Keryl Raist's Blog, page 13
March 3, 2014
Shards To A Whole: Chapter 293
McGee-centric character study/romance. Want to start at the beginning? Click here.
Chapter 293: Why Did You Marry Them
Gibbs set Rachel’s coffee on the little table she had next to her chair, and limped to the sofa, setting his crutch to his side, and taking his coffees out.
“How’s the knee doing?” she asks once he’s settled, taking a sip of the coffee. “Thank you, this is lovely.”
He nods. “Down to just the brace next week. They want me to go to physical therapy.”
“You don’t sound happy about that.”
He shrugs. “Not happy about the whole thing.” He taps his knee. “Don’t like feeling useless. They’ll only okay me for light duty once I get off the crutches. Then won’t get okayed for full duty until the physical therapy is done, and that’ll be about a week before I retire.”
“Sorry to hear it.”
“Yeah, well… It is what it is. Work with the boys. Have Ziva put me through my paces. I’ll get it done faster than they expect, but faster’ll be two weeks, three weeks before they boot me out? Not a big difference.”
“No. I guess not.” She makes a little note of that.
“What?”
“Reminding myself to talk with you about retiring, but probably not today.”
“Okay. What are we talking about today?”
“Did you do your homework?”
He nods, taking a sip of his coffee.
“Who’d you tell?”
“Penny.”
Rachel thinks about that. She knows the name but isn’t immediately coming up with who Penny is. He sees that.
“Tim’s grandma, Ducky’s…” he sort of rolls his eyes. “Can you call a woman north of eighty a girlfriend? And if I did, I’d have to listen to her lecture on she’s a woman, not a girl, and that describing her by her relationships to the men in her life diminishes her personhood. Or something like that. I zoned out last time.”
“The third corner in your grandparenting triangle?”
“Yes. Kelly’s great-grandma. Maybe that one won’t get me chewed out. She might do it just because she knows it bugs me.”
“Sounds like you have an adversarial relationship.”
“Not really. Not as smooth as the rest of the family; there’s friction but not anger…” he thinks about that and decides it feels right. “If she was thirty years younger, I would have been interested. Of course, if she was thirty years younger, I wouldn’t have been smart enough for her.”
“Is that part of the friction?”
“Nah. We met on a case—“
“Not through Tim?”
“Not really. He was taking point, she’s his grandma after all. She wasn’t talking, actually playing him, so I went in and went hard, and she may have called me a jack-booted fascist, or thought it, not sure if it actually came out, but she didn’t know I wasn’t as straight up law and order as I looked and I didn’t know she wasn’t as hippie-dippie, peacenik as she looked, and we both kind of nudge each other with it now and again.”
“Family dinners must be a blast.”
He nods, smiling. “They are. They’re good enough we have Shabbos say three out of five Fridays, and now Sunday breakfast, too.”
Rachel makes a note of that, too.
He looks at her curiously.
“One of these days I want to hear about this family you’ve built. Created families of the kind you have are fairly rare, working ones rarer still. Tim and Penny are the only two with any blood ties?”
He nods and she makes a note of that, too. Long note. He decides not to ask what she’s thinking right now. They’ll get to it sooner or later.
“So, why Penny?”
“Her husband died back in ’88. She’d been married to him all her life at that point. They lost a son in ‘Nam. Wanted to talk to someone who got it.”
“Sounds like a good choice.”
“I think so. It was a good conversation. Got to know more about her, too. Though neither of us seem to know how the switch flips and you move on. She said it just did.”
“How’d her husband die?”
“I don’t know the details. She said he was at sea, it was unexpected, and painless. It was the ‘80s and he was an Admiral, so I’m fairly sure it wasn’t combat related.”
“Admiral?”
“Yeah, her son, Tim’s dad, is one, too.”
“You weren’t kidding about not being smart enough.”
“No. Not smart enough. Not ambitious enough. You need at least a PhD before she’s willing to look at you for more than a good time.”
“She must be a very interesting woman.”
“She is.”
“He likely died of natural causes?”
“I think so.”
“And she doesn’t think she had anything to do with how he died? No guilt?”
“Probably not.”
Rachel stares at him.
“Yeah, I know, probably has a lot to do with flipping that switch.” She makes a note at that, and he has a feeling she’s thinking up his next homework assignment.
“How did saying it feel?”
His look could best be described as, how do you think?
“That’s the point of this, Jethro, I don’t assume how it works for you, I ask. And even when I do know, I still ask, because then you have to think about it, put it into words, and actually tell me.”
“Really uncomfortable.”
“Why?”
“Talking? Bringing it up out of the middle of nowhere? That look that comes right after you say it? All of it?”Rachel nods.
“Are you going to do it again?”
“Probably. There’s this diner we go to. Elaine’s the lady who runs the counter. She asked when I put the ring on, ‘Go and get married again, hon?’ and I said no, and left it, and she hasn’t poked. Probably tell her the next time I go in for a late night coffee.”
“Sounds good.”
He shrugs. “She’ll give me a hug and pie.”
“Hugs and pie are good.”
“Not saying they aren’t just…”
“It’s easier to be invulnerable?”
“Yes!”
“Too bad. You’re human, Jethro. None of us are made of stone.”
“Yay,” he says, dry and sarcastic.
She takes another drink of her coffee and picks up the pages he wrote about the wives and girlfriends. “I was reading over your collection of ladies, and I wanted to know, why did you marry them?”
He blows out a frustrated breath. “Beyond it seemed like a good idea at the time?”
“Yes. You’re a fairly traditional guy, so can I assume that at some point, for each of these women, you went out, found a ring, came up with some sort of ‘let’s get married’ speech, set up some sort of romantic encounter, and then stuck around long enough to plan a wedding, and then got married?”
“Only two weddings.”
“Hm. One was Shannon, who was the other one?”
“Diane.”
“What were the other two?”
“Eloped. Justice of the Peace with Hannah, Marine Chaplain owed me a favor for Stephanie.”
“Okay. So let’s start with Hannah. What made you think, ‘I should marry this woman?’”
He exhales, looking a bit sheepish. “Not exactly my finest moment.”
She smiles at that and nudges him on. “We can talk about your finest moments, later. Why’d you marry her?”
“She was young, twenty-three, going to school to be a pharmacist. Which was why she was in DC in the first place. She finished about four months after we started dating. Her family was in Buffalo. They wanted her to find a job closer to them. Wanted her to drop me, move home, meet a nice guy, one a lot closer to her age, settle down, make lots of little red-haired grandbabies. They didn’t much like me, probably because they had an easier time seeing who I was than she did. So, she was telling me about her parents giving her grief about heading back north. I wasn’t in love with her. But I didn’t want her to leave. And if I didn’t make a move, she was going to go, and I was going to be rattling around the house with just memories and bourbon for company.
“So, I found a ring, and I lied my ass off about loving her for the rest of our days, and she said yes, and two weeks later she was Mrs. Gibbs.”
“How was it?”
“Okay, for about a year. That year was better than Diane or Stephanie. We got on pretty well. Not… not what I wanted, but better than nothing.”
“And after that year?”
“I caught the Boone case, and that one ate me, and our marriage, alive. I don’t even know when she actually left. Just one day I noticed that her stuff was gone. She could have left that afternoon, she could have left a month earlier, and I had no idea.
“Didn’t contest the divorce. Signed over whatever she wanted, besides the house. That was mine. That’s the only thing I’ve managed to keep a hold of, besides my tools, through the three divorces.”
“And Diane?”
He smiles at that. He might not remember where they were when they met, but he certainly remembered that look she gave him, and the way she said, ‘Back off. I don’t like cops.’ “She told me I wasn’t her type.”
“And you had to prove her wrong?”
He shakes his head, half-smile still on his face. “Or die trying.”
“Why did you have a real wedding with her?”
“Diane and I liked anything that made sparks. Sex, teasing, fighting… Anything that got us hot was good. And a wedding is seventeen million things to fight about. Hell, I almost cancelled the thing three times just to stretch it out even longer, because the arguing was fun.”
“Did she think it was fun?”
“She changed the date on me twice.”
“Cold feet?”
“Moved it up the second time. Nah. Just messing with me. But eventually, we did get married, and we had a great honeymoon, and we got home and ran out of stuff to argue about. And if we weren’t fighting, I wasn’t interested.”
Rachel stares at him, looking like she doesn’t think that’s the whole story. “You won?”
“Yeah. I won. I proved her wrong. And I got bored. And she got angry. And that kept things going a little longer. I got more and more into work. Into the next case, the next puzzle, the next challenge. She got more and more annoyed. Then she got mean. And I pulled in further. She got clingy and meaner. I took Agent Afloat. We were divorced by the time I got back.”
Rachel squints at him. “The way you write about her seems… fonder.”
“I am fond of her. Now. And a long time between then and now helps. We keep running into each other. And… We’re okay… ish, now. At peace, definitely. For some reason, every single fall, it’s practically clockwork, sometime between September and November, I’ll find Fornel or Diane at a case, and within minutes the other one shows up.”
“God’s amused by you three together?”
He rolls his eyes and sighs a little. “Satan probably. Every year. And I already know the one after next. Tobias is getting married in October of ’16. Last time she got married, she invited both of us. We didn’t go. Tobias was going to, got all dressed up, showed up at my place, saw I was in street clothing, and we spent the rest of the day drinking in my basement.
“So, he’s already got it set with Wendy, she’s cool with it. After all, she’s not just his ex, but also his daughter’s mom. He’s going to invite her. And she’ll come. I’ll be there, I’m the best man.” Gibbs looks up, licks his lips, and shakes his head.
“Jethro?”
“Unless she’s found herself a new pet, she’ll show up, we’ll argue, it’ll be fun, and we’ll end up in bed together.”
That got a curious look from Rachel.
“We were always good at pushing each other’s buttons. And so far, every time we’ve run into each other, she’s been married, or had a new boyfriend. But last I heard, she was single again.”
“You seem pretty sure your advances would be welcome.”
He’s not entirely sure what that look on Rachel’s face means. “Are you asking if I think I’m God’s gift to women, and she’ll just fall for me because I think it might be interesting, or if I actually know something to indicate making a move would be welcome?”
She nods, nicely, but nods. He sends her a wry look, one that makes it pretty clear that he knows he’s not God’s gift to women, not these days.
“She told me I was her Shannon. I think, especially if we spent a night sniping at each other, all dressed up, kind of tipsy, it’d be welcome. Probably end up making out in the parking lot.”
And while Rachel looks really surprised at that, she’s not surprised about the making out in the parking lot comment. “She knew about Shannon? Did you tell her?”
“No. Never spoke her name for… close to a decade. Like I said, we had a great honeymoon, we got home, and I got bored. She knew I was bored. Knew something was wrong, didn’t know what. We limped around for a few months, and she got more and more angry, and I dug further and further into work. The challenge was over. I’d won. She was Mrs. Gibbs, mine, and even whacking me with a golf club didn’t shake the boredom.
“I took Agent Afloat. Six months in the Med. While I was gone, she went through all my stuff, and found out about them.”
“Oh. Yet, even with that, it sounds like you’re still attracted to her.”
“I am. She’s beautiful. And I do like her. Always did. Probably always will. Don’t like the way she gets mean and shrill when she’s unhappy, but I do like her.”
“So. You aren’t the same man you were then. Say you did go to the wedding, you did get tipsy and push each other’s buttons, find yourselves a quiet bit of parking lot, would a new start be welcome? Obviously she cares for you. You like her…”
“Don’t think I’d be able to trust her enough for it. Not for more than sex.”
Another curious look.
“I’d been afloat for five weeks when I got the ‘I’m pregnant’ letter.”
Cranston winces. She remembers the comment about the vasectomy.
“Tobias’?”
“Yeah. Her name is Emily. She’s sixteen. Beautiful girl. Funny, smart as a whip, calls me Uncle Gibbs.”
“You have a relationship with Emily Fornell?” Cranston looks stunned and amused.
He chuckles, shaking his head. “Life is weird. I’m her father’s best friend and her mom’s ex-husband. Yeah. She’s at my house for extended family parties a few times a year. Occasionally she crashes at my place when they’re driving her buggy. My door’s always open, and they both trust that if she’s at my place, she’s safe and well-looked after.”
Cranston closes her eyes, smiles, and shakes her head. “Sounds like you and Diane are better than okay… ish.”
“We’re okay, now.”
“But you don’t trust her?”
“Not deep down.”
“But you trust Tobias?”
“Yeah.”
“Why?” Takes two to make a baby clear in her eyes.
He licks his lips and looks up again, trying to figure out how to put this feeling into words. “The three of us got on great. Dinner at my place, especially before we got married, was always a lot of fun. I knew he liked her. I knew she liked him. And when I got the letter… It was the nineties, hard to make calls off a battleship, but I was the Agent Afloat, so I managed it. I called Tobias. And I was so…
“So…”
“I knew it wasn’t mine. I mean, I just knew. I’d told her I didn’t want kids. She seemed on board with that. She’d been on the pill.”
“You didn’t tell her about the vasectomy?”
“No. Couldn’t tell her about that without telling her why I’d had one. Not like the scar is obvious, so, never mentioned it.
“So, I knew she couldn’t be mine. But, I saw the word on the paper and felt the thrill of it and the kick in the balls all at once. I called Tobias, and he was acting off, but I was too out of it to really notice, but he did remind me that sometimes vasectomies heal up, so I should get it tested before I got a hold of a divorce lawyer.”
“So you did.”
“Yeah, easy test. Anyone with a microscope can do it.”
“And you hadn’t had any sort of miraculous recovery.”
“No. And when the medic told me that, I realized that Tobias had been acting off, and I suddenly knew why. And that hurt like fuck. And after I got back and beat the hell out of him, we didn't talk, outside of a case, for year. But… He’s not the one I married. He’s not the one who told me he was okay with not having children. And he’s not the one who slept with my best friend and tried to pass off his kid as mine.”
Cranston nods at that. “What do you think she was doing?”
“I think she thought that, after seeing the shots of Kelly, that if there was a baby it’d get my attention, and keep it. And it would have. She was dead right. Like I said, Diane always knew how to push my buttons. If Emily had been mine… But she wasn’t.”
“Does Emily know…”
He shakes his head. “She’s under the impression Diane and I got divorced a year earlier than we actually did.”
“Ah.”
“None of the three of us see any reason for her to know the truth on that.”
“Probably wise. How about Stephanie? Why did you marry her?”
He shrugs.
“Don’t give me that, you know.”
“I couldn’t have Shannon, and I needed a distraction from Jen. She looked, smelled, and acted enough like both of them that I could kind of pretend.”
“That’s why you slept with her. Why did you marry her?”
He glares at Rachel. She smiles back.
“Come on, I’m not stupid, and you aren’t either. And we both know you’ll sleep with a woman for distraction, but that’s not why you’ll marry one.”
“She wanted to.”
“Nope.”
“Nope?” He’s got a startled look on his face when he asks that.
“Nope.” Rachel shakes her head. “You and I are not strangers, we have not just met, and I do not, for one second, believe a man who couldn’t be bothered to come home on time for dinner regularly married a woman because she wanted it. Try again. Dig deep. Why did you marry her?”
He hasn’t thought about it for years. So he does. Moscow, it was brutally cold and very snowy and lonely and why marry her?
Oh. “In ’96 Franks left, and I got a new Probie. Stan Burley. Great guy. Good agent. Put up with my crap and then some. Including the fact that I called him Steve for four years just to see if I could piss him off enough to do something about it. In ’98 NCIS began to shift its main focus away from crime to anti-terrorism. At that point in time we had nothing in the way of anti-terrorism talent.
“I’m good at languages. Stan’s family was well-connected. He was a Senator’s aide for years. Law school, all the rest of that. So, they sent us to Europe to head up the new NCIS anti-terrorism squad.”
“Europe?”
“Moscow, Paris, Romania, few other places.”
“Don’t sound like hotbeds of international terrorism.”
“Like I said, we weren’t the crown jewel of the anti-terrorism world. Anyway, it was ’98, and NCIS also wanted a stronger female presence, especially on all of the ‘premier’ teams. So Stan and I got this new Probie, and that was Jen.
“Stan’s not stupid, and he’s not blind, so he knew how I felt about Jen. He saw the way I’d watch her. Saw how she’d watch me. Probably had a better idea of what was going on in her mind about that than I did.
“We’re in Moscow, and we know we’re going to Paris, long mission, at least four months, maybe longer. We know Jen’s going, because the couple in love cover works well. What we don’t know is which of the two of us is going.
“He was going to go over my head. He’d knew I’d fuck it up. And he was right, I did exactly what he thought I was going to, and we got a few lucky breaks and were able to pull it out of the weeds. But I know it, and Jen knows it, and Stand did, too. In the end it was luck. Because I fucked up and got distracted and put more into her than the mission.
“We were planning the mission, and he’s giving me the ‘you aren’t going to Paris with her’ look, and I had a girlfriend, and I knew we were still a few months out, so…
“So, Moscow has, or at least had, the kind of malls where you could buy anything and everything. Stephanie and I were out, and she’d been moping about something, like me missing dinner, so we walk past one of the jewelry stores, and there’s diamonds all over the place. She’s staring at them. I nod at them and say, ‘Pick one out.’ Ten days later we were married, and Stan stopped riding me so hard about Jen.”
“That’s cold.”
“It was Moscow.”
“Cute. You said Stan had a better idea of what Jen was doing. What did you mean by that?”
“I was the next rung up the ladder, and she was going to climb me however she could. I saw pretty, sassy redhead with…” He realizes he’d kept that sentence going a few words longer than necessary and stops.
“With…”
“Attractive curves—“
She smiles at the way he’s censoring himself. “Big boobs?”
“Yes. And some other nice curves, too. Jen was an extremely well-shaped woman. And between being my probie, and so cute, and sexy, and she had this mix of standing up for herself and taking orders and… she had me wrapped around her finger pretty fast.”
“And you like women who challenge you, ones you can’t have.”
“There was that, too.”
“She liked me. I liked her. That was real. That’d she’d play up the sex to get the men around her to do what she wanted was true, too.”
“And Stan saw that better than you did?”
“Yeah. Probably didn’t hurt that he had a serious girl then, made him more immune to big boobs, doe eyes, and sass.”
“And it worked for her?”
“It did. There are a few things that every other NCIS director has had in common that she didn’t. One of them was twenty-years in. Department head was another. Marine or Navy service. Somehow all those ‘rules’ vanished when her name got on the list.”
“Was she a bad Director?”
He shrugs. “She was herself. She put me in charge for a week while she was at a conference. Great. Message received. Being Director is hard. I get it. So that was fine for the two of us working things out. But, I’ve never gone higher than Team Leader for a reason. I didn’t become an officer for a reason. And we lucked out and nothing too big happened that week. But if something had happened, I wouldn’t have been able to handle it, not without pissing off everyone in DC with initials, and not without making the whole agency look bad.
“She was good at people. Running them, building relationships and teams. She was good at politics. She was bad at not getting caught in the little stuff.
“Was she a good Director? I don’t know. I think there were things she could have done better, but that’s true for everyone. Are you actually asking me if I think she slept her way into that position?”
“Do you?”
“No. But she used her charm to move higher, faster than she would have otherwise. And it’s not like she wasn’t good. Not like there wasn’t substance to go with her looks. But she mixed them together and got a lot further than someone who wasn’t as pretty would have.”
“A male someone?”
“Sure, or a less attractive female one. She was tiny. And she’d look up at you, big green eyes, and say something unexpected, sharp as a whip, and dead on right, and just use that charm to shape the world around her to the way she wanted it to be.”
“How about the other ones you didn’t marry?”
“Elizabeth was… a friend with benefits? That’s what Tony’d call it.”
“How about Hollis? Were you getting serious with her?”
“We were starting to talk in that direction. She had her twenty-five in, and was thinking of retiring, wanted to know if it’d be worth it for her to stay in DC. I’d said yes. Starting to feel kind of hopeful about it. Like maybe this time it’d work…”
“But…”
“But she found out about my girls, and I’d never said anything, because I thought she knew, and I think she decided I wasn’t going to be able to get past it, and next thing I knew she’d moved to Hawaii.”
“You didn’t talk at all?” Rachel sounds credulous.
“I thought we were going to. She looked at me. I looked back at her. We didn’t say anything. She left. I figured that she’d take a day or so and then give me a call. But she didn’t. And I caught a hot case. So, eight days later, I finally come up for air, and notice there are no messages on my machine, no emails, nothing. I’d told her that…” he trails off on that.
“Told her what?”
“When she was talking about retiring. I told her I’d be around, that I wanted her to stay. Helped her fix up her place so she’d have a better home for staying. So, she knew I wasn’t going anywhere, she knew I was hoping we’d have something. But she didn’t call, and I got the message loud and clear. She retired and moved to Hawaii.”
“And you never tried to reach her?”
“Didn’t know her number. Figured she would have called if she wanted me to find her. It just ended there.”
“Was she already moved after a week?”
“No.”
“So, you had her number, you just didn’t call. A week went by and you just dropped her.”
“I think she dropped me.”
“So, you’re telling me this person you cared about just wandered off and you did nothing about it?”
“Yeah.”
“You really want me to believe you just let her go?”
“Yes.”
She’s building to something, but he’s not sure what. “How many other things have you ever just let go?”
He shrugs.
“How about Susan? Did you just let her go, too?”
He thinks about that. “Not exactly. I sent her off.”
“What happened? You obviously cared about her. How’d you make the jump from this is good to no more?”
That’s a whole lot more recent so it doesn’t take long for him to remember the, nope, this isn’t right, moment. “Valentine’s Day. We’re having lunch, and the guys are all talking about their plans. What special things they were getting or doing. Tony was worrying about not having a plan yet. Stuff like that. And I liked Susan. She’s sweet and beautiful and kind and just… just a really good person, you know? Just being around her makes you feel good.”
“She sounds great.”
“She is. She really is. Anyway… The guys are getting their various things ready, and Tony asks what I’m doing, and I… think I didn’t answer… brushed it off in a sort of Valentines never works sort of way… which was true, we caught a case and Molly was born. No one got home until the 15th. But I could hear them talking, especially Tim and Jimmy, and they were really into it. Not the hearts and flowers and cuteness stuff, but the doing something to make your woman happy part of it. Even Tony, who told us five hundred times how much he hates Valentine’s Day was saying it because he was scared of not doing enough. And I had some plans in motion, we had our Valentines that weekend, and it was nice. But that was it. It was nice. We saw a movie she’d been looking forward to, I made dinner, quiet night in front of the fireplace. It was nice. She liked it. She was happy.
“But I was going through the motions. I was doing something to make her happy, not because I was enjoying her happy, but because I didn’t want to make her sad. Tim, Tony, Jimmy, they were all doing things that would make their girls happy, and that happy would make them happy, feed them. All I was doing was avoiding sad.
“I thought about that more, and two weeks later broke up with her. Then spent a few more weeks acting like a bear. Which was when,” he taps his ring finger, “that happened.”
Rachel thinks about it. “Did making Hollis happy make you happy?”
“Yeah, it did. I repiped her home and put up drywall. Yeah, making her happy made me happy.”
“Jethro, did you really not love her, or was she just not Shannon?”
He thinks about that. “I don’t know. I’d like to think I’d have gone to see her, or called her, or something, if I had loved her.”
“Really? Would you have? On the verge of a functional relationship, something that might work, might make you happy, might threaten the sacred space you hold your love of Shannon in? Another shot at getting your heart ripped out? Do you really think you’d have gone after her if you loved her? Would you have jumped into that again?”
“No.”
“Especially after she left without saying anything to you?”
“No.”
“Did you love her?”
He closes his eyes and sighs. “Yeah. I did.”
“Good.”
Good? His look says, disbelieving.
“Good. It’s one thing if you can’t fall in love, it’s another thing if you won’t. And won’t is a lot easier to deal with than can’t.”
“Wonderful.”
“So, can you guess what this week’s homework is?”
“Think about love some more?”
“Yeah. What is love? This time not defined by Shannon. Don’t have to write it down or anything, but think about it.”
“Okay.”
Next
Chapter 293: Why Did You Marry Them
Gibbs set Rachel’s coffee on the little table she had next to her chair, and limped to the sofa, setting his crutch to his side, and taking his coffees out.
“How’s the knee doing?” she asks once he’s settled, taking a sip of the coffee. “Thank you, this is lovely.”
He nods. “Down to just the brace next week. They want me to go to physical therapy.”
“You don’t sound happy about that.”
He shrugs. “Not happy about the whole thing.” He taps his knee. “Don’t like feeling useless. They’ll only okay me for light duty once I get off the crutches. Then won’t get okayed for full duty until the physical therapy is done, and that’ll be about a week before I retire.”
“Sorry to hear it.”
“Yeah, well… It is what it is. Work with the boys. Have Ziva put me through my paces. I’ll get it done faster than they expect, but faster’ll be two weeks, three weeks before they boot me out? Not a big difference.”
“No. I guess not.” She makes a little note of that.
“What?”
“Reminding myself to talk with you about retiring, but probably not today.”
“Okay. What are we talking about today?”
“Did you do your homework?”
He nods, taking a sip of his coffee.
“Who’d you tell?”
“Penny.”
Rachel thinks about that. She knows the name but isn’t immediately coming up with who Penny is. He sees that.
“Tim’s grandma, Ducky’s…” he sort of rolls his eyes. “Can you call a woman north of eighty a girlfriend? And if I did, I’d have to listen to her lecture on she’s a woman, not a girl, and that describing her by her relationships to the men in her life diminishes her personhood. Or something like that. I zoned out last time.”
“The third corner in your grandparenting triangle?”
“Yes. Kelly’s great-grandma. Maybe that one won’t get me chewed out. She might do it just because she knows it bugs me.”
“Sounds like you have an adversarial relationship.”
“Not really. Not as smooth as the rest of the family; there’s friction but not anger…” he thinks about that and decides it feels right. “If she was thirty years younger, I would have been interested. Of course, if she was thirty years younger, I wouldn’t have been smart enough for her.”
“Is that part of the friction?”
“Nah. We met on a case—“
“Not through Tim?”
“Not really. He was taking point, she’s his grandma after all. She wasn’t talking, actually playing him, so I went in and went hard, and she may have called me a jack-booted fascist, or thought it, not sure if it actually came out, but she didn’t know I wasn’t as straight up law and order as I looked and I didn’t know she wasn’t as hippie-dippie, peacenik as she looked, and we both kind of nudge each other with it now and again.”
“Family dinners must be a blast.”
He nods, smiling. “They are. They’re good enough we have Shabbos say three out of five Fridays, and now Sunday breakfast, too.”
Rachel makes a note of that, too.
He looks at her curiously.
“One of these days I want to hear about this family you’ve built. Created families of the kind you have are fairly rare, working ones rarer still. Tim and Penny are the only two with any blood ties?”
He nods and she makes a note of that, too. Long note. He decides not to ask what she’s thinking right now. They’ll get to it sooner or later.
“So, why Penny?”
“Her husband died back in ’88. She’d been married to him all her life at that point. They lost a son in ‘Nam. Wanted to talk to someone who got it.”
“Sounds like a good choice.”
“I think so. It was a good conversation. Got to know more about her, too. Though neither of us seem to know how the switch flips and you move on. She said it just did.”
“How’d her husband die?”
“I don’t know the details. She said he was at sea, it was unexpected, and painless. It was the ‘80s and he was an Admiral, so I’m fairly sure it wasn’t combat related.”
“Admiral?”
“Yeah, her son, Tim’s dad, is one, too.”
“You weren’t kidding about not being smart enough.”
“No. Not smart enough. Not ambitious enough. You need at least a PhD before she’s willing to look at you for more than a good time.”
“She must be a very interesting woman.”
“She is.”
“He likely died of natural causes?”
“I think so.”
“And she doesn’t think she had anything to do with how he died? No guilt?”
“Probably not.”
Rachel stares at him.
“Yeah, I know, probably has a lot to do with flipping that switch.” She makes a note at that, and he has a feeling she’s thinking up his next homework assignment.
“How did saying it feel?”
His look could best be described as, how do you think?
“That’s the point of this, Jethro, I don’t assume how it works for you, I ask. And even when I do know, I still ask, because then you have to think about it, put it into words, and actually tell me.”
“Really uncomfortable.”
“Why?”
“Talking? Bringing it up out of the middle of nowhere? That look that comes right after you say it? All of it?”Rachel nods.
“Are you going to do it again?”
“Probably. There’s this diner we go to. Elaine’s the lady who runs the counter. She asked when I put the ring on, ‘Go and get married again, hon?’ and I said no, and left it, and she hasn’t poked. Probably tell her the next time I go in for a late night coffee.”
“Sounds good.”
He shrugs. “She’ll give me a hug and pie.”
“Hugs and pie are good.”
“Not saying they aren’t just…”
“It’s easier to be invulnerable?”
“Yes!”
“Too bad. You’re human, Jethro. None of us are made of stone.”
“Yay,” he says, dry and sarcastic.
She takes another drink of her coffee and picks up the pages he wrote about the wives and girlfriends. “I was reading over your collection of ladies, and I wanted to know, why did you marry them?”
He blows out a frustrated breath. “Beyond it seemed like a good idea at the time?”
“Yes. You’re a fairly traditional guy, so can I assume that at some point, for each of these women, you went out, found a ring, came up with some sort of ‘let’s get married’ speech, set up some sort of romantic encounter, and then stuck around long enough to plan a wedding, and then got married?”
“Only two weddings.”
“Hm. One was Shannon, who was the other one?”
“Diane.”
“What were the other two?”
“Eloped. Justice of the Peace with Hannah, Marine Chaplain owed me a favor for Stephanie.”
“Okay. So let’s start with Hannah. What made you think, ‘I should marry this woman?’”
He exhales, looking a bit sheepish. “Not exactly my finest moment.”
She smiles at that and nudges him on. “We can talk about your finest moments, later. Why’d you marry her?”
“She was young, twenty-three, going to school to be a pharmacist. Which was why she was in DC in the first place. She finished about four months after we started dating. Her family was in Buffalo. They wanted her to find a job closer to them. Wanted her to drop me, move home, meet a nice guy, one a lot closer to her age, settle down, make lots of little red-haired grandbabies. They didn’t much like me, probably because they had an easier time seeing who I was than she did. So, she was telling me about her parents giving her grief about heading back north. I wasn’t in love with her. But I didn’t want her to leave. And if I didn’t make a move, she was going to go, and I was going to be rattling around the house with just memories and bourbon for company.
“So, I found a ring, and I lied my ass off about loving her for the rest of our days, and she said yes, and two weeks later she was Mrs. Gibbs.”
“How was it?”
“Okay, for about a year. That year was better than Diane or Stephanie. We got on pretty well. Not… not what I wanted, but better than nothing.”
“And after that year?”
“I caught the Boone case, and that one ate me, and our marriage, alive. I don’t even know when she actually left. Just one day I noticed that her stuff was gone. She could have left that afternoon, she could have left a month earlier, and I had no idea.
“Didn’t contest the divorce. Signed over whatever she wanted, besides the house. That was mine. That’s the only thing I’ve managed to keep a hold of, besides my tools, through the three divorces.”
“And Diane?”
He smiles at that. He might not remember where they were when they met, but he certainly remembered that look she gave him, and the way she said, ‘Back off. I don’t like cops.’ “She told me I wasn’t her type.”
“And you had to prove her wrong?”
He shakes his head, half-smile still on his face. “Or die trying.”
“Why did you have a real wedding with her?”
“Diane and I liked anything that made sparks. Sex, teasing, fighting… Anything that got us hot was good. And a wedding is seventeen million things to fight about. Hell, I almost cancelled the thing three times just to stretch it out even longer, because the arguing was fun.”
“Did she think it was fun?”
“She changed the date on me twice.”
“Cold feet?”
“Moved it up the second time. Nah. Just messing with me. But eventually, we did get married, and we had a great honeymoon, and we got home and ran out of stuff to argue about. And if we weren’t fighting, I wasn’t interested.”
Rachel stares at him, looking like she doesn’t think that’s the whole story. “You won?”
“Yeah. I won. I proved her wrong. And I got bored. And she got angry. And that kept things going a little longer. I got more and more into work. Into the next case, the next puzzle, the next challenge. She got more and more annoyed. Then she got mean. And I pulled in further. She got clingy and meaner. I took Agent Afloat. We were divorced by the time I got back.”
Rachel squints at him. “The way you write about her seems… fonder.”
“I am fond of her. Now. And a long time between then and now helps. We keep running into each other. And… We’re okay… ish, now. At peace, definitely. For some reason, every single fall, it’s practically clockwork, sometime between September and November, I’ll find Fornel or Diane at a case, and within minutes the other one shows up.”
“God’s amused by you three together?”
He rolls his eyes and sighs a little. “Satan probably. Every year. And I already know the one after next. Tobias is getting married in October of ’16. Last time she got married, she invited both of us. We didn’t go. Tobias was going to, got all dressed up, showed up at my place, saw I was in street clothing, and we spent the rest of the day drinking in my basement.
“So, he’s already got it set with Wendy, she’s cool with it. After all, she’s not just his ex, but also his daughter’s mom. He’s going to invite her. And she’ll come. I’ll be there, I’m the best man.” Gibbs looks up, licks his lips, and shakes his head.
“Jethro?”
“Unless she’s found herself a new pet, she’ll show up, we’ll argue, it’ll be fun, and we’ll end up in bed together.”
That got a curious look from Rachel.
“We were always good at pushing each other’s buttons. And so far, every time we’ve run into each other, she’s been married, or had a new boyfriend. But last I heard, she was single again.”
“You seem pretty sure your advances would be welcome.”
He’s not entirely sure what that look on Rachel’s face means. “Are you asking if I think I’m God’s gift to women, and she’ll just fall for me because I think it might be interesting, or if I actually know something to indicate making a move would be welcome?”
She nods, nicely, but nods. He sends her a wry look, one that makes it pretty clear that he knows he’s not God’s gift to women, not these days.
“She told me I was her Shannon. I think, especially if we spent a night sniping at each other, all dressed up, kind of tipsy, it’d be welcome. Probably end up making out in the parking lot.”
And while Rachel looks really surprised at that, she’s not surprised about the making out in the parking lot comment. “She knew about Shannon? Did you tell her?”
“No. Never spoke her name for… close to a decade. Like I said, we had a great honeymoon, we got home, and I got bored. She knew I was bored. Knew something was wrong, didn’t know what. We limped around for a few months, and she got more and more angry, and I dug further and further into work. The challenge was over. I’d won. She was Mrs. Gibbs, mine, and even whacking me with a golf club didn’t shake the boredom.
“I took Agent Afloat. Six months in the Med. While I was gone, she went through all my stuff, and found out about them.”
“Oh. Yet, even with that, it sounds like you’re still attracted to her.”
“I am. She’s beautiful. And I do like her. Always did. Probably always will. Don’t like the way she gets mean and shrill when she’s unhappy, but I do like her.”
“So. You aren’t the same man you were then. Say you did go to the wedding, you did get tipsy and push each other’s buttons, find yourselves a quiet bit of parking lot, would a new start be welcome? Obviously she cares for you. You like her…”
“Don’t think I’d be able to trust her enough for it. Not for more than sex.”
Another curious look.
“I’d been afloat for five weeks when I got the ‘I’m pregnant’ letter.”
Cranston winces. She remembers the comment about the vasectomy.
“Tobias’?”
“Yeah. Her name is Emily. She’s sixteen. Beautiful girl. Funny, smart as a whip, calls me Uncle Gibbs.”
“You have a relationship with Emily Fornell?” Cranston looks stunned and amused.
He chuckles, shaking his head. “Life is weird. I’m her father’s best friend and her mom’s ex-husband. Yeah. She’s at my house for extended family parties a few times a year. Occasionally she crashes at my place when they’re driving her buggy. My door’s always open, and they both trust that if she’s at my place, she’s safe and well-looked after.”
Cranston closes her eyes, smiles, and shakes her head. “Sounds like you and Diane are better than okay… ish.”
“We’re okay, now.”
“But you don’t trust her?”
“Not deep down.”
“But you trust Tobias?”
“Yeah.”
“Why?” Takes two to make a baby clear in her eyes.
He licks his lips and looks up again, trying to figure out how to put this feeling into words. “The three of us got on great. Dinner at my place, especially before we got married, was always a lot of fun. I knew he liked her. I knew she liked him. And when I got the letter… It was the nineties, hard to make calls off a battleship, but I was the Agent Afloat, so I managed it. I called Tobias. And I was so…
“So…”
“I knew it wasn’t mine. I mean, I just knew. I’d told her I didn’t want kids. She seemed on board with that. She’d been on the pill.”
“You didn’t tell her about the vasectomy?”
“No. Couldn’t tell her about that without telling her why I’d had one. Not like the scar is obvious, so, never mentioned it.
“So, I knew she couldn’t be mine. But, I saw the word on the paper and felt the thrill of it and the kick in the balls all at once. I called Tobias, and he was acting off, but I was too out of it to really notice, but he did remind me that sometimes vasectomies heal up, so I should get it tested before I got a hold of a divorce lawyer.”
“So you did.”
“Yeah, easy test. Anyone with a microscope can do it.”
“And you hadn’t had any sort of miraculous recovery.”
“No. And when the medic told me that, I realized that Tobias had been acting off, and I suddenly knew why. And that hurt like fuck. And after I got back and beat the hell out of him, we didn't talk, outside of a case, for year. But… He’s not the one I married. He’s not the one who told me he was okay with not having children. And he’s not the one who slept with my best friend and tried to pass off his kid as mine.”
Cranston nods at that. “What do you think she was doing?”
“I think she thought that, after seeing the shots of Kelly, that if there was a baby it’d get my attention, and keep it. And it would have. She was dead right. Like I said, Diane always knew how to push my buttons. If Emily had been mine… But she wasn’t.”
“Does Emily know…”
He shakes his head. “She’s under the impression Diane and I got divorced a year earlier than we actually did.”
“Ah.”
“None of the three of us see any reason for her to know the truth on that.”
“Probably wise. How about Stephanie? Why did you marry her?”
He shrugs.
“Don’t give me that, you know.”
“I couldn’t have Shannon, and I needed a distraction from Jen. She looked, smelled, and acted enough like both of them that I could kind of pretend.”
“That’s why you slept with her. Why did you marry her?”
He glares at Rachel. She smiles back.
“Come on, I’m not stupid, and you aren’t either. And we both know you’ll sleep with a woman for distraction, but that’s not why you’ll marry one.”
“She wanted to.”
“Nope.”
“Nope?” He’s got a startled look on his face when he asks that.
“Nope.” Rachel shakes her head. “You and I are not strangers, we have not just met, and I do not, for one second, believe a man who couldn’t be bothered to come home on time for dinner regularly married a woman because she wanted it. Try again. Dig deep. Why did you marry her?”
He hasn’t thought about it for years. So he does. Moscow, it was brutally cold and very snowy and lonely and why marry her?
Oh. “In ’96 Franks left, and I got a new Probie. Stan Burley. Great guy. Good agent. Put up with my crap and then some. Including the fact that I called him Steve for four years just to see if I could piss him off enough to do something about it. In ’98 NCIS began to shift its main focus away from crime to anti-terrorism. At that point in time we had nothing in the way of anti-terrorism talent.
“I’m good at languages. Stan’s family was well-connected. He was a Senator’s aide for years. Law school, all the rest of that. So, they sent us to Europe to head up the new NCIS anti-terrorism squad.”
“Europe?”
“Moscow, Paris, Romania, few other places.”
“Don’t sound like hotbeds of international terrorism.”
“Like I said, we weren’t the crown jewel of the anti-terrorism world. Anyway, it was ’98, and NCIS also wanted a stronger female presence, especially on all of the ‘premier’ teams. So Stan and I got this new Probie, and that was Jen.
“Stan’s not stupid, and he’s not blind, so he knew how I felt about Jen. He saw the way I’d watch her. Saw how she’d watch me. Probably had a better idea of what was going on in her mind about that than I did.
“We’re in Moscow, and we know we’re going to Paris, long mission, at least four months, maybe longer. We know Jen’s going, because the couple in love cover works well. What we don’t know is which of the two of us is going.
“He was going to go over my head. He’d knew I’d fuck it up. And he was right, I did exactly what he thought I was going to, and we got a few lucky breaks and were able to pull it out of the weeds. But I know it, and Jen knows it, and Stand did, too. In the end it was luck. Because I fucked up and got distracted and put more into her than the mission.
“We were planning the mission, and he’s giving me the ‘you aren’t going to Paris with her’ look, and I had a girlfriend, and I knew we were still a few months out, so…
“So, Moscow has, or at least had, the kind of malls where you could buy anything and everything. Stephanie and I were out, and she’d been moping about something, like me missing dinner, so we walk past one of the jewelry stores, and there’s diamonds all over the place. She’s staring at them. I nod at them and say, ‘Pick one out.’ Ten days later we were married, and Stan stopped riding me so hard about Jen.”
“That’s cold.”
“It was Moscow.”
“Cute. You said Stan had a better idea of what Jen was doing. What did you mean by that?”
“I was the next rung up the ladder, and she was going to climb me however she could. I saw pretty, sassy redhead with…” He realizes he’d kept that sentence going a few words longer than necessary and stops.
“With…”
“Attractive curves—“
She smiles at the way he’s censoring himself. “Big boobs?”
“Yes. And some other nice curves, too. Jen was an extremely well-shaped woman. And between being my probie, and so cute, and sexy, and she had this mix of standing up for herself and taking orders and… she had me wrapped around her finger pretty fast.”
“And you like women who challenge you, ones you can’t have.”
“There was that, too.”
“She liked me. I liked her. That was real. That’d she’d play up the sex to get the men around her to do what she wanted was true, too.”
“And Stan saw that better than you did?”
“Yeah. Probably didn’t hurt that he had a serious girl then, made him more immune to big boobs, doe eyes, and sass.”
“And it worked for her?”
“It did. There are a few things that every other NCIS director has had in common that she didn’t. One of them was twenty-years in. Department head was another. Marine or Navy service. Somehow all those ‘rules’ vanished when her name got on the list.”
“Was she a bad Director?”
He shrugs. “She was herself. She put me in charge for a week while she was at a conference. Great. Message received. Being Director is hard. I get it. So that was fine for the two of us working things out. But, I’ve never gone higher than Team Leader for a reason. I didn’t become an officer for a reason. And we lucked out and nothing too big happened that week. But if something had happened, I wouldn’t have been able to handle it, not without pissing off everyone in DC with initials, and not without making the whole agency look bad.
“She was good at people. Running them, building relationships and teams. She was good at politics. She was bad at not getting caught in the little stuff.
“Was she a good Director? I don’t know. I think there were things she could have done better, but that’s true for everyone. Are you actually asking me if I think she slept her way into that position?”
“Do you?”
“No. But she used her charm to move higher, faster than she would have otherwise. And it’s not like she wasn’t good. Not like there wasn’t substance to go with her looks. But she mixed them together and got a lot further than someone who wasn’t as pretty would have.”
“A male someone?”
“Sure, or a less attractive female one. She was tiny. And she’d look up at you, big green eyes, and say something unexpected, sharp as a whip, and dead on right, and just use that charm to shape the world around her to the way she wanted it to be.”
“How about the other ones you didn’t marry?”
“Elizabeth was… a friend with benefits? That’s what Tony’d call it.”
“How about Hollis? Were you getting serious with her?”
“We were starting to talk in that direction. She had her twenty-five in, and was thinking of retiring, wanted to know if it’d be worth it for her to stay in DC. I’d said yes. Starting to feel kind of hopeful about it. Like maybe this time it’d work…”
“But…”
“But she found out about my girls, and I’d never said anything, because I thought she knew, and I think she decided I wasn’t going to be able to get past it, and next thing I knew she’d moved to Hawaii.”
“You didn’t talk at all?” Rachel sounds credulous.
“I thought we were going to. She looked at me. I looked back at her. We didn’t say anything. She left. I figured that she’d take a day or so and then give me a call. But she didn’t. And I caught a hot case. So, eight days later, I finally come up for air, and notice there are no messages on my machine, no emails, nothing. I’d told her that…” he trails off on that.
“Told her what?”
“When she was talking about retiring. I told her I’d be around, that I wanted her to stay. Helped her fix up her place so she’d have a better home for staying. So, she knew I wasn’t going anywhere, she knew I was hoping we’d have something. But she didn’t call, and I got the message loud and clear. She retired and moved to Hawaii.”
“And you never tried to reach her?”
“Didn’t know her number. Figured she would have called if she wanted me to find her. It just ended there.”
“Was she already moved after a week?”
“No.”
“So, you had her number, you just didn’t call. A week went by and you just dropped her.”
“I think she dropped me.”
“So, you’re telling me this person you cared about just wandered off and you did nothing about it?”
“Yeah.”
“You really want me to believe you just let her go?”
“Yes.”
She’s building to something, but he’s not sure what. “How many other things have you ever just let go?”
He shrugs.
“How about Susan? Did you just let her go, too?”
He thinks about that. “Not exactly. I sent her off.”
“What happened? You obviously cared about her. How’d you make the jump from this is good to no more?”
That’s a whole lot more recent so it doesn’t take long for him to remember the, nope, this isn’t right, moment. “Valentine’s Day. We’re having lunch, and the guys are all talking about their plans. What special things they were getting or doing. Tony was worrying about not having a plan yet. Stuff like that. And I liked Susan. She’s sweet and beautiful and kind and just… just a really good person, you know? Just being around her makes you feel good.”
“She sounds great.”
“She is. She really is. Anyway… The guys are getting their various things ready, and Tony asks what I’m doing, and I… think I didn’t answer… brushed it off in a sort of Valentines never works sort of way… which was true, we caught a case and Molly was born. No one got home until the 15th. But I could hear them talking, especially Tim and Jimmy, and they were really into it. Not the hearts and flowers and cuteness stuff, but the doing something to make your woman happy part of it. Even Tony, who told us five hundred times how much he hates Valentine’s Day was saying it because he was scared of not doing enough. And I had some plans in motion, we had our Valentines that weekend, and it was nice. But that was it. It was nice. We saw a movie she’d been looking forward to, I made dinner, quiet night in front of the fireplace. It was nice. She liked it. She was happy.
“But I was going through the motions. I was doing something to make her happy, not because I was enjoying her happy, but because I didn’t want to make her sad. Tim, Tony, Jimmy, they were all doing things that would make their girls happy, and that happy would make them happy, feed them. All I was doing was avoiding sad.
“I thought about that more, and two weeks later broke up with her. Then spent a few more weeks acting like a bear. Which was when,” he taps his ring finger, “that happened.”
Rachel thinks about it. “Did making Hollis happy make you happy?”
“Yeah, it did. I repiped her home and put up drywall. Yeah, making her happy made me happy.”
“Jethro, did you really not love her, or was she just not Shannon?”
He thinks about that. “I don’t know. I’d like to think I’d have gone to see her, or called her, or something, if I had loved her.”
“Really? Would you have? On the verge of a functional relationship, something that might work, might make you happy, might threaten the sacred space you hold your love of Shannon in? Another shot at getting your heart ripped out? Do you really think you’d have gone after her if you loved her? Would you have jumped into that again?”
“No.”
“Especially after she left without saying anything to you?”
“No.”
“Did you love her?”
He closes his eyes and sighs. “Yeah. I did.”
“Good.”
Good? His look says, disbelieving.
“Good. It’s one thing if you can’t fall in love, it’s another thing if you won’t. And won’t is a lot easier to deal with than can’t.”
“Wonderful.”
“So, can you guess what this week’s homework is?”
“Think about love some more?”
“Yeah. What is love? This time not defined by Shannon. Don’t have to write it down or anything, but think about it.”
“Okay.”
Next
February 26, 2014
Shards To A Whole: Chapter 292
McGee-centric character study/romance. Want to start at the beginning? Click here.
Chapter 292: Shared Past
“My wife is dead.”
It feels weird to say it out loud, doubly so because there’s no one else in the room with him.
And he’s fairly sure that saying it to himself isn’t what Cranston meant by say it to someone.
God, how the hell do you say that to someone? You don’t just walk up to them and say, ‘Hey, guess what, my wife is dead.” That’s just horribly uncomfortable for everyone involved. And sure, Gibbs doesn’t usually go out of his way to avoid making people feel uncomfortable, but there’s a huge difference between staring down a perp and polite conversation among equals.
And at home, in his basement, starting the measurements for Anna Palmer’s crib, he’s not even sure who he’d say that to.
Mike.
Mike would have been his first choice. But, he looks around, and doesn’t see Mike’s ghost, doesn’t feel him, and he’s fairly certain that if he tells Rachel he’s having heart to hearts with ghosts about dealing with grief he is rapidly going to find himself embracing an even earlier retirement than he was expecting.
Fornell and Ducky had both been upset that he’d never told them. Understood, eventually, but still upset. So… he puts his pencil down and picks up his phone and hits Ducky’s contact number.
“Hello, Jethro.” Penny’s voice. He’s getting ready to ask for Duck when a few things hit him. Penny’s a widow. Penny lost her husband after forty years. The husband that by all accounts she adored.
Penny’s done this.
Penny has perspective.
“Hi, Penny. Are you busy?”
“Not right this second.”
“Wanna get some coffee with me?”
He hears the pause, where she’s wondering what is going on. “Are you serious?”
He nods, realizes she can’t see it, and says, “Yes.”
“Just me?”
“Just you.”
“Do you know you dialed Ducky?”
“Yep.”
“Okay. Did you want me to give him a message.”
“Nope.” He can imagine the perplexed look on her face.
“Do you have my phone number?”
“Uh huh.”
“So why did you call him?”
“Why did you pick up?”
“Phone was sitting next to me, and he’s in the kitchen.”
“Then that’s why I called his phone. So, coffee?”
He can hear the confusion in her voice as she says, “Sure.”
“Jethro,” Penny says as she slips into the booth across from him. Before he could say much more than ‘Hi,’ Elaine’s over.
She hands the menu with the specials on it to Penny, while asking, “What can I get you to start off with?”
“Coffee’s fine.”
“Iced or hot?”
“Hot.” Elaine nods at that and then says, “New friend, Jethro?”
He smiles at her. “Keeping track of my ladies?”
“You know it, Hon. Looking for your next sweetie.”
“Elaine, this is Penny, Tim’s grandma.”
She looks more carefully at Penny and says, “I should have seen that straight away. Shape of your eyes and face… Well, welcome Ms. Penny. Used to just get Jethro, but the last few years he’s been bringing the family in. Get to see your darling baby girl on Sunday mornings. Anything you want, just holler and we’ll have it for you. On the menu or not.”
“Just Penny is fine.” Eliane nods as that and heads off to get her coffee. “Sunday mornings?” Penny asks Gibbs.
“You know I’ve been going to church and Sunday dinner with them?”
Penny nods; Breena and Tim had mentioned that in passing.
“Last two, and hopefully going forward, weeks, we’ve had breakfast here first. Eight on Sundays, you and Duck want to come, to breakfast or church too, you’re welcome. Meet Breena’s family. They’ll probably invite you to supper after.”
Penny nods at that, smiling, as Elaine set a cup of coffee down in front of her, along with cream and sugar.
“Not sure how you like it, but I know tastes tend to run in families, and he takes his with cream and sugar.”
Penny pours a splash of cream into her coffee as well as one sugar. “They do tend to. He had his first cup of it at my house. Would have been ten or eleven, drank some of mine, liked it.” She stops telling the story there, but Gibbs catches the hesitation and knows there’s more on that for when Elaine heads off.
Elaine sets a piece of strawberry pie in front of him to go with his coffee. She looks to Penny. “We’ve got pecan and raspberry, too. I know Tim likes both of them.”
“Is the raspberry a frozen pie or a jam pie?”
“Oreo cookie crust, raspberry ice cream, raspberry puree, whipped cream and chocolate shavings on top.”
“Yeah, he would love that,” she says with a smile. “Bring me a piece, too.”
Elaine nods at that and heads off again.
“So, let me guess,” Gibbs says quietly, “John was fine with him drinking coffee until he saw it was yours and sweet and creamy and then yelled about how men drink it black?”
“Something like that. I was there, so it was just a few sarcastic comments, not full out yelling, but in context of what happened when I wasn’t there, Tim dropping the coffee, spilling it down his shirt, which resulted in more sarcasm about being clumsy, and never drinking it again when his dad was around makes a whole lot more sense.”
Jethro shakes his head and grits his teeth. And while learning more about Tim and his dad is something he’s interested in, it’s something he wants to learn from Tim, and also if he gets into it, he’ll use it as a way to avoid dealing with his own stuff.
He doesn’t know if Penny senses what he’s thinking, or if she’s just curious, but she asks, “So… what’s got you offering coffee, Jethro? We’re obviously not talking about Tim, or you would have had something to say besides just gritting your teeth. We planning a surprise for Ducky?”
“No. We could be, I guess, but we aren’t… unless you want to.”
Penny laughs at how startled he looks by that idea. “I’ll put that on the back burner. So, if it’s not about Ducky, what’s going on?”
He takes a sip of his coffee, not saying anything for a long second. Then put it down and exhaled deeply. “Did Tim tell you he’s got me seeing someone?”
“No, and what sort of someone?”
“A counselor. Dealing with…” another long exhale, “everything.”
“No. He didn’t mention that, and I’m glad to hear it.”
“Yeah, great.” He’s feeling monumentally uncomfortable, and while she’s listening attentively, she’s not meeting him halfway or filling in the blanks on her own. “It’s ummm… yeah…”
“Less than easy or comfortable?”
He nods decisively at that and jumps over the cliff. Dithering about it can’t make it any easier. “My wife and daughter are dead. They were murdered when I was in Iraq. They are the loves of my life. And they’re gone. And I haven’t handled it well. And I realized that you’ve dealt with something similar.” He tries to smile with that, but it comes off more pathetic than anything else.
Penny reaches across the table and squeezes his hand.
“You two were married forty years, right?” he asks as her hand withdraws.
“Yeah. Met in early ’46, when I was fourteen and he was twenty-four. The Langstons were a navy family, too, and my dad was Nelson’s commanding officer. Brought him home for working dinners a few nights a week. It was right after the war, I had a twenty and twenty-two-year-old sister at home, and my dad was dangling them in front of him, thinking he was good husband material for them.
“He was a Captain then. Working on making better aircraft carriers. I was bright and precocious and interested in math and geometry and how thing flew. My dad thought he was humoring me, letting me join in some of those conversations. After a few months of it, most nights we’d wrap up dinner, my mom and Elsa, the oldest sister would clear up the table, and Nelson would spread out his drawings and calculations, and we’d work on them together until I had to start my own homework or go to bed.
“By ‘48 he’d decided that he couldn’t do a better job of trying to build a better aircraft carrier until he really knew what it was like to fly. He was accepted into the naval aviator training program, and we got married fast and headed to Pensacola, three weeks shy of my seventeenth birthday.”
Gibbs shakes his head at that. Then he thinks for a moment. “Would have been forty years for us in October of ’18.”
Penny knows how old he is and does the math. “So you were babies, too.”
“Not quite that young, but yeah. We were eighteen when we met. Really met. Lived in the same small town, went to school together, but were never in the same class. And even if we had been, I probably wouldn’t have been brave enough to talk to her.”
Penny smiles at that.
“Were you Mrs. McGee back then, when you first got married?”
“Mrs. Captain Nelson McGee.”
Gibbs laughs at that.
Penny sips her coffee and takes a bite of the pie. “I was so obnoxiously proper back in the day. At least about things like that. Even back then having a seventeen-year-old bride, especially in the Officer Corp made you stick out. So, I dressed older, my manners were impeccable, and I was pretty enough to be attractive, but not so pretty that men wouldn’t listen to what I had to say when I said it. I didn’t talk a lot, not to the others, but when I did have something to say, it was always dead on right.”
“How’d you get to be Dr. Langston?”
“Finished high school by correspondence just about the time John was born in ’49. Had three more boys and finished my Bachelors by ’56. Began working on original research in ’57. I already knew that in the field I was working, medical technology, that Penelope McGee wasn’t going to get any traction. And P. McGee didn’t sound much better. So I’d publish as P. Langston. There wasn’t biotech per se at that point, but in ’61 John’s Hopkins wanted to move in that direction, and, without knowing P. Langston was a woman, they offered me a research position based on the strength of my publications. I said yes. They were awfully shocked when I showed up, but Dr. Renner, who ran the program knew I was the real deal, and kept me on.
“You know about some of the stuff I worked on after that. A lot of it is still classified. But by ’72 my husband was an Admiral, my oldest son was a Lieutenant Junior Grade in Vietnam, James, our second boy, had been killed in action, and Michael and Thomas were still too young to enlist.”
“I didn’t know you’d lost a child.”
“Hasn’t come up in conversation, and, though I’m sure Tim’s aware of the existence of his Uncle James, it’s not like they ever met.”
Gibbs nods at that. “You two made it through though…”
“By the skin of our teeth. By the end of ’72, I’d legally changed my name back to Langston and drawn up the divorce papers.”
“But never pulled the trigger on it?”
“No. We worked a lot of it out, and after that dinner parties at the Admiral’s house were always…” she smiles, “interesting.I was done being horribly proper, and he decided that having me, as me, in all my me-ness, was worth the occasional uncomfortable moment with the higher ups.”
“Not a lot of higher ups when you hit flag rank.”
“There is that. The number of guys he couldn’t tell to go to hell with impunity was fewer than ten.” Gibbs thinks about that and nods. “What did you do when he died?”
“Handled it." She says with a rueful look. "I was a Navy wife, an Admiral’s widow, stiff upper lip and all that crap. The Navy took care of the burial. Whatever’s left of him is deep in the Pacific somewhere, maybe swimming around as ten or twenty generations of some sort of meat-eating critter. He’d have liked that. That maybe there’s a king crab out there that’s part him.
“You live with sailors or fishermen, you’ll notice something, they don’t, usually, eat crab. Maybe they do now, so few of them get killed in action, but especially when I was young, you could always tell a navy family or a fisherman’s family because crab and lobster, no matter how cheap it was, and in Boston it was cheap, never went on the menu. Didn’t know who you were eating. But he’d joke about that, how one day he’d be the biggest, meanest, oldest king crab scuttling along in the Pacific.” She makes a pincher gesture with her fingers. Gibbs smiles and nods.
“I knew it as soon as I heard the knock. There’s that, pause, stopping in front of the door that people just don’t do when its good news. I heard the footsteps, heard the pause, and then the knock, slow, precise, and I knew. Hell, back during Korea and Vietnam, until we lost James, I was one of the people who’d stand on the porch, next to the Chaplain, ready to help comfort.
“I planned a very proper memorial, stoically took the condolences of the probably thousand people who dropped in over the course of three days. John brought me his flag, but I wouldn’t take it. It meant more to him than it did to me, so he kept it. He’s got it in his office along with all the medals.”
“And after?”
She smiles again. “Four day after the funeral, after everyone had left, when I was just knocking about alone in my house, the way I had been doing for a decade at that point... It was just like him being at sea, except it wasn't because he wasn't ever going to come home again. That alone and waiting had changed to just alone. I broke down, finally let go of stoic, cried for days, and then I cut my hair off. Total buzz cut. I think it was a third of an inch long. Packed everything up. Gave most of it away. Put some of it in storage. Tim’s mom got a few boxes. And then I bought a ticket to Italy and spent the next two years traveling. We were going to travel. He had placed he wanted me to see. I had places I wanted to see. So, I did them. Took pictures. Sent post cards home. Tim probably still has some of them. Didn’t come home until I was feeling like a person again.”
“How’d that happen?”
“I don’t know.” The expression on her face is soft, comforting. “It just did. You ever chip a tooth?”
He nods.
“You know how you just can’t not keep poking it with your tongue, and you end up with a chipped tooth and a sore on your tongue.”
He nods at that too.
“But eventually, you get the tooth fixed, and eventually your tongue stops hurting.”
“Yeah.”
“That’s what happened. Eventually it stopped hurting so bad. He went the way he wanted to. Sooner than either of us would have liked, but it was fast, painless, and at sea. He couldn’t have asked for more than that.”
“Still miss him?”
“Sure. Especially for family things. I love sharing Molly and Kelly with Ducky. That’s true and always will be. But I would have liked to have seen Nelson hold his great grand-daughter, too. Wanna hear something funny?”
“Sure.”
“They would have liked each other. You’d have never gotten the two of them to shut up. Nelson loved stories, too, and had a million of them. He was a good listener and a good story teller and the two of them would have gotten on splendidly.”
Gibbs smiles at that, trying to imagine both men together.
“I think Tim gets that from him. He always had to put everything into stories. It was how he made sense of the world.”
“You have any serious boyfriends between Nelson and Ducky?”
She smiles at that, looking very amused. “I had friends. Some very good friends. Some less good friends. Some acquaintances. Ducky’s the only man I’ve attempted to live with, since.
“One of the things I’ve missed most about Nelson was a man who didn’t find my mind a threat. Someone who would love me because of it, instead of in spite of it. I’m an academic. Even traveling, I tended to stay in places filled with people who live and die by their minds. And what I rapidly found out was that men who had a brain, and a modicum of charm, and who weren’t intimidated by a woman with a brain, were all married by the time they hit my age. The ones who weren’t, were like Ducky, married to a job. Or they were grad students or undergrads, which was fun, but not any sort of long term solution.
“Jerks and blowhards existed in droves. Mincing piranhas who couldn’t have identified manhood, let alone been one, tons of them.”
Gibbs was looking at her curiously. It never occurred to him that someone who was proud of being arrested at different peace/feminist rallies would appreciate “manhood.”
She sees the look, and responds to it with, “Women don’t need men. But we want them. I never had any problem with any man who wanted me and wanted me to want him. I had and have a whole lot of problems with men who try to create or uphold a world where I need one to survive.”
“People like to be needed.”
“Men like power. Being needed creates power. Men especially love the power and hate the responsibility of that power. So they write laws that codify the power and let them off easy on the responsibility.”
Gibbs decides this is a good point to get off politics or philosophy or whatever this is and get back to family history and getting through grief.
“What happened after James died?”
“Didn’t like the last topic, hit too close?”
“Don’t like being judged based on the actions of every other asshole on earth. I imagine you don’t, either.”
“Fair enough. June of ’72. Things were slowing down, but not done, in Vietnam. Nelson was the newest Admiral of the US Navy. John was a Lieutenant Junior Grade. James was three weeks out of Annapolis, brand new Ensign. They were both turtle navy.” She gives Gibbs a questioning look, making sure he knows what that is. He nods, familiar with that term for Naval deployments on rivers. “Bringing supplies in, taking men out, stuff like that. Dangerous as hell, on a tiny boat, filled with weapons, moving through the jungle, no real line of sight, possible ambush from anywhere on shore, and on occasion, the rivers got mined, too.
“Three weeks in, his boat took fire, he didn’t make it.” She looks away from Gibbs, out the window of the diner, just staring into space for a long minute. “That never gets easier, does it?” she asks, shaking her head, ruefully.
“No. It doesn’t.”
“I’d already joined the peace movement at that point. Quietly. That was the deal Nelson and I had, once he made Admiral, I could be as outspoken as I wanted to, but before that, I needed to keep quiet. And I did. And he’d give me occasional bits of information on thing he thought were dishonorable, that no honest man could support, and I made sure they saw the light of day.
“Like what you were doing with the Annex project.”
“That was one of them. It’s one thing to be a warrior and to fight other warriors. It’s another all together to unleash plague and famine upon non-combatants. Neither of us approved of that. Napalm to clear a landing zone is one thing. Napalm on a village is another all-together.”
Gibbs nods at that. There have been numerous times he’s wondered what he would have done if he’d been five or ten years older and ended up in Vietnam. He and Fornell have had a few long conversations about that.
“When James died, quiet stopped. I started getting arrested. Admiral’s wife at protest march made for impressive headlines. I wanted to destroy anything that had a hand in sending my son off to die. But to do that, I had to cut ties with two of my sons, Michael was a plebe at Annapolis that year, and my husband.
“When we should have been pulling together to share the grief, we all ran our own separate directions and screamed it to the heavens.”
“But you pulled together eventually?”
“Eventually. Like Nelson, James was buried at sea. Should have been shipped home, but when you’re an Admiral you can get things like that done. We’ve never been a dust to dust family. From the sea we came, and to the sea we return. Or as Nelson would say, ‘We’re water given breath and set free to walk upon God’s green earth. Allowed a short time to see what else is out there, and then we’ll return to the oceans that gave us life.’ But, because of that, I never really got a proper goodbye. And I was so mad at him.
“Eventually in early ’73, Nelson got home. And we got a chance to talk, and yell, and cry, and scream, and fight and mourn and all of it… And when it was done, we still loved each other and we decided to stay together. What did you do after your girls died?”
“Earned my second purple heart the day they died. Didn’t come out of the coma I was in until after they were buried. I was invalided home, granted compassionate leave on top of that. And for a week, I more or less lay on the sofa, stared at the ceiling, and did nothing. Only time I did anything was when Mike Franks, the NIS agent handling Shannon and Kelly’s case would come around. He’d get me up enough to eat something and occasionally shower, took care of me in a hands off sort of way.
“Wasn’t like he was asking me questions or anything. They knew why my girls had been killed. They knew who did it. It was just a matter of trying to get the guy who did it.
“That was the pattern for about two months. He’d pop by once or twice a week, usually with a bottle of bourbon, two cups of coffee, a bag of McDonalds hamburgers and fries, and ‘fill me in on their progress’ while pouring the bourbon, coffee, and food down my throat.
“Eventually he hit the point where they knew where the guy was, but Mexico wasn’t going to go out of its way to capture or extradite him. So, Mike invited me in to his office, told me that it’d be a good plan to show up having gotten a shower and shave so no one would notice me when I went in, and then while he was ‘releasing personal items to me’ he got called away from his desk while the file with everything about the man who killed my girls, including their best guess as to where he was, was sitting open on his desk. Then he ‘forgot’ I was in there for two hours.”
He could remember Franks heading back into that dingy little office, seeing him there, giving a big, mock startled jump, saying, “Good Lord, Gibbs! Completely forgot you were in here. Here, let me get this signed.” He took the bag with the ‘personal items,’ which was actually empty, none of the evidence in the case could go missing, signed it, staring at him, and said, “I hope you found what you needed,” his eyes giving Gibbs permission to do what he wouldn’t.
Gibbs nodded at him. Didn’t say anything, and left.
“When Hernandez ended up dead, killed by a sniper’s bullet, no one fussed much. Guy ran a drug family, competition’s pretty fierce in that job. The Federales didn’t exactly strain themselves looking for who shot him. After that case, Mike got transferred back east.
“Like you, I packed everything up, headed back east. I put that life in a box, bunch of boxes, stuck them in the attic, found Mike again, and learned how to be a cop.” He fiddles with his coffee cup as he says that.
“And now you’re taking that life back out of the boxes?”
“Been doing that for ten years. Trying to figure out what to do with it’s more likely.”
“That’s always the question, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.”
“Ideas?”
He blows out a frustrated breath. “Working on getting some.”
Next
February 25, 2014
Shards To A Whole: Chapter 291
McGee-centric character study/romance. Want to start at the beginning? Click here.
Chapter 291: Work
Tim was rummaging around in the cabinet under the sink the next morning, looking for cotton balls. “Did we use up all the cotton balls?”
Abby popped her head into the bathroom. “Yeah. Sorry. Forgot all about that. I’ll put them on the grocery list.”
“Great.” He headed back into their room for tissues. “It never comes all the way off when I use a tissue.”
“Hmm?”
“The nail polish. I always end up with those little black lines around the edges when I use a tissue to take it off. Makes my nails look dirty.” And while there are places and times where that’s cool, work isn’t one of them.
“Then leave it on.”
He looked at her curiously.
“It’s not against the regs. Can’t be. Women can wear it, so they can’t stop you from doing it without risking a sexual discrimination suit. Besides, you’re not going into the office today, right?”
Sigh. “Not with the way this stakeout is going. Twelve more hours in the bus station, breathing in the exhaust, bored as hell with a dull, nagging headache.”
“Jeans, t-shirt, book bag, nail polish, wrist cuff, computer. You’re just another guy getting on a bus, going somewhere. Artist, musician, or something.”
“Like a writer?” he said with a wry grin.
“Yeah, you could be a writer. Hell, grab a Mountain Dew and you’re an indie game designer.”
He smiled at that. “Good point. We are trying to blend in when we go in and out. Make it harder to see we’re watching the place.”
He sat down next to Tony.
“You’re late.”
“It’s 8:01, Tony.”
The look Tony was shooting at him wasn’t a glare, but it was a none-too-subtle, hey, I’m your boss, toe the line.
The that might have worked eight years ago but isn’t going to fly now look that Tim shot back made Tony change track.
“You think they wanted to spend a single second longer here than they needed to?”
“No.” Good point. “How’s Ziva doing?”
“She didn’t kill Draga. But I’d double and triple check everything before using it, make sure it’s not booby-trapped or pranked.”
“Yay.” He sighed. One day of stakeout is about as long as their team can go before they start getting itchy and rubbing each other wrong. “Draga still in one piece?”
“He wasn’t limping when he left.”
“Good.” Tim handed over the reason he was late, a warm box of breakfast. “And yes, they’re scrambled.”
“Good. Only took you a decade to get it down pat.” Tony barely looked away from the monitor when he took the box from Tim, but he did catch sight of Tim’s thumb which was on the top of the box. “Man, that must have hurt.”
“Huh?”
“Your nail. What’d you do to bruise the whole thing up like that? Whack yourself with a hammer or something.”
Tim held up all ten of them, wiggling them. “Not a bruise.”
“Oh.” Tony rolled his eyes, taking a bit of his eggs. “Cute, McMetrosexual.”
“Says the guy with his own collection of organic bath salts.”
“She told you about that!” Tony looked horrified.
“I’ve been in your bathroom, Tony. You’ve got like nine of those little glass bottles full of them.”
“If you just saw them, you wouldn’t have known they were mine!”
Tim flashes him the I didn’t know they were yours until a second ago look. Which wasn’t actually true. Ziva must have told Breena, Breena must have mentioned it to Jimmy, Jimmy mentioned it to him. But he’s not tossing anyone under the bus for that chain of gossip.
Tony stared at him for a second, but when Tim didn’t say anything else about it, he took another bite of his eggs, and looked back to the monitor. “These are good.”
“They should be.” Tim opened up his own box, and saw a western omelet staring up at him. “Elaine sends her love.”
They both ate in silence for a few minutes. Tim noticed Tony glancing away from the monitor to his nails, then back to the monitor several times in the course of those few minutes. Finally Tony asked, “So, you just wake up this morning and think, you know, I really need some nail polish?”
“No, Tony.”
“Then why the hell are you wearing it? Not like we’re at a club.”
“A: It’s not against the regs. I checked.” (And he did. Abby’s assurances aside, he wanted to make sure.) “B: I already had it on. And C: As Abby pointed out, if I’m trying to look like a guy who rides the bus, maybe office casual isn’t precisely the look I need to be going for. I mean, not to put too fine a point on it,” he stared at Tony, eyes tracing over his navy suits, “but, who wears a suit to ride a bus?”
“My dad.”
“Does he own any non-suit clothing?”
“Bathrobe? I’d assume he does, but I don’t remember seeing it.”
“And I’d assume the suit is his way of saying, ‘I don’t really belong here.’”
Tony shrugged. “Maybe. So, you’re blending in?”
“I’m blending in.” He had put on a t-shirt, jeans, and his boots as well. He wasn’t as far away from Office Tim as he can get, but he was certainly not looking particularly professional. “T-shirt and boots are part of that, too. Get headachy enough, I might take a few hours out there. Just another guy waiting for a bus. I can watch that locker from the seats just as easily as I can from here.”
Tony nodded at that. “Can’t let me know if he moves just as easily.”
“I can text. When you’re off, take a look at the guys who are waiting. They’re all on their phones.”
Half an hour on, half an hour off. That’s how long you can watch a locker where nothing happens without losing focus. Tony had the first half hour on, eyes on the monitor, hