Who he was working for is another story, one they want a conclusion to.)

Draga's asking about the technical specs of what Ralph was doing. (He cloned the VA's website interface for doctors, stole their info, then used it to order extra medical devices from several companies. VA never got the devices, but the companies that made them got paid. Not their usual sort of case, but the last murder they handled involved an artificial knee that they traced by the manufacturer number, and found that said knee joint had been sold four times… Solved the murder two days ago, but decided this stunk to high heaven and needed to be checked out.) Tim's enjoying getting to be the guy who hangs out in the corner. In the past, he's always had to write up notes that were too deep for Tony, Gibbs, or Ziva to do the questioning, so they didn't. They hung out and looked menacing and he asked the questions.

So, Draga's working Mason over, laying the verbal trap to get the names of who actually set this up. His voice is calm, the questions are lulling, he's even adding a sort of Robin Hood angle into it, making Ralph look like some sort of hero, after all, times are hard, and those 'extra' orders kept a bunch of people employed, and no one got hurt, really… so…

About three words too late, Ralph figured out what was happening and froze, demanding a lawyer.

And a quick change of track, the 'come on, you don't really need one, only guilty people need lawyers' didn't get Ralph's tongue to loosen again. And as Draga's aiming for another run at that, Tim ends things, gently pulling him out without making it obvious he's doing it.

So, they head back out of interrogation. Tim pulls out his cell, sees the note from Jethro, and feels a… he's not sure, and right now isn't a great moment for introspection. He says to Draga, "Okay, give him a few minutes in there, then take him down to processing, they'll handle the details."

"Got it."

He tucks his cell back into his pocket. "Also, next time, once they ask for a lawyer, you've gotta stop. If you get the wrong judge or the right lawyer, anything he says after he's asked for one'll get tossed, and anything we find based on anything he says after he's asked for one'll get tossed, too."

"Okay. What'll you be doing?"

"Having a chat with Tony." He's not entirely sure about that, but he's guessing they better get it done.

"You two okay?" Draga doesn't look like he's sure he's allowed to ask that, but he does, anyway.

"Nothing you need to worry about."

"You know, if you want to talk or something…"

Tim smiles at Draga, appreciating the offer. "Even if I did, it wouldn't be appropriate. He's your Boss."
Draga thinks about that. "But he's not yours, is he?"

"No."

"Is that the problem?"

"Yeah." Tim glances around, they're the only ones in the hallway outside of interrogation, but he pitches his voice low, anyway. "Look, we're not talking about it yet, but, yes, your interview question about why are we replacing Gibbs with you was right. We're not replacing Gibbs with you, we're replacing me. When Jenner leaves, I'm taking Cybercrime. Cybercrime does not know this, yet. Jenner does not know this. Jenner's second-in-command really does not know this, and I do not want him to find out from anyone but me, got it?"

Draga nods. "No scuttlebutt."

"Good."

"But Gibbs is a few months away from fifty-seven."

Tim doesn't comment on that.

"So, he should be leaving, right?"

"That's the question."

"So, is Gibbs not leaving?"

"That's what I'm going to be talking to Tony about."

"Why would you be talking to him about it?"

"Because if Gibbs isn't leaving, it'll be my fault."

Draga looks perplexed by that answer.

Tim shakes his head. "There are a few ways around mandatory retirement. Let's leave it at I found one of them for Gibbs."

"Okay." He thinks about it. "That a long enough wait for…" he tilts his head toward the interrogation room.

"Actually, yeah, that was. Take him to processing, then head back to the Bullpen. Ziva or Gibbs'll have something for you."

He'd only gotten Wh of where are you texted into his phone when the door to observation opened and Tony curled his finger, indicating Tim was to come in.

"Report?"

Tony looked mad enough bite his head off, and his voice was sharp, but he didn't ask about Gibbs, so Tim answered the question he did ask crisply, "Mason lawyered up. Draga handled the interrogation, got enough out that we've got him dead. Realized he was in danger of incriminating whoever's hiring him, and shut up."

Tony's not really paying attention to his answer, probably because if he was in observation, he saw the interrogation and doesn't really need a report. Finally he notices that Tim's finished and says, "See who's paying for the lawyer. If he is, he should roll pretty easy for the reduced sentence. If one of the companies is, we'll see if we can put pressure on him for conflict of interest."

"That's the play."

"Yep."

Tim turns, getting ready to head to processing to find out who Mason's lawyer is, and who's paying for him when Tony says, "So, you gonna tell me why you woke up a few days ago thinking, 'I know, today I'll fuck Tony's team?'"

He turns and squints at Tony, feeling like he's being overly dramatic about this. "Please. I maybe goosed you, no one got fucked."

Probably wasn't the right answer, ready to bite his head off morphed into the level beyond it, a sort of dangerous calm where Tony's brain speeds up and he starts really seeing everything around him, ready to go in for the kill.

Tony takes a deep breath, exhales long and slow, and then says, "Really? You goosed me? That's how you see going over my head, to my Boss, about my team, without talking to me first? You think that's a minor deal? You think making sure that Vance knows that I'm not in charge of my own team is like a pat on the ass?"

Okay, that was a decent point, and one Tim hadn't thought of. "I'm sorry. I just…"

"You think rearranging my team is just a minor little thing? Gibbs around for a whole nother year, that's a moot point? You think that, really?"

Well, actually, yes on that. Sure, he hadn't been thinking about it when he was getting everything ready to get Gibbs another year, but he is now, and now he's not seeing it as a big deal. Tony's been working with Gibbs for sixteen years, not like one more should be an issue. So Tim says, "Okay, I get how going to Leon over you looks bad, but how is keeping Gibbs an extra year fucking you or your team? You're running it. Everything is going nice and smooth. You've an experienced hand to help take care of things and keep Draga in shape. You'll have him good and trained before you bring in someone new, instead of trying to ride herd on two probies. Why is this a bad thing?"

"Because that means he'll be here for an extra year! That means instead of breaking in someone new in the next few months, I'll be breaking someone new in next January, you know, about the time Ziva and I were hoping to be having a baby. But it's my team, so I've got to be here to break in a new person. And Ziva obviously can't be anchoring the team while I'm on paternity leave because she'll be on maternity leave, and no matter how good Draga is, he can't be running a brand new probie of his own less than two years in, so yeah, I'm fucked by this. Ziva is fucked by this."

"Oh." Tim winces, yeah, he's fucked Tony over royally and he's feeling like shit for it.

"Yeah. Why would you do this? I get why he's doing this. He's staring into the goddamned abyss and seeing nothing staring back up at him. But you're supposed to be the smart one. You're the one who sees three moves ahead, so why the fuck would you do this to me?"

"It's not about you…" Tony doesn't look happy at that, at all, but Tim keeps explaining, "Because the gold watch wasn't enough. You and I were talking about that, remember, what we'd do for him when he retires, and I was thinking about it, and there isn't anything that's enough. And we're sitting in the car, and I'm watching him do the job, and he's not done. He's not ready to retire. And I could do it for him. I could fix that. I never managed to get my Dad anything that made him proud, but I could fucking well do it for Gibbs. God, he looked so happy when we showed him the new documents. It was like the way he looked at us when we told him Abby was pregnant.

"I'm sorry, but I didn't think about you at all when it came to this. I know that's bad, but you didn't cross my mind."

"Because I'm not your boss."

"Because it wasn't about you! I should have thought about you, but I didn't. I should have been thinking three moves ahead, but the three moves I was thinking through was how to hack into the Social Security database to change his birthdate."

Tony's staring at their reflections in the window to interrogation.

Tim's leaning back against the door staring at the ceiling, not sure what to say next. He gave it to Gibbs. He saw the way he lit up at the idea of it. He heard the hope in his voice when they showed him his new documents. He wants this, wants it bad, probably wants it more than he's wanted anything in decades, and when push comes to shove, when it's Tony and Ziva's happiness or Gibbs' he's more attached to Gibbs.

But it's Tony's team, and Tony and Ziva's family, and… and he fucked it up.

He doesn't want to take it away from Gibbs.

He doesn't want to be the guy who screwed Tony and Ziva.

"Leon's still checking into it. I can fix this. Make it go away."

Tony closes his eyes and grits his teeth. "No. It'd be like cutting his head off. I can't do it."

Tim nods at that. They stand there quietly. "The team doesn't always have to come first, Tony. Honestly, it probably shouldn't. Just because that's how he ran it doesn't mean that's how you do."

Tony stares at Tim's reflection, blinks slowly, once, and Tim doesn't know what that means.

"Just… You married Ziva, not Draga, not NCIS. You're allowed to let it go to the back burner long enough to have babies. World won't end if Draga and whoever the other Probie is do paperwork for a month or get loaned to someone else. Lab didn't fall apart because Abby left. Her new guys were on for three days before she left. Crimes still got solved, murderers got put away, NCIS kept going. You're allowed to leave. Or… if she got pregnant now, you'd have Gibbs in place to cover for you…"

Tony's not glaring, but this doesn't seem to be anything he wants to hear. He waves that away. "As long as he's here, I'm not in charge. He's staring over my shoulder, making sure I'm doing it 'right.' Draga's the only one who actually thinks I'm his Boss. I know I'm never really going to be Ziva's Boss, don't want to be, not really. It's good to have a partner. But until he's gone, it'll still be his team. We'll still do it his way. Keep his rules. Follow the same patterns."

"What do you want to change?"

Tony shakes his head. You're not getting it clear on his face. "You remember the difference between how it felt to drive with… who taught you to drive?"

"My grandfather."

"Remember the difference between driving with him next to you and the first time you got behind the wheel on your own?"

"Not really. Messing with the windshield wiper, looking up, seeing the bus two seconds away from plowing into me then feeling it hit is pretty much the only concrete memory I've got of the first time I drove on my own."

Tony looks pretty frustrated by that. "How'd it feel when you were running the Ender case?"

"Good. I liked it. Didn't feel much different than usual, though. More handling people, less tech."

Tony sighs. "No. I guess it didn't." So much of what Tim does is all on his own. None of the rest of them actually know what it is he does on the computers, so they don't ask, and he doesn't tell, and until he's ready for them to move, he's just on his own. Tony shakes his head again. "It's not the same with him here. It's not like it was back when he left and I was really in charge."

"Okay. I'm sorry."

"Yeah, great." It's very clear that sorry hasn't fixed this, can't fix it.

"What do you want me to do?"

Tony waves at the door. "Go through those companies' financials again. Bring in the bookkeepers if necessary, someone okayed the payments to Mason. Go find them."

"On it."

Next

Shards To A Whole: Chapter 298

McGee-centric character study/romance. Want to start at the beginning? Click here.


Chapter 298: Team Gibbs

Tony sees the nod. Sees the way Gibbs is looking at McGee, follows that glance, sees McGee nod, and sees Gibbs… not smile, but he's looking very, very satisfied.

Then he sees McGee notice he's watching the exchange and go white.

And suddenly Tony's thinking something just went very, very wrong.

Ziva and Draga are out, grabbing a suspect, which means, right now, they have the time to get into whatever the hell just happened.

"Okay, both of you, my office."

McGee and Gibbs both glance at each other. Tony doesn't have an office, and as of this point, he hasn't had any need to have a private conference, at work, with either of them that couldn't wait to get home. Which means he's talking about Gibbs' office. Except that it's Tony's, right? Not Gibbs', not anymore, because Gibbs isn't supposed to be having the sort of conferences that require an office. Because that's Tony's job.

Or, at least, it's supposed to be.

Tony feels his stomach drop even further when Gibbs suddenly looks guilty and then shakes his head. "Coffee run. Someone'll want to use the elevator sooner or later."

Tony's eyes go wide. "What the hell did you two do?" he asks while herding them toward the elevator. His office, Gibbs' office, whatever, it's the only nearby space they can talk in private.

McGee glances at Gibbs and says, "It's not in the bag, yet. Leon's looking into it."

Great. Whatever it is those two have got running, they've got Vance in on, too. "Looking into what, McBackstabber?" Tim sort of cringes at that but doesn't deny it, and that makes him feel worse. By that point they are in the elevator, and he flips it off and says, "McGee, what the fuck did you do?"

"Bought me another year."

Tony stares at both of them, feeling the steam getting ready to come out of his ears. Another year? Without even saying anything to me? Reset my whole team without my permission? Then he slams the off switch, hit the button for the bullpen, and stands there, silent, vibrating with anger, and when the doors open, he points at McGee and says one word. "Out."

McGee doesn't look like he wants to leave. Tony's not sure if he wants to stay and protect Gibbs, or stay and have Gibbs protect him, but either way, he doesn't budge until Gibbs gave him a quick nod. Doesn't move until his Boss gives him permission. Tony closes his eyes and winces as McGee heads back to his desk to do… Right now, Tony's so pissed he doesn't care what McGee does.

As soon as the doors slide shut he bites out, "You didn't think it was worth mentioning this to me before doing it?"

"Eighteen."

He's flat out glaring at Gibbs. "Fuck eighteen! Eighteen is crap. Eighteen is something you pull on strangers you don't care about because doing whatever the hell it is you want is way more important to you than how they feel about it. So fuck eighteen. I am not a stranger. I am your partner; rumor has it you've got a rule about that, too. Technically, I am your boss. And above and beyond all of that, I am someone who has earned the basic common courtesy, if not the respect, of you telling me what the fuck you are doing!

"And more than that, because if fifteen years of having your six, backing every play you've ever run, and saving your life more often than any other man on earth doesn't do it, you are not the team leader! It is my team, and you and McGee don't get to run off and pull crap like this on your own."

Gibbs doesn't say anything. He's not sorry about doing it. Tim's right, he wants this. He needs it. Another year is like being able to breathe again; it's like getting to step off the ledge, or hearing the crack of the bullet as it whizzes by your head, but the fact that he's not sorry doesn't mean that he doesn't get why Tony is pissed.

Or that, as he's thinking about it, that he's not sorry about how they did it. And that, not being sorry about trying to get another year doesn't erase the fact that he's feeling like he did, in fact, stab Tony in the back.

And he gets, standing there, watching Tony vibrate with anger, that there are levels of this. A lot more of them than he would have guessed if he'd thought about it, beyond the rush of hope at getting another year, but of course, he didn't think about it, not beyond that hope for more time.

The first level is that punched-in-the-gut, feeling betrayed that came from them not telling Tony.

It really hadn't even occurred to him to do it. Secrets work best the fewer the people who know about them. And he didn't know if Tim and Abby really could pull it off, and if they couldn't…

Obviously, if it worked, he'd have to say something about it, because the whole family knows that January is coming, but…

But it didn't hit him to say something to Tony because… Because he hasn't made the switch out of Team Leader. He's letting Tony play in charge, sitting back and following his lead, but in his own head it's his team and he doesn't have to answer questions about what he's doing to anyone. He certainly doesn't have to explain what he's doing. He does his thing; they follow and back his play, and that's how it works.

Except, of course, it's not his team.

And that's the second, deeper, real level. Tony is never going to be his Boss. He just… can't. And sure, he'll take Tony's orders, back his plays, run whatever game he wants run, but Tony isn't his Boss.

Same as that minute he always spent thinking about it whenever he called Mike Franks back in. Franks would help; Franks always helped, but he was never in charge of Franks.

This is a fine mess you've gotten yourself into, Probie.

Ya think, Mike?

He can feel the nod Mike would have given him at that. What he doesn't feel is a way to get out of this, at least, not a way that doesn't feel like setting himself on fire.

He feels Tony's anger on another level, a related one. Tony isn't Tim's Boss, either. Few more months and Tim'll outrank Tony, and they both know it. And really, since Tim was in charge back in July, he's been doing his own thing, running his own plays. He's working with the team, but it's clear he's not following anyone's orders, not any more.

Which means, as long as both of them are there, it's not really Tony's team. Can't be. And Tony knows that, but was willing to put up with it because it's temporary. And because they'd both been playing their roles, allowing for the illusion of it being his team.

Sort of. Tim's already broken it once when he sidelined Tony after the thing with Ziva.

And this breaks the illusion again, and not just in a quick, temporary sort of way. That's why Tony winced when Tim waited for his nod to leave. Just another mark of it not being his team.

And the only saving grace of this is that it happened when Draga wasn't in the office.

Gibbs leans against the wall of the elevator, the back of his head hitting with a dull thunk, as he looks up and licks his lips.

"You want me to go?"

"You are too old for this!"

"Not what I asked."

"Your vision is shot. Your knee is fucked. The only reason you're still here is because we've got a five man team and can take up the slack. You are too old!"

"I passed my last physical. My vision is within specs, even without glasses, but I can wear them full time if that's the issue. I've got to get through physical therapy and then pass another physical to get back to full duty. If I can't pass it, I won't stay. You know that.

"Until I blew my knee out, I was hitting the gym every day. I dropped sixteen pounds between February and July and took a minute twelve off my time on the mile. Until the warehouse, I was in the best shape I've been in for five years." He leaves unsaid that right now (knee aside) he's in about the same shape Tony is, maybe slightly better, and better shape (stronger, better wind, faster) than Tim was for most of the years he's been here.

"Besides, you know the retirement age is about money. You were there when they dropped it from sixty-two to fifty-seven." NCIS, like a lot of the Federal Government, paid by years of experience, and cutting that five years off saved literally tens of millions of dollars a year for NCIS in wages and pension outlays. And it was true that if you had less than twenty years of service it was very easy to get the fifty-seven mandatory retirement age waived, (it's so common there's actually a form for it) but back in '13 that stopped being an out for Gibbs. "FBI and the Marines would let me hang around until sixty-two."

"Marines would have booted you for too many years a decade ago." Which was true, also. As a Gunny, they would have booted him at twenty-four years. If he'd hit Master Gunnery Sergeant, they would have booted him at thirty years. Well, not booted, he would have been able to serve out his term, but they don't let you re-enlist after that many years of service. And like NCIS, but on a much larger scale, cutting those years saved lots of money. A Gunny with thirty years in made fifteen thousand dollars a year more than a Gunny with twenty years, and did the same job. Gibbs' twenty two years at NCIS meant he was getting paid eleven thousand dollars a year more than Tony, who was, at this point, literally doing the same job. "And you know just as well as I do that it's not just about money. It's also about making sure guys like me can move up before we get put out to pasture."

That's true, too. Upper-middle rungs never mind when the top level gets sent off, because they fill those positions. And as long as he's there, Tony can't really move up. "Do you want me to go?"

Tony glares at him, and he knows what that means. He's asking Tony to cut his head off, and Tony, no matter how pissed he may be about this, doesn't want to drop that blow. It's one thing for him to age out, it's a whole other thing for Tony to tell him to leave.

"It's kinda like dying. I guess." Gibbs says, quietly. "Not really, but… There's that day on the calendar, staring at me, and after it… What? Sit around, drink, build boats? Remember the Reynolds case?" Tony looks alarmed, so obviously he did remember the Commander who killed himself rather than face retirement and the emptiness that went with it. "It's not that bad, not even close, but… January 15th is like jumping off a cliff. He threw me a lifeline, so I took it, and I'm not sorry about that." And it's a low blow, because he knows that'll make it even harder for Tony to boot him out, but it is like dying, and he doesn't know what the hell he's going to do on January 16th, and right now, he'll take almost any out he can get.

"I'm sorry we didn't tell you. Should have done that. I'm sorry it screws with your team. And if you need or want me to go, I will. I've got my twenty plus in, my pension's vested. If you need me to be done, I can be done." And that's true, too. If Tony draws the line for him, he won't give him any trouble. He'll make drawing that line as hard as he can, but if Tony does it, he'll abide, and he'll leave, and he'll never mention it again, and, eventually, he won't hold it against him. Everything ends, and his run as NCIS can't be exempt from that, no matter how much he wishes it was.

"But you're not done," Tony says with a deep sigh.

"No. I'm not. I'm not ready to be done with this. I'm… I'm not ready for whatever comes next."

"You will pass the physical, and then you'll pass my physical and it will be a hell of a lot harder, and if it looks like you're lagging or anything…"

Gibbs holds up his hands in a gesture of peace. "Your team, you pick."

Tony shakes his head, muttering, "Like fuck it's mine. You know I can't shoot my own dog, and you're taking advantage of it."

Jethro nods. "Yes."

They're closer to the first floor than the bullpen, so Tony flicks the elevator back on, let it go down, and got out. He doesn't say anything, but Gibbs figures it's a good idea to let him have some time to himself.

Next

Shards To A Whole: Chapter 297

McGee-centric character study/romance. Want to start at the beginning? Click here.


Chapter 297: One Year

"Have a good nap?" Gibbs asks.

Tim looks through the car window with muzzy eyes, rubs them for a moment, and stares at the factory in front of them.

"Yeah, actually. Thanks for letting me rest. Kelly's making sure neither of us gets a lot of sleep." Neither he, nor Abby, nor Heather knows what's going on, but for the last three days she's decided that 3:30 AM is party time, and they're having a devil of a time getting her to go back to sleep. She's not hungry, or gassy, or poopy, or… anything. But whatever it is, she wants to be up and playing.

He and Abby have been doing their best impression of Zombies for two days now, and are looking for anything they can think of to get their child back to sleeping from one to seven, the way she had been doing and the way they had been appreciating greatly.

Gibbs has been nodding away at that. (His own veteran parenting technique for this worked something like this: 'Waking up for no good reason?' 'Yep.' 'Crying?' 'Nope, just wants to hang out with us.' 'Call Jimmy.' He knows when he's out of his depths.) "Babies do that. Nothing going on right now. But you fall asleep when you're on watch, and you're toast."

"Got it, Boss. So, how long was that?"

"Three hours."

"Thank you." He stretches as well as he can in the car and rubs his eyes. "Okay, I'm up. No one's moved?"

"Nope."

"You wanna crash?" It's a bit after two in the morning, good time to crash if you don't want your entire schedule upside down. Since he and Tony got the day shift on the last stakeout, they got the night shift on this one, and since Gibbs is officially back on 'light duty', he's capable of sitting in a car and making note of who goes into and out of a brownstone just as well as Tim and Tony can, so he's taking some of the night shifts, too.

"I'm going to get us more coffee first, then sure." Gibbs gets out of the car and heads down the street.

Tim stares at the building in front of them. Okay, in front of them and one street over. They've got a view through an empty lot. Nothing's going on, so he keeps his eyes moving. Three doors, two access roads, six windows. He keeps them all in view. Sure, no one's likely to go repelling off the roof into one of those windows, but he's also sure that if he just stares at the house he'll be asleep in a matter of minutes, and that would be a very not good thing.

Gibbs gets back a few minutes later, while Tim's noting the license plate of every car that's parked out front. Yes, he's sure Gibbs has already done that, but redundancy is good, and if it helps to keep him awake…

He takes the coffee from Gibbs and gulps it. "Okay, starting to feel like a human again."

Gibbs smiles, shakes his head a little, after all, it's decaf, takes a sip of his, and then settles back into his seat, relaxing, eyes closed. Crashing for a few hours sounds like a really good plan right about now.

Tim watches the house, and then watches Gibbs, seeing how even getting ready to snooze he's still awfully alert.

So, he decides to ask Gibbs something he's been thinking about for a while. Since he blew his knee out and had to take that time off. When he and Tony started talking some about what the hell to do when Gibbs hangs up his cuffs the idea started to crystalize.

He's already talked to Abby about it, and she thought it was a good idea. Thought it was worth the risk, assuming Jethro and Leon were on board.

"Jethro?"

"Yeah." He doesn't open his eyes.

"You aren't ready to be done with this, are you?"

"I'm ready for this stakeout to be done."

"Not what I mean. January 15th, that's supposed to be your last day, right?"

"Yeah."

"What if it didn't have to be?"

That gets Gibbs' eyes open. "You got someone who'll change the mandatory retirement age for field agents?"

"No." Tim stares at Gibbs, really looking at his face, thinking about what he could do, what people might be willing to believe. If only he hadn't enlisted the minute he turned eighteen.

"Say the word and you were born in 1960."

"Tim?" He looks startled by that.

"One year. I can cut a year off your age. People will believe that. Anyone asks, you lied and enlisted at seventeen."

"Vance knows how old I am."

"Yeah, but he won't say anything about it. Keep his best team running smooth for another year? Let Draga really settle in before adding in another Probie? He'll go for it."

"Five on a team?" True, that'll be awkward, but Tim's fairly sure it also won't be true all that much longer.

Tim shakes his head. "Jenner's on his third call back with IBM. Can't imagine I'll finish out the year on the MCRT. You want me to do it?"

He can see it in Gibbs' eyes, hope, that he can pull it off. Doubt, that he won't be able to do it. Little bit of fear, not wanting to get his hopes up if this can't be done. Lot of fear, what happens after retirement. Relief, he may not have just tossed the drowning man the lifesaver, but he's noticed he's there and has told him he's going to find one.

"What would you have to do?" He can see the how illegal is this? in Gibbs' eyes as he asks the question.

"Nothing much." Yeah, it's pretty damn illegal. I won't get caught. "Just, don't screw it up. After it's done, you've got to act it. Don't start collecting social security a year 'early.' Stuff like that."

"I can do that."

"Okay. I'll take care of it and have a chat with Vance. If he's not cool with it, I'll put everything back the way it was."

"Thank you."

He shrugs.

"No. Really, Tim. Thank you."

"Let's see if I can actually pull it off before you thank me."

Tim made an appointment with Vance a week later, as September was easing into October, and wasn't surprised to see he got a chance to talk to him less than four hours later.

"Agent McGee, what can I do for you?" Vance was assuming this was going to be another update on his continuing Cybercrime investigation. And there was some of that. He'd been looking through the HR files and coming to the distressing conclusion that Jenner was good at hiring, but working at NCIS was sucking all the life and talent out of these people.

On the upside, it was easier to change the environment than it was to change people. So… hopefully he can get the morale switched around and start beating them into shape.

"I was talking to Jethro a few days ago, and something came up."

Vance was giving him the 'get to it' look, because this wasn't what he was expecting and chit chatting about Jethro isn't on his to do list for today.

"Did you know he lied about his age to enlist early?" But, Jethro was what Tim was up here to talk about, so they were going to talk about him.

"No. I did not know that." The subtext being, I did not know that because it didn't happen, so why are you bugging me about it?

"Yeah, besides you and I, and Jethro, of course, almost no one knows that."

"Fascinating." Vance was giving Tim his get to the point look.

"It just seems like it'd be a shame to lose such a good agent because of forty-year-old lie."

"Uh huh…" Vance was looking remarkably unimpressed that Tim would even try this on him. "McGee, has anyone ever told you how bad of a liar you are?"

He nodded. Unlike Tony, he didn't have a reputation for being any good at lying. "Several times. There's a reason why I almost never go undercover. Of course, as someone once said to me, there are two ways to follow someone, one way is so they never see you, and the other way is so they see nothing but you. Likewise, there are a lot of ways to lie."

Vance seemed interested in that, interested in the idea that McGee might have more than just his word for it, but still cool. "Uh huh. So, this forty-year-old lie, is there anything to suggest it might not be a lie?"

"Well, someone might wonder why Jethro started kindergarten at four, but there is a note in his file from his kindergarten teacher about how smart of a child he was, and everyone knew his mother was sick at the time, so having him out of the house for a few hours a day helped. And someone might wonder why his social security number is one from 1959, but the records show it was assigned in 1960, and as we all know, SS numbers can be a little wonky. And if someone were to check his birth certificate, or the baptism records at Stillwater First Episcopal, they'd find that he was born in 1960. He's something of a pack rat, you know? Still has all of that, still has his first driver's license, and that has his birth year as 1960."

"Uh huh." Leon's respect for Tim's lying skills, or at least his forging skills, appeared to be increasing. Technically, Tim handled the computer work and the 'rewriting' part of the forging detail. (Literally, rewriting, he's better at matching someone else's handwriting than Abby is.) Having someone with a masters in chemistry around made it a whole lot easier to come up with "blank" documents to rewrite, along with chemically correct inks to do the rewriting with. So Abby handled that. Short of carbon dating, Jethro's "new" documents were perfect.

Tim was seeing the way Leon was looking at him and was wondering if he was going to be getting some interesting off-the-books assignments in the not wildly distant future.

"Yeah. It'd just be unfortunate to make him retire because of that."

"Uh huh. What about actual living people?"

"LJ'd tell you he was born in 1960. Most of the time. LJ's been telling that lie about 1959 for a long time, too, so he might answer wrong on automatic. So, he might need some reminding about why he's telling the truth. But once he knows he's not covering anymore, he'll tell you about how Jackson didn't want Jethro to join the Marines, how they were fighting all the time, so LJ stepped up and suggested he go in early. Off they went to the next town over. His Godfather, a distinguished veteran, vouched for his age. Jethro got in." All of that was complete and utter bullshit, but LJ knew the 'real story' and was willing to swear on it. He actually rather liked that version of it. And because Stillwater didn't have a Marine recruiting station, Gibbs did have to go to the next town over, Meadville, to enlist.

"I'll see what I can do."

"Good."

It wasn't until he walked out, got back to the bullpen, and nodded to Gibbs that he realized that just possibly mentioning this plan, to their actual team leader, before putting it in action, may have been a good plan.

Next

Shards To Whole: Chapter 296

McGee-centric character study/romance. Want to start at the beginning? Click here.

Chapter 296: Of Triage and Dragons


"Abby!" Benedict says as she heads in. "Didn't think we'd be seeing you for a few more days."

"Nope. Supposed to meet Jimmy and Tim for lunch, but they're going to be an hour." Which is true, but misleading. They're going to be an hour because she showed up an hour early. "Figured I'd head down and see what's going on."

"Right now we're running trace for McKellan's theft, Jamison's murder case, Apley's drug ring. And Corwin is logging evidence on the Meyer's case."

She doesn't recognize any of those names, so they must all be Agents Afloat. Apparently it's a bad time to be at sea. "All at once?"

"As much as we can. Only so many slots in the mass spectrometer."

She bristles a little at the way Benedict is treating Major Mass Spec like it's just a tool, but that's not important here.

"Okay. You've got the reports up to date?"

"As up to date as they can be mid-case."

"Good. I'll log on and get reading. Want to be ready to hit the ground running when I get back."

"Great."

One of the good things about the position of her main computer monitor is that she can be 'reading' her reports while watching, with a fairly clear view, what's going on in the lab. What's even better is that, with the door shut and her music on, her new underlings are sure she can't hear what they're saying.

They are absolutely right about that. She cannot, at all, hear what they are saying.

Of course, she doesn't need to hear what they are saying to follow the conversation.

And, it's not like they're saying anything particularly troublesome or indiscreet. They are, after all, professionals, at work, doing their jobs. Little bit of gossip about the new hair and wondering if that music is going to be on all the time (She makes a note to get more earbuds.) as well as some speculation as to exactly how many tattoos she's got and where they might all be, (something you get used to when you've got as many tatts as she does) followed by some speculation as to what kind of skin ink Tim must have, but for the most part they're talking about work.

And skimming the reports, they do seem to be doing fine.

The quality of the work is good.

The tests are accurate, well done, and thorough, exactly what she expects if she's the one doing them. Likewise they're maintaining the equipment properly, and running tests on it often enough to make sure that everything is in tip top shape.

So, if there's any issue with this crew, it's that they don't seem to grasp the concept of triage. The most important work comes first. They do indeed seem to be working on the idea of the first case in gets worked as each spot in the lab opens. So, Major Mass Spec can handle twelve samples at once, so the first twelve bits of whatever get run, and if that means the trace under the nails of the vics of the triple homicide have to wait because the robbery got there first, then wait they will.

So, that's the first job, getting the triage protocols set.

As she continues to read through the reports she's noticing that computer forensics is looking a bit shaky. They've been handing things off to Cybercrime that she or Tim would usually handle, but… well, okay, technically that's part of what Cybercrime is supposed to do. Still, gotta get that up to shape, make sure they understand that their lab handles all forensics that comes into them.

But, it might just be that, in that they are forensic scientists, and not computer guys, they just don't know how to do that sort of work. Not uncommon, computer forensics wasn't a skillset the forensic lab usually hires for.

That might be her new prima ballerina area, she'll be the shining star of the computer forensics, and let them do more and more of the traditional lab work…

Maybe.

Day after tomorrow she'll officially be back, and they'll figure it out from there.

After an hour, she did head over to Autopsy, say hello to Ducky, and collect Jimmy for their lunch date.

"How's it going?" he asked as the elevator took them up to the Bullpen.

She nodded her head a little. "It's going. Zelaz is very interested in how many tattoos I really have."

Jimmy nudged her shoulder with his and grinned at her. "Aren't we all?"

"Twenty-two."

"That many? Really?"

She pushed up the sleeve of her lab coat so he could see the stitch marks. "Well, this is nine of them."

"Okay."

She can see him thinking through that. "You've seen all of them. Anyone who's seen me in a bathing suit has."

"That's what I was thinking."

"Yeah, I could see you counting it in your head."

The doors opened, and Tim saw them head toward him, held up his index finger in a one minute gesture, and typed faster. And a minute after that he did join them.

"Finishing up an email to Vance about my last test on Cybercrime."

Jimmy and Abby both know that's not something he really talks about at work, so they both nod, wait for the door to the elevator to close, and then Abby asks, "So?"

"Just clean up stuff, details about the six of them who completely failed to figure out what was going on. I checked the regs, and since, technically I'm a co-worker and not their boss, I'm not allowed access to their HR files, so I was asking him for permission to get them."

"Why asking permission? Don't you have a rule for that?" Jimmy asked.

"Because if I don't get permission, they can sue me, personally, for breaking into their records for privacy violations. I'm not so gung-ho on Gibbs' rules that I want to bankrupt us."

"Thank you." Abby said.

"No problem. So, how's the first day back going?" he asks with a quick hello kiss.

They talked about work, and about Abby's plan for creating some sort of evidence/case triage system. Talked about getting used to the idea of being at work, of not being Kelly's primary caregiver. And, in that they're dads, and no one ever expected either of them to be their baby's primary caregivers, talking to them about it is somewhat less satisfying than talking to Breena, but they're both very supportive and trying to be sympathetic.

As lunch was winding down, Tim said, "I was thinking…"

"God, that sound ominous," Jimmy adds.

Tim kicked him lightly under the table. "How would you feel about being major characters in a series I'm thinking of writing?"

Jimmy put his drink down. "Wait, are you actually asking, ahead of time, if we'd like to be in one of your books?"

"Yeah."

Abby's eyebrows shot awfully high up on her forehead. Like she can't believe he'd ask. (Of course, having starred in one of his series, and having been told about one of them when he was writing it, and having to scour the internet to find the other, she's… used to… might be the best way to put it, being his silent muse.)

"I'm contracted for one more Deep Six, and I was thinking of… I don't know… I don't want to stop doing them all together… Maybe writing more of them on spec…" He can see Jimmy and Abby don't know what that means. "As they come out. Instead of a set schedule of one a year.

"And I was thinking of a fantasy series." Abby lights up at that, knowing what characters he's playing with. "Maybe not full on Game of Thrones, but something for adults, something with dragons."

"You aren't going to make me a dragon, are you?" Jimmy asks.

Tim looks a little startled by that. "I hadn't been thinking of it. You wanna be a dragon?"

Jimmy shakes his head. "I am not your comic sidekick."

"No, wasn't thinking that. Besides, does three tons of flaming death machine sound like a comic sidekick to you?"

"Oh, real dragons." Jimmy lights up at the idea of that.

"Yeah. Book for grown-ups. Serious hard-core, magic-wielding, fighters. Not… snarky house cats with wings."

"Might like being a dragon, then…"

"I was thinking of the Lord of the next castle over."

"Sidekick?"

"Partner/friend/brother-in-arms." Jimmy doesn't look thrilled by that. "You wanna be the main character, write your own book."

Jimmy smiles and takes a sip of his drink.

"So, you're going to be the main character in your own book, finally?" Abby asks. Tibbs leads the Deep Six series, with Tommy and Liza being the main secondary characters, McGregor, Amy, and James are all firmly in back up territory. And nothing even remotely like him shows up in the T. M. Gee books.

"Yeah. I was thinking maybe it was time to really be in my stories, not just have them happen around me."

Abby squeezes his hand. "I like that."

Jimmy smiles. "I think Gibbs should be a dragon."

That got the other two of them laughing.

"He should be an old, silver one, trains the young dragons, beats them into shape."

"Fornell, too." Tim adds.

"Oh yeah. Can you just see that? Old dragons, just a bit past fighting prime, wings are starting to get a little droopy, but the brains, claws, and teeth are still sharp, the spells still fly fast and deadly…" Abby says, getting into the idea.

"Dragons can change shape right?" Jimmy asks.

"Why not?" Tim replies. Some dragons can. No reason his dragons couldn't.

"Then there's your twist. We are the dragons, but we're the knights, too. No one outside the Dragon Knights knows that, though. They use the magic to keep it a secret, for, I don't know, whatever reason… thinking that up is your job…"

Tim looks at Abby, grinning. "That'd explain the 'need to be strong of will and magic to control them' bit. It's not that the dragons eat the knights that can't control them, it's that they are the knights, so they don't let anyone else ride them. Building up the mythos of their power and the power of the men who control them."

She nods along with that. "If you've got to be a total badass to even get on the dragon… Yeah, that works. So, why are we at war?"

"Who the hell cares?" Tim asks.

She rolls her eyes. "It's been a while since you've read an epic fantasy, hasn't it?"

"Yeah."

"Trust me, they care now."

"I'll figure out something. So, wanna be in my next series of books?"

"Yeah."

"Yes."

"I'll ask Breena, too. After all, the Dragon Knights have to have their ladies."

"I think she'll like that. So, we're gonna be the big, damn heroes?" Jimmy asks, quoting Firefly.

Tim grins back at him. "Big, damn heroes engaging in thrilling heroics!"

Abby laughs at both of them, enjoying their excitement.

Seven AM. Normally they don't leave for work until 7:23, but she wants to get in a bit early today. Has to get in a bit early. Needs to be the first one in.

So, she hands Kelly to Heather, who takes her with a smile, grabs her bag, kisses Kelly one more time, exhales deeply, and heads with Tim to the car.

He squeezes her hand as he pulls out of the driveway.

"It's gonna be fine."

She bites her lip. "I know."

"It really is. Only thing you've got to worry about now is getting into the house before I do so you can get your snuggle on first."

She glares at him.

"Just kidding. I know you get first snuggles today."

"Today?"

"She's my baby, too. I've got just as much dibs on snuggle time as you do."

Abby snorted at that, and he wasn't sure if that was a laugh or a dismissal, but she wasn't, either…

First one in. Exactly the way she had hoped. Abby took the poster she had rolled up and tucked into her bag, and opened it, taping it to the shelf over the monitors on the main computers. (She'll put it somewhere less in the way, later.)

NCIS Lab Priorities:Terror ThreatKidnappingTerror AttackMurderEverything Else
She saw Benedict take a look at is as he came in, but he didn't say anything, and started getting his station ready. She waited until Zelaz and Corwin were in as well and gathered them 'round.

"From everything I've been seeing, you three are doing a find job on the evidence. Your technical skills are top notch. You're doing the job exactly the way it's supposed to be done.

"Organizational skills are a different matter. We're not just working on Afloat cases where the perps are all stuck in one place, can't get away, and time sensitivity isn't such a big deal.

"From now on, this is how we handle evidence. Protecting and saving living victims come first. Terror threat is a whole bunch of living victims, so it goes on top. We get a credible terror threat and everything else that does not contribute to stopping it goes by the wayside.

"Kidnappings come next. The only thing that trumps a kidnapping is a terror threat. Someone goes missing, all hands go on deck and we work until we get 'em back.

"Then comes a finished terror attack. Lots of dead people don't outweigh one alive one. But if it looks like figuring out what happened'll stop another on, this gets bumped up to preventing a terror attack.

"After that comes assaults/rapes. Fortunately we don't get a lot of those.

"Dead bodies come next. When we're working a murder we're there for the survivors.

"Everything else comes later. I do not want to see any of you working on any evidence for anything that isn't one of the above until everything we've got on the top five is processed or processing. I don't care how time sensitive or embarrassing a theft or fraud or whatever is. It doesn't get taken care of until anything that belongs to one of the above is cooking.

"Got it?"

Three nods. "Good. Okay, they tell me you've got a smoother system for checking and processing evidence. Show me what you're doing and let's get this lab moving the way it's supposed to."

Next

Shards To A Whole: Chapter 295

McGee-centric character study/romance. Want to start at the beginning? Click here.

Chapter 295: Having It All


"Gibbs?"

"Abbs?" He looks up from Anna Palmer's crib. He's gotten all the pieces cut, now it's time to start putting them together.

"Hey."

He glances around briefly, but doesn't see or hear anyone else. "So…"

She sits on the second from the bottom step. "I don't know how to be the Boss. I'm not sure I even want to be the Boss."

Gibbs smiles at that and sits next to her, wrapping his arm around her. "Trust me, Abbs, you know how to be the Boss. You've scared interns into wearing bells in your lab. You'll get those three whipped into shape."

"That's not being the Boss… That's not leading. That's just being scary."

Gibbs gives her a if it gets the job done look.

"These are professionals. They're good at their job. They deserve respect, and I can't just threaten or pout at them until they toe the line."

"You want a team of equals."

"Benedict technically is. He ran his own lab for seven years. Only reason I'm in charge is seniority."

"And you're a better scientist."

That gets a smile out of Abby and a kiss on Gibbs' cheek.

"Leon knows his job. If you're still in charge, it's not because you've been around longer. He's got no problem shuffling people around if it'll work better."

Abby leans against him. "How do I do this?"

Gibbs shrugs. "Takes a long time to get a good team. And all the leadership on Earth isn't gonna help without the right people. But, first of all, there are no teams of equals. One of you is going to lead. You can be… conciliatory. You can be like Jen, building alliances and teams, but someone is going to make the decisions at the end of the day. And that's gonna be you."

"I don't like being in charge."

Gibbs tilts his head at her in a sort of really, you're gonna try that with me look.

"Not saying I don't want things the way I want them, or like them exactly right, but… That's not leading. That's not being in charge. That's me forcing every assistant I've ever had out because I can't stand working with someone else for more than a few hours at a time."

She looks up.

"I'm a prima ballerina in the lab, and the ballerina's only in charge of her own dance. She does it perfectly, but she's only responsible for herself. And now I've got to learn to be the director and choreographer and make everyone work."

"Yep."

"How am I going to do that?"

"One day at a time, Abbs. Keep remembering the point of the ballet, and let the other dancers do their thing so you can get through it."

Seven AM to seven PM. At least, that's the idea of how it'll go for now. Tim and Abby are both hoping that eventually they can get their schedules wrangled well enough to make sure that at least one of them will be home every day around five.

Mostly because twelve hours a day five days a week is a long week. Add in commute time on top of it, and it's a really long week.

But, for now at least, those are Heather's hours.

And she seems happy to be working them.

Abby's not actually going back for three more days. Right now, they're both home so Kelly's not just getting dumped into someone new's hands as Abby goes sprinting out the door.

The idea is that she's taking a back seat, letting Heather get the hang of dealing with Kelly, learning where everything is and how they run their home.

That's the idea at least.

She's honestly not sure which is going to be harder, sitting back and letting a stranger take care of her child, or trying to run her other baby with all those new people in it.

Every time Kelly chirps she wants to leap up and grab her from Heather.

And it's not even that Kelly seems to be having a bad time. Actually, as much as you can tell with a baby, Kelly seems to be doing fine. (She's not crying any more than she usually does.) Heather doesn't seem to be struggling, either. They're getting on fine. Learning each other, but fine.

And not swooping in and taking care of it is killing her.

"Mrs. McGee—"

"Abby."

"Abby. This part is always hard. I've got her schedule. I've got your number. I'm sure you've got cameras somewhere so you can do a spot check. How about you head out for a bit, get some lunch or something This'll go easier for all of us if Kelly and I get some time alone."

And sure, that's logical, that makes sense, but she still wants to rip her hair out as she heads off.

"Okay. I know this needs to happen. I know I don't want to be home with her all the time. I know I'm starting to go buggy on laundry and nursing all the time, but how do you do this? How do you leave your baby with a stranger?"

Breena looked up from the lady she's embalming. "You just do it. And it sucks, and you visit fifty times the first day, and you cry more than the baby does, but you do it. But eventually it gets easier and you get used to it, and you don't feel so beaten down when you are in charge, don't feel like baby care is an unending run of hours and hours of mindless nothing which means you enjoy being with her more when you're with her."

"What if I don't want to get used to it?"

"Well, you better, or you'll be going to college with her, and she won't appreciate that, and neither will Tim."

"Yeah." Abby picked listlessly at the edge of the embalming table (currently empty) that she was leaning against.

Breena tied the knot on the final stitch closing the incision that would keep the cotton she'd packed into the corpse's torso in place. "All done Mrs. Callum. We'll get you all dressed up and ready to go soon. Your daughter tells my mom that you love the dress they picked out for you."

"Ducky does that, too."

"Talks to the clients. Of course. They're humans, so you've got to talk to them. If you stop talking to them you'll start treating them like things."

Abby nodded at that as Breena straightened up, and gently stroked Mrs. Callum's face.

"Your parents died when you were still in the breaking away from them part of life, right?"

"Sort of. The end of it. I was still swinging between wanting lots of hugs and vastly too cool to be in the same hemisphere with them."

"I remember those days. It'll get easier, it really will, and it's something you've got to do. Maybe not this early, not if you don't want to, but… That's the job, we hold them for a little while and then send them off."

"Great." Abby looked remarkably unenthusiastic about that.

"How long have you been out of the house?"

Abby checked her phone. "Thirty-six minutes."

"Okay, come on, give Heather a call, and then we'll go get some lunch."

And yes, Skyping with Heather and Kelly for two minutes, just to see that she was indeed sleeping peacefully felt stupid as all get out, but it also helped. Made it easier to head off to lunch. She checked back in at the end of lunch too, and saw Kelly getting a bottle, looking just fine.

Kelly was still awake when Abby got home, so there was snuggle time, which felt very, very good. (She's getting a better sense of why most nights Tim makes a bee line to Kelly for snuggles as soon as he can.) And Kelly seemed very happy to see her, too. Which was also good.

But… but maybe it hurts a little that someone else can do this, can make her little girl happy and keep her safe and…

And maybe she wants to be the only one, but she doesn't, because she can't, because this will drive her buggy if it's all she's doing… and… and she just doesn't know.

So, she goes on, stowing the breast milk she pumped in the fridge, putting Kelly down when it was naptime, letting Heather get her when she woke up, then nursing. And she tried to burn this into memory, tries to make it last, knowing it can't and won't, feeling… she wasn't sure what this feeling was, just that it was here and real.

And then she started to figure out what to do tomorrow. Because like Gibbs said, one day at a time. And tomorrow, even though it's not her first day back, she was thinking it'd be a good plan to drop into the lab and just get a feel for what's going on.

Next

Shards To A Whole: Chapter 294

McGee-centric character study/romance. Want to start at the beginning? Click here.


Chapter 294: Abby's New Groove


You fall in love, get married, get pregnant, have a baby, life changes, your body changes, your home changes, everything changes.
It has to.
You can’t do all of that and have things stay the same.
And Abby knows that.
There are welcome changes, like Tim curled around her each night, or the feel of Kelly’s breath against her breast as she nurses, and there are unwelcome changes.
Like the inch of blond roots peeking out from her black hair.
And yeah, it’s not the end of the world or anything. But her hair is one of her defining characteristics. It’s black and up in pig tails most of the time. It’s dark and cute and perky and just fun.
But she’s naturally blonde, and until Kelly was on the outside every two weeks she’d dye it to keep it looking perfect. She’s so good at the upkeep that a lot of people don’t know that her hair isn’t naturally black. It’s her own special dye mix, organic, natural, no ammonia, beautiful color that doesn’t make her hair feel like straw. None of this right out of the box stuff for her.
It’s her hair, and she loves it, and…
But, because it’s not the out of the box stuff, and because it’s natural and organic and has no harsh chemicals, it takes her two hours every other week to keep it the way she likes.
Two hours she could be doing something else, like sleeping, or Tim.
But it’s her hair…
God, she hates this; it feels so whiny. She wants “her” hair. She doesn’t want to spend the time she needs to to keep it “her” hair.
Okay, really, it’s not the hair. Well, it is… but… It’s just the one last straw on the camel’s back. Her favorite tattoo is broken, her skin’s covered in stretch marks, none of ‘her’ clothing fits, even though she’s only twelve pounds away from her pre-pregnancy weight her hips and boobs aren’t even close to the same size they used to be. Even her shoes don’t fit properly anymore. (That one kills her. She’s probably got fifteen thousand dollars’ worth of beautiful boots and shoes, that she spent the last twenty years collecting and they’re all at least half a size too small now.) Nothing about her feels the same, so she could at least keep her hair, right?
Breena and Ziva are looking at Abby as she’s saying this.
“Could you just dye it less often?” Ziva asks. “The roots aren’t very noticeable until they get to be about a quarter inch long.”
Abby mopes at that. “I can see them. And it makes me look like my hair’s really thin because I end up with what looks like a really wide part.”
“Tony uses Garnier to cover his gray. He likes it, and it doesn’t take two hours. I am sure they have black.”
Abby nods at Ziva’s comment. “They do. They all do. But my hair’s so fine it feels like straw after I use one of those dyes. And especially with nursing, I don’t want to use anything I didn’t mix up myself.”
Breena’s staring at Abby’s hair, playing with it a little. “Go blonde. What’s your real color? Kind of light honey blonde?” That’s what color her roots are.
“Lighter. About the color of your highlights. At least that’s what it used to be.” She thinks the roots were always this color and it just got lighter as it got longer, but she doesn’t really remember. It’s been almost thirty years since she dyed it black the first time.
Breena’s thinking about that as they sit in Abby’s living room. Summer’s inching to a close, and once more Labor Day weekend has come around. So, right now, as the guys are outside messing about with the grill and keeping babies entertained, the ladies are inside, taking advantage of the AC, (It’s way too hot out there for Breena. At five months pregnant, anything over eighty-five is torture.) and working on making some plans for getting Abby’s groove back.
She ruffles her fingers through Abby’s hair, feeling how thin it is. “It’ll take a lot of bleach to get rid of the black, and that’s hard on hair. So, cute, sassy, short little cut, bleach it back to whatever you think it is, and we can fine tune when more of it grows in. Maybe put some pink or blue on the tips, too. When you’re out of all babies all the time, you can go black again.”
“Cute and short sounds like time getting it cut instead of dyed,” Abby replies, twirling one ponytail between her fingers, not loving the idea of chopping them off. Though she finds herself wondering how much of that is not being willing to let go of Kate. Last thing she ever said to her… almost last thing,.. last thing was about the tattoo on her bum… was how much she liked Abby’s hair up in ponytails.
“Yeah, but every other month instead of every other week,” Breena answers. “And you go out to have someone else do it so you get some baby-free time where all you have to do is sit around and let someone else take care of you for a while. I don’t think you’ll have a hard time selling Tim on the idea that you need a Saturday afternoon off every other month.”
Ziva smiles. “He will drive you to the appointment himself, smiling.”
Breena stares at Abby’s hair, runs her fingers through it again, and says, “Actually, the first cut’s really only about limiting the damage from the bleach to get your hair lighter. If you don’t want that afternoon off, just grow it back out again after the first one.”
Abby stands up and heads to their downstairs bathroom, looking at herself in the mirror. “How short are you thinking?” she calls out to the others.
Ziva joins her. Breena stays comfortable on the sofa. She’ll be doing enough up and down and chasing Molly around soon.
When she can find her cheekbones
again.“Not a pixie cut,” Ziva says.
“Noooo…” No way in hell she’s doing that. Though it would take care of the dye issue all-together. Cut it that short and it’d just be her natural hair and maybe some tiny little black tips. That actually might look kind of cool… Okay, no that’s insane. Ten pounds from now, when she can find her cheekbones again, maybe. But right now her face is too round for it.
“Maybe jaw length?” Ziva suggests.
She can kind of imagine that.
“Maybe.”
They hear the sliding glass door to the porch open, and the sound of Tim’s voice. “Dinner’s ready. Got some ladies that want to eat?” He looks at Abby and Ziva a little oddly when they both come out of the bathroom, but doesn’t ask about it.
“Do I want to know?” he whispers to Abby a few minutes later while everyone floods into the kitchen to put together their burgers and salad. He'd told her about Tony's mention of them doing more baby related research and he's wondering if the bathroom confab had something to do with that.
“Just talking hair.”
“Hers or yours?”
“Mine.”
“Really?” That has his interest.
“Yeah.”
“What are you thinking?”
“I don’t know. Tossing around the idea of short.”
He thinks about that and kisses the back of her neck. “I’d like short.”
“Yeah?”
“Like long too, and really long, but yeah, short might be interesting. Looks bad, it’ll regrow. Not a big deal.”
“You’d really like short?”
“I like my mental image of short. If it looks anything like that, I’ll like it.”
“Hmmm..”
“What are you two conspiring about?” Penny asks, snagging a few more glasses.
“Nothing big.”
“Good, get moving, we’re waiting on you to eat.”
“Yes, Ma’am,” Tim replies, and Abby suddenly has a very clear idea of him at eight or nine-years-old being told to hurry up a bit and get to the table.
They get settled and dinner begins, bits and pieces of conversation floating around while Kelly naps and Molly pokes at the little cut up pieces of hamburger she’s eating off of Ziva’s plate.
“It’s been a while, what happened with your log everyone out of their password protection?” Penny asks, while passing the salad to Ducky on her left.
“Better than my last test, but not necessarily for the right reasons. Two passed, but they passed the last test. My worm never got in. Two of them are running their passwords old school, either have them memorized or written down, or something like that, so the worm never got them. Three of the others noticed something was wrong, actually talked to each other, and caught it and killed it before it got the other five.”
“That part’s better, right?” Tony asks.
“Yeah.”
“They figure out it was from you?” Jimmy asks.
“Nah. And that’s the part that’s worse. Didn’t do much to cover my tracks. They may have the IP address I launched it from, but that’s a dead end. Now, if any of them have any investigative savvy they may decide to find out where that IP was located, and then try to figure out why they got hacked from a bus station, let alone a bus station NCIS was running an operation out of, but if they’re doing it, no one’s said anything yet.” 
“How about Leon?” Tony asks.
“His system defeated it.”
“Didn’t you set his system up in the first place?” Breena asks.
“Not all of it, and he’s had new stuff added since.”
“Bet he was happy to see that,” Abby says, and Tim nods.
Conversation bops around, mostly just family stuff, little bits of work, catching up on the things they’ve done lately. As burgers, salad, and corn on the cob is cleared off, and strawberry-peach shortcake (sans cake for Jimmy and Tim) was passed around, Kelly starts crying.
Tim heads up to get her, and hears the tail end of, “finally hired a nanny,” as he sits down, handing his daughter to his wife.
“Her name is Heather, and she starts on the 15th. Give her a little time to get used to this while I’m still home.”
“I met her, didn’t I?” Gibbs asks.
“Yep. She was the one telling you about artificial knees.”
He rolls his eyes a little at that. The twelve-year-old.
“So, does that mean you’re heading back to work soon?” Penny asks.
“Back on the twenty-first.”
“Good, you’ve got to get them into the shape. They keep working on other teams’ evidence,” Tony says, half-joking.
“I’ll remember to speak severely to them about that,” Abby responds, like Tony, half-joking.
“It actually is something of an issue. It’s not that they are working on other teams’ evidence, it is that they do not seem to grasp the concept of murders take precedence over drug deals, thefts, or money laundering,” Ziva adds.
Tim nods at that. “Priorities are a little skewed. They seem to do a sort of first come first served sort of thing.”
“And I get the feeling they aren’t used to doing much in the way of time sensitive work. I’ve sent Jimmy down with samples on several occasions, and sometimes they just sit there for a few days," Ducky adds.
“They are doing a whole lot more work, too,” Jimmy adds, feeling like it’s important to get the idea across that the lab staff didn’t suddenly triple, have the same amount of work, and were doing it badly. “They’re getting everything from all the Afloats, too. But, yeah, we’re not getting the sort of personal touch we’re used to.”
“Then I guess I know what my first job is.”  

While they were cleaning up the table, Penny quietly asked Jethro, “Still seeing your new friend?”
“Yeah.”
“Finding any clarity?”
He shrugs. “Haven’t stopped going.”
“Are you getting what you want out of it?”
“Maybe. Thinking about things different, so that’s something.”
She gives his shoulder a squeeze. “Yeah, it is. Not that I’m planning on blabbing, but, who all knows about this?”
“Haven’t said, but I think it’s already gone through. Think Tim let the crew knew that was part of Tony and I getting back on the job.”
Penny nods at that heads back into the kitchen to put the plates in her hands into the dishwasher.


NCIS may be closed on Labor Day, but the just about everywhere else, isn’t.
So, having dropped boys and babies off at the McGees’ house, the girls ventured forth for a girls day out. What started as a haircut for Abby morphed into treat the ladies day when Jimmy looked at Breena and said, ‘I’ll take Molly over to Tim’s, you go out and have fun, too. Don’t come back until you’ve had at least a massage.’
So, with both of them thinking massages and facials to go with Abby’s hair transformation, sounded good, Breena just made the appointments for Ziva and Penny, too.
The Gibbs clan ladies were going out, and that was that.

  One of the good things about living in the Capitol City of the US is that it’s not hard to find places that will cater to a quad of ladies looking for a nice day out, let alone a nice day out that involves things like haircuts and massages.
Only tricky part was picking where to go.
But Breena took that in hand, and by shortly after 8:30, all four of them were very happy with her choice.
Abby had to admit that getting a reflexology treatment while the black cooked out of her hair was awfully nice.
She was really nervous about the staff here being able to do what she wanted, because they were awfully… vanilla looking. She didn’t get the sense that much of the ladies here had any edge, or if they did they kept it well hidden.
But as she described the idea for her hair, short, shag cut, lightened to match her roots, little touches of pink to frame her face, Amanda, her stylist got really excited, and started gushing about the new dyes they got in, taking her in hand and dragging her over to see all the shades they had to play with.
“We never get to use them,” she said, gesturing to the close to six different pinks, (they had a similar inventory of blues, greens, and reds, along with a large library of standard hair colors) and holding up a few of them to Abby’s face to see how they looked with her hair and eyes. “How about this baby pink, and maybe a touch or two of this rose color?”
“Sure!” she was starting to get excited about this idea of… changing.


“You know, while we’re at it, we could take a stab at your wardrobe,” Breena said as they got lunch. “Gonna be a while before you can get back into your jeans and skirts. You’re going to need something to wear to work.”
Abby kept staring at herself in the mirrored wall behind them. It felt really odd to be able to identify everyone at the table at a glance, besides herself. She also kept turning her head, fast, feeling this new, short hair flip around her neck and jaw.
“They don’t really sell the kind of clothing I tend to like here.”
Ziva was looking her over. “Maybe you might try some new clothing to go with the new hair. Sort of like how your court wear changed, maybe you could try something less…”
“Me?”
“No, not less you, different you. New armor for new battles. Boss-wear,” Breena said, enthusiastically.
 Abby looked to Penny, who shrugged and asked, “Do you have any even vaguely appropriate tops that fit?”
“No.” Double D nursing breasts were doing everything they could to get out of every top she owned. (Which was why she’d been wearing a lot of Tim’s t-shirts lately. Why she was wearing one now.)
“Then you need to get something. But you’ve got time. Head online and get your old style. Play with the girls and try a new one. Do both. But having spent my entire professional life working with male scientists, I have noticed they tended to be more respectful and more willing to pay attention to what I was saying when I dressed a certain way.”
“So that’s what you did?” Breena asked.
“Certainly not! I had to dress like a nun to get them to pay attention. I wore whatever the hell I wanted and when they ignored me I shoved my better understanding of the subject down their throats and made them see I was a better engineer than they ever dreamed of being. I intentionally dressed like a woman so they couldn’t just sort of pretend I was a small man with long hair.
“But… and this is probably important, I was also not trying to create a harmoniously running department, I was taking on an already up and running team, and for a lot of those years, I was the only female in Biotech anyone had ever heard of, let alone seen. The only thing I was doing was making sure they understood lack of penis did not mean lack of brains.”
“Yeah, that’s not precisely what I’m going to be doing.”
“So, as Breena put it, getting some Bosswear might be in order. At least until you have a better handle on them. Or go all out Goth and make them see that collars and black leather doesn’t mean lack of brains, either.”
Abby looked from Ziva to Breena to Penny. “What would Bosswear look like?”


Tim, Tony, and Jimmy were entertaining Molly (naptime for Kelly) when Breena and Ziva and Penny came in. For a second, Tim was feeling a bit apprehensive because Abby was lingering outside of view and the three of them were grinning stupidly at him.
Jimmy stood up and kissed his wife. “You guys lose a member of the party?”
“Oh no. We just wanted to be in range to see you respond to the grand unveiling,” Ziva answered with a wide and happy smile.
Jimmy looked at Ziva, watching the pleasure on her face, and says, “Ziva, you’re a girl.”
Tony whacked him. “Really astute, Palmer.”
“No. I mean, look, she’s grinning, and really happy about a makeover party…”
Tim’s aware of the fact that they’re chatting about this new revelation that Ziva does indeed appear to like some girly stuff, he’s somewhat less aware of Penny’s commentary about ‘girly stuff’ being a social construct. (Ziva liking girly stuff is not, in fact, a revelation to him, he figured it out when he finally saw all of wedding stuff put together. No way you put something that pretty together without being a girl. He, Tony, Gibbs, and Jimmy could have worked on that wedding until the end of time, it still wouldn’t have looked that good. Hell, infinite monkeys planning infinite weddings would have gotten that level of elegant, refined prettiness before he, Jimmy, Gibbs, and Tony stumbled onto it. Mainly because, there’re fifty-fifty odds that any given one of those infinite monkeys is a girl. What that says as to his belief in the idea that appreciation of girly stuff is a social construct shoved down the throats of baby girls at a young age is probably better left unsaid in the presence of his grandmother.)
No, he’s standing there, sort of aware of them talking, of Molly riding Breena’s hip, waiting for her to come in. Abby and dress up games has always been one of his favorite things and…
His breath literally caught in his chest. It’s just so…
my edit.Her hair is short, comes to her jaw at the longest part, and blonde, mostly, bits and pieces around the edges are pink. He doesn’t know what that sort of cut is called. Not a bob, but beyond that, he’s clueless.
It’s cute and playful and flirty and adult. That’s always been the thing with the pony tails. They’re a link to her past, her childhood. They’re adorable, but not the mark of a grown up. This is fun, but sophisticated, and so sexy, her whole neck is visible, and the colors perk up her skin and…
“Wow.”
“You like it?” She’s looking a little shy as she asks, so he takes two steps, pulls her close and bends her back into a deep, passionate, oh my God! YES sort of kiss.
A bit later, as he was getting both of them standing regularly again, he noticed Breena saying to Jimmy, “That’s how you respond to a new haircut.”
“Yes, dear.” (Apparently ‘Yes, dear,’ must have had some unspoken context, because Breena gently whacked Jimmy’s shoulder, and then he grinned at her.)
He stepped back a bit, and looked Abby over a bit more carefully. “You’ve got new clothes, too.”
That got a smile out of her. “Yeah.”
These are a lot closer to her traditional style than the hair is. From what he can tell, it’s just a bigger version of the clothing she normally wears.
“Got some work clothing, too.”
“Gonna show me?” he asked with a raised eyebrow and a little sexy grin.
“Eventually.”
“Ooo…” He was about to say something mildly salacious about how she could show him, but Kelly woke up, so she turned and headed toward her room.
“Let’s see if she can figure out who I am.”


Dress up came later that night, after they were on their own.
It’s stunningly amazing how much difference a new haircut/color makes. Even in her “regular” clothing (as much of it as she could squeeze into) light hair and different jewelry made some of it look, almost, normal.
Not plain or boring, but… Not nearly so edgy. Some of the less skull bedecked pieces started to look classically professional with the new hair and no cuffs or collars.
And there was the new stuff. Tim could feel the hands of Breena, Penny, and Ziva on those outfits. Granted none of it looked like anything that the three of them would wear, but all of it was vastly more aware of traditional office casual/high end professional wear, with, like everything else, an edge..
He’s not sure what kind of skirt it is. Tight. It curves perfectly from her waist to just above her knee, has a little slit up the back so she can walk more easily. She’s got it paired with some sort of black shell, and a white blouse and… little black pumps and… just… wow…
“Do you really like it?” She’s staring at herself in the mirror, not sure about this change at all.
“Oh yeah.”
“Really?”
He steps over to her. “I like anything that shows off your butt.” His hands trace from her waist to her thighs. “And anything that puts this luscious curve front and center is good by me. So, snug jeans, those short flirty skirts, whatever this thing is called. Really, I’m awfully easy on this… Booty right there?” He squeezes her gently. “Yep? Happy Tim!”
“It feels really weird.”
He nodded at that. “Look, if it’s not really you, it’s okay. Taking it back isn’t a problem, or just using it for court dates. If you wanna go back, that’s fine. But playing is good, right? That’s what you tell me?” He gestures to himself, kilt, t-shirt, wrist cuff, three new tattoos, and thirty-five fewer pounds. “I don’t exactly look like that guy you started dating again back in ’12. Not exactly him, either. You still love me. And if you want to go all satin and sophisticated with just and edge of punk, I’m good with that. I’m not going anywhere, and I’m more than happy to play new Abbies with you.”
“Feels weird.”
He nods at that.
“Good weird?”
“Just weird. I was really into it with the girls, but now… It doesn’t look like me.”
“Nope. Looks different. Good different.”
“I feel really naked in this.”
He looked at her curiously. “Naked?”
“Yeah. Like… I’m terrified I’ll spill something on myself. My legs and feet are practically bare.”
“Oh, literally, naked.”
“Yeah.”
He headed over to their bed. “How about the trousers?”
They’re slim cut, navy, some sort of light-weight wool blend. As he was handing them to her he said, “You know, when it fits again, both of these would go with that pink blouse of yours, and you could probably match this with some of your belts and cuffs, and nicer tank tops type shirts.”  
“Maybe.” She pulls off the skirt and begins to wriggle into the trousers. And like with the skirt, Tim was seriously appreciating the cut on them. “Who was picking these out?”
“Mostly Breena and Ziva. Penny kept me from breaking into hives at ‘normal clothing.’”
“Remind me to thank Breena and Ziva, and Penny for getting you into it. Whether you ever wear these again or not, they fit really nicely.”
“You think so?” She’s looking at herself in the mirror critically.
“Maybe I just really like what’s under them. Either way, I’m having a good time.”
“And that’s what matters?”
He shrugged. “At least one of us should be enjoying this, right?”
She laughed at that, shaking her head. “Yeah, I guess so. There’s a sort of drapy top that goes with this…”
And Tim headed over to their bed to dig through the bags and find it.

Next

Shards To A Whole: Chapter 293

McGee-centric character study/romance. Want to start at the beginning? Click here.


Chapter 293: Abby's New Groove


You fall in love, get married, get pregnant, have a baby, life changes, your body changes, your home changes, everything changes.
It has to.
You can’t do all of that and have things stay the same.
And Abby knows that.
There are welcome changes, like Tim curled around her each night, or the feel of Kelly’s breath against her breast as she nurses, and there are unwelcome changes.
Like the inch of blond roots peeking out from her black hair.
And yeah, it’s not the end of the world or anything. But her hair is one of her defining characteristics. It’s black and up in pig tails most of the time. It’s dark and cute and perky and just fun.
But she’s naturally blonde, and until Kelly was on the outside every two weeks she’d dye it to keep it looking perfect. She’s so good at the upkeep that a lot of people don’t know that her hair isn’t naturally black. It’s her own special dye mix, organic, natural, no ammonia, beautiful color that doesn’t make her hair feel like straw. None of this right out of the box stuff for her.
It’s her hair, and she loves it, and…
But, because it’s not the out of the box stuff, and because it’s natural and organic and has no harsh chemicals, it takes her two hours every other week to keep it the way she likes.
Two hours she could be doing something else, like sleeping, or Tim.
But it’s her hair…
God, she hates this; it feels so whiny. She wants “her” hair. She doesn’t want to spend the time she needs to to keep it “her” hair.
Okay, really, it’s not the hair. Well, it is… but… It’s just the one last straw on the camel’s back. Her favorite tattoo is broken, her skin’s covered in stretch marks, none of ‘her’ clothing fits, even though she’s only twelve pounds away from her pre-pregnancy weight her hips and boobs aren’t even close to the same size they used to be. Even her shoes don’t fit properly anymore. (That one kills her. She’s probably got fifteen thousand dollars’ worth of beautiful boots and shoes, that she spent the last twenty years collecting and they’re all at least half a size too small now.) Nothing about her feels the same, so she could at least keep her hair, right?
Breena and Ziva are looking at Abby as she’s saying this.
“Could you just dye it less often?” Ziva asks. “The roots aren’t very noticeable until they get to be about a quarter inch long.”
Abby mopes at that. “I can see them. And it makes me look like my hair’s really thin because I end up with what looks like a really wide part.”
“Tony uses Garnier to cover his gray. He likes it, and it doesn’t take two hours. I am sure they have black.”
Abby nods at Ziva’s comment. “They do. They all do. But my hair’s so fine it feels like straw after I use one of those dyes. And especially with nursing, I don’t want to use anything I didn’t mix up myself.”
Breena’s staring at Abby’s hair, playing with it a little. “Go blonde. What’s your real color? Kind of light honey blonde?” That’s what color her roots are.
“Lighter. About the color of your highlights. At least that’s what it used to be.” She thinks the roots were always this color and it just got lighter as it got longer, but she doesn’t really remember. It’s been almost thirty years since she dyed it black the first time.
Breena’s thinking about that as they sit in Abby’s living room. Summer’s inching to a close, and once more Labor Day weekend has come around. So, right now, as the guys are outside messing about with the grill and keeping babies entertained, the ladies are inside, taking advantage of the AC, (It’s way too hot out there for Breena. At five months pregnant, anything over eighty-five is torture.) and working on making some plans for getting Abby’s groove back.
She ruffles her fingers through Abby’s hair, feeling how thin it is. “It’ll take a lot of bleach to get rid of the black, and that’s hard on hair. So, cute, sassy, short little cut, bleach it back to whatever you think it is, and we can fine tune when more of it grows in. Maybe put some pink or blue on the tips, too. When you’re out of all babies all the time, you can go black again.”
“Cute and short sounds like time getting it cut instead of dyed,” Abby replies, twirling one ponytail between her fingers, not loving the idea of chopping them off. Though she finds herself wondering how much of that is not being willing to let go of Kate. Last thing she ever said to her… almost last thing,.. last thing was about the tattoo on her bum… was how much she liked Abby’s hair up in ponytails.
“Yeah, but every other month instead of every other week,” Breena answers. “And you go out to have someone else do it so you get some baby-free time where all you have to do is sit around and let someone else take care of you for a while. I don’t think you’ll have a hard time selling Tim on the idea that you need a Saturday afternoon off every other month.”
Ziva smiles. “He will drive you to the appointment himself, smiling.”
Breena stares at Abby’s hair, runs her fingers through it again, and says, “Actually, the first cut’s really only about limiting the damage from the bleach to get your hair lighter. If you don’t want that afternoon off, just grow it back out again after the first one.”
Abby stands up and heads to their downstairs bathroom, looking at herself in the mirror. “How short are you thinking?” she calls out to the others.
Ziva joins her. Breena stays comfortable on the sofa. She’ll be doing enough up and down and chasing Molly around soon.
“Not a pixie cut,” Ziva says.
“Noooo…” No way in hell she’s doing that. Though it would take care of the dye issue all-together. Cut it that short and it’d just be her natural hair and maybe some tiny little black tips. That actually might look kind of cool… Okay, no that’s insane. Ten pounds from now, when she can find her cheekbones again, maybe. But right now her face is too round for it.
“Maybe jaw length?” Ziva suggests.
She can kind of imagine that.
“Maybe.”
They hear the sliding glass door to the porch open, and the sound of Tim’s voice. “Dinner’s ready. Got some ladies that want to eat?” He looks at Abby and Ziva a little oddly when they both come out of the bathroom, but doesn’t ask about it.
“Do I want to know?” he whispers to Abby a few minutes later while everyone floods into the kitchen to put together their burgers and salad. He'd told her about Tony's mention of them doing more baby related research and he's wondering if the bathroom confab had something to do with that.
“Just talking hair.”
“Hers or yours?”
“Mine.”
“Really?” That has his interest.
“Yeah.”
“What are you thinking?”
“I don’t know. Tossing around the idea of short.”
He thinks about that and kisses the back of her neck. “I’d like short.”
“Yeah?”
“Like long too, and really long, but yeah, short might be interesting. Looks bad, it’ll regrow. Not a big deal.”
“You’d really like short?”
“I like my mental image of short. If it looks anything like that, I’ll like it.”
“Hmmm..”
“What are you two conspiring about?” Penny asks, snagging a few more glasses.
“Nothing big.”
“Good, get moving, we’re waiting on you to eat.”
“Yes, Ma’am,” Tim replies, and Abby suddenly has a very clear idea of him at eight or nine-years-old being told to hurry up a bit and get to the table.
They get settled and dinner begins, bits and pieces of conversation floating around while Kelly naps and Molly pokes at the little cut up pieces of hamburger she’s eating off of Ziva’s plate.
“It’s been a while, what happened with your log everyone out of their password protection?” Penny asks, while passing the salad to Ducky on her left.
“Better than my last test, but not necessarily for the right reasons. Two passed, but they passed the last test. My worm never got in. Two of them are running their passwords old school, either have them memorized or written down, or something like that, so the worm never got them. Three of the others noticed something was wrong, actually talked to each other, and caught it and killed it before it got the other five.”
“That part’s better, right?” Tony asks.
“Yeah.”
“They figure out it was from you?” Jimmy asks.
“Nah. And that’s the part that’s worse. Didn’t do much to cover my tracks. They may have the IP address I launched it from, but that’s a dead end. Now, if any of them have any investigative savvy they may decide to find out where that IP was located, and then try to figure out why they got hacked from a bus station, let alone a bus station NCIS was running an operation out of, but if they’re doing it, no one’s said anything yet.” 
“How about Leon?” Tony asks.
“His system defeated it.”
“Didn’t you set his system up in the first place?” Breena asks.
“Not all of it, and he’s had new stuff added since.”
“Bet he was happy to see that,” Abby says, and Tim nods.
Conversation bops around, mostly just family stuff, little bits of work, catching up on the things they’ve done lately. As burgers, salad, and corn on the cob is cleared off, and strawberry-peach shortcake (sans cake for Jimmy and Tim) was passed around, Kelly starts crying.
Tim heads up to get her, and hears the tail end of, “finally hired a nanny,” as he sits down, handing his daughter to his wife.
“Her name is Heather, and she starts on the 15th. Give her a little time to get used to this while I’m still home.”
“I met her, didn’t I?” Gibbs asks.
“Yep. She was the one telling you about artificial knees.”
He rolls his eyes a little at that. The twelve-year-old.
“So, does that mean you’re heading back to work soon?” Penny asks.
“Back on the twenty-first.”
“Good, you’ve got to get them into the shape. They keep working on other teams’ evidence,” Tony says, half-joking.
“I’ll remember to speak severely to them about that,” Abby responds, like Tony, half-joking.
“It actually is something of an issue. It’s not that they are working on other teams’ evidence, it is that they do not seem to grasp the concept of murders take precedence over drug deals, thefts, or money laundering,” Ziva adds.
Tim nods at that. “Priorities are a little skewed. They seem to do a sort of first come first served sort of thing.”
“And I get the feeling they aren’t used to doing much in the way of time sensitive work. I’ve sent Jimmy down with samples on several occasions, and sometimes they just sit there for a few days," Ducky adds.
“They are doing a whole lot more work, too,” Jimmy adds, feeling like it’s important to get the idea across that the lab staff didn’t suddenly triple, have the same amount of work, and were doing it badly. “They’re getting everything from all the Afloats, too. But, yeah, we’re not getting the sort of personal touch we’re used to.”
“Then I guess I know what my first job is.”  

While they were cleaning up the table, Penny quietly asked Jethro, “Still seeing your new friend?”
“Yeah.”
“Finding any clarity?”
He shrugs. “Haven’t stopped going.”
“Are you getting what you want out of it?”
“Maybe. Thinking about things different, so that’s something.”
She gives his shoulder a squeeze. “Yeah, it is. Not that I’m planning on blabbing, but, who all knows about this?”
“Haven’t said, but I think it’s already gone through. Think Tim let the crew knew that was part of Tony and I getting back on the job.”
Penny nods at that heads back into the kitchen to put the plates in her hands into the dishwasher.


NCIS may be closed on Labor Day, but the just about everywhere else, isn’t.
So, having dropped boys and babies off at the McGees’ house, the girls ventured forth for a girls day out. What started as a haircut for Abby morphed into treat the ladies day when Jimmy looked at Breena and said, ‘I’ll take Molly over to Tim’s, you go out and have fun, too. Don’t come back until you’ve had at least a massage.’
So, with both of them thinking massages and facials to go with Abby’s hair transformation, sounded good, Breena just made the appointments for Ziva and Penny, too.
The Gibbs clan ladies were going out, and that was that.

  One of the good things about living in the Capitol City of the US is that it’s not hard to find places that will cater to a quad of ladies looking for a nice day out, let alone a nice day out that involves things like haircuts and massages.
Only tricky part was picking where to go.
But Breena took that in hand, and by shortly after 8:30, all four of them were very happy with her choice.
Abby had to admit that getting a reflexology treatment while the black cooked out of her hair was awfully nice.
She was really nervous about the staff here being able to do what she wanted, because they were awfully… vanilla looking. She didn’t get the sense that much of the ladies here had any edge, or if they did they kept it well hidden.
But as she described the idea for her hair, short, shag cut, lightened to match her roots, little touches of pink to frame her face, Amanda, her stylist got really excited, and started gushing about the new dyes they got in, taking her in hand and dragging her over to see all the shades they had to play with.
“We never get to use them,” she said, gesturing to the close to six different pinks, (they had a similar inventory of blues, greens, and reds, along with a large library of standard hair colors) and holding up a few of them to Abby’s face to see how they looked with her hair and eyes. “How about this baby pink, and maybe a touch or two of this rose color?”
“Sure!” she was starting to get excited about this idea of… changing.


“You know, while we’re at it, we could take a stab at your wardrobe,” Breena said as they got lunch. “Gonna be a while before you can get back into your jeans and skirts. You’re going to need something to wear to work.”
Abby kept staring at herself in the mirrored wall behind them. It felt really odd to be able to identify everyone at the table at a glance, besides herself. She also kept turning her head, fast, feeling this new, short hair flip around her neck and jaw.
“They don’t really sell the kind of clothing I tend to like here.”
Ziva was looking her over. “Maybe you might try some new clothing to go with the new hair. Sort of like how your court wear changed, maybe you could try something less…”
“Me?”
“No, not less you, different you. New armor for new battles. Boss-wear,” Breena said, enthusiastically.
 Abby looked to Penny, who shrugged and asked, “Do you have any even vaguely appropriate tops that fit?”
“No.” Double D nursing breasts were doing everything they could to get out of every top she owned. (Which was why she’d been wearing a lot of Tim’s t-shirts lately. Why she was wearing one now.)
“Then you need to get something. But you’ve got time. Head online and get your old style. Play with the girls and try a new one. Do both. But having spent my entire professional life working with male scientists, I have noticed they tended to be more respectful and more willing to pay attention to what I was saying when I dressed a certain way.”
“So that’s what you did?” Breena asked.
“Certainly not! I had to dress like a nun to get them to pay attention. I wore whatever the hell I wanted and when they ignored me I shoved my better understanding of the subject down their throats and made them see I was a better engineer than they ever dreamed of being. I intentionally dressed like a woman so they couldn’t just sort of pretend I was a small man with long hair.
“But… and this is probably important, I was also not trying to create a harmoniously running department, I was taking on an already up and running team, and for a lot of those years, I was the only female in Biotech anyone had ever heard of, let alone seen. The only thing I was doing was making sure they understood lack of penis did not mean lack of brains.”
“Yeah, that’s not precisely what I’m going to be doing.”
“So, as Breena put it, getting some Bosswear might be in order. At least until you have a better handle on them. Or go all out Goth and make them see that collars and black leather doesn’t mean lack of brains, either.”
Abby looked from Ziva to Breena to Penny. “What would Bosswear look like?”


Tim, Tony, and Jimmy were entertaining Molly (naptime for Kelly) when Breena and Ziva and Penny came in. For a second, Tim was feeling a bit apprehensive because Abby was lingering outside of view and the three of them were grinning stupidly at him.
Jimmy stood up and kissed his wife. “You guys lose a member of the party?”
“Oh no. We just wanted to be in range to see you respond to the grand unveiling,” Ziva answered with a wide and happy smile.
Jimmy looked at Ziva, watching the pleasure on her face, and says, “Ziva, you’re a girl.”
Tony whacked him. “Really astute, Palmer.”
“No. I mean, look, she’s grinning, and really happy about a makeover party…”
Tim’s aware of the fact that they’re chatting about this new revelation that Ziva does indeed appear to like some girly stuff, he’s somewhat less aware of Penny’s commentary about ‘girly stuff’ being a social construct. (Ziva liking girly stuff is not, in fact, a revelation to him, he figured it out when he finally saw all of wedding stuff put together. No way you put something that pretty together without being a girl. He, Tony, Gibbs, and Jimmy could have worked on that wedding until the end of time, it still wouldn’t have looked that good. Hell, infinite monkeys planning infinite weddings would have gotten that level of elegant, refined prettiness before he, Jimmy, Gibbs, and Tony stumbled onto it. Mainly because, there’re fifty-fifty odds that any given one of those infinite monkeys is a girl. What that says as to his belief in the idea that appreciation of girly stuff is a social construct shoved down the throats of baby girls at a young age is probably better left unsaid in the presence of his grandmother.)
No, he’s standing there, sort of aware of them talking, of Molly riding Breena’s hip, waiting for her to come in. Abby and dress up games has always been one of his favorite things and…
His breath literally caught in his chest. It’s just so…
Her hair is short, comes to her jaw at the longest part, and blonde, mostly, bits and pieces around the edges are pink. He doesn’t know what that sort of cut is called. Not a bob, but beyond that, he’s clueless.
It’s cute and playful and flirty and adult. That’s always been the thing with the pony tails. They’re a link to her past, her childhood. They’re adorable, but not the mark of a grown up. This is fun, but sophisticated, and so sexy, her whole neck is visible, and the colors perk up her skin and…
“Wow.”
“You like it?” She’s looking a little shy as she asks, so he takes two steps, pulls her close and bends her back into a deep, passionate, oh my God! YES sort of kiss.
A bit later, as he was getting both of them standing regularly again, he noticed Breena saying to Jimmy, “That’s how you respond to a new haircut.”
“Yes, dear.” (Apparently ‘Yes, dear,’ must have had some unspoken context, because Breena gently whacked Jimmy’s shoulder, and then he grinned at her.)
He stepped back a bit, and looked Abby over a bit more carefully. “You’ve got new clothes, too.”
That got a smile out of her. “Yeah.”
These are a lot closer to her traditional style than the hair is. From what he can tell, it’s just a bigger version of the clothing she normally wears.
“Got some work clothing, too.”
“Gonna show me?” he asked with a raised eyebrow and a little sexy grin.
“Eventually.”
“Ooo…” He was about to say something mildly salacious about how she could show him, but Kelly woke up, so she turned and headed toward her room.
“Let’s see if she can figure out who I am.”


Dress up came later that night, after they were on their own.
It’s stunningly amazing how much difference a new haircut/color makes. Even in her “regular” clothing (as much of it as she could squeeze into) light hair and different jewelry made some of it look, almost, normal.
Not plain or boring, but… Not nearly so edgy. Some of the less skull bedecked pieces started to look classically professional with the new hair and no cuffs or collars.
And there was the new stuff. Tim could feel the hands of Breena, Penny, and Ziva on those outfits. Granted none of it looked like anything that the three of them would wear, but all of it was vastly more aware of traditional office casual/high end professional wear, with, like everything else, an edge..
He’s not sure what kind of skirt it is. Tight. It curves perfectly from her waist to just above her knee, has a little slit up the back so she can walk more easily. She’s got it paired with some sort of black shell, and a white blouse and… little black pumps and… just… wow…
“Do you really like it?” She’s staring at herself in the mirror, not sure about this change at all.
“Oh yeah.”
“Really?”
He steps over to her. “I like anything that shows off your butt.” His hands trace from her waist to her thighs. “And anything that puts this luscious curve front and center is good by me. So, snug jeans, those short flirty skirts, whatever this thing is called. Really, I’m awfully easy on this… Booty right there?” He squeezes her gently. “Yep? Happy Tim!”
“It feels really weird.”
He nodded at that. “Look, if it’s not really you, it’s okay. Taking it back isn’t a problem, or just using it for court dates. If you wanna go back, that’s fine. But playing is good, right? That’s what you tell me?” He gestures to himself, kilt, t-shirt, wrist cuff, three new tattoos, and thirty-five fewer pounds. “I don’t exactly look like that guy you started dating again back in ’12. Not exactly him, either. You still love me. And if you want to go all satin and sophisticated with just and edge of punk, I’m good with that. I’m not going anywhere, and I’m more than happy to play new Abbies with you.”
“Feels weird.”
He nods at that.
“Good weird?”
“Just weird. I was really into it with the girls, but now… It doesn’t look like me.”
“Nope. Looks different. Good different.”
“I feel really naked in this.”
He looked at her curiously. “Naked?”
“Yeah. Like… I’m terrified I’ll spill something on myself. My legs and feet are practically bare.”
“Oh, literally, naked.”
“Yeah.”
He headed over to their bed. “How about the trousers?”
They’re slim cut, navy, some sort of light-weight wool blend. As he was handing them to her he said, “You know, when it fits again, both of these would go with that pink blouse of yours, and you could probably match this with some of your belts and cuffs, and nicer tank tops type shirts.”  
“Maybe.” She pulls off the skirt and begins to wriggle into the trousers. And like with the skirt, Tim was seriously appreciating the cut on them. “Who was picking these out?”
“Mostly Breena and Ziva. Penny kept me from breaking into hives at ‘normal clothing.’”
“Remind me to thank Breena and Ziva, and Penny for getting you into it. Whether you ever wear these again or not, they fit really nicely.”
“You think so?” She’s looking at herself in the mirror critically.
“Maybe I just really like what’s under them. Either way, I’m having a good time.”
“And that’s what matters?”
He shrugged. “At least one of us should be enjoying this, right?”
She laughed at that, shaking her head. “Yeah, I guess so. There’s a sort of drapy top that goes with this…”

And Tim headed over to their bed to dig through the bags and find it.

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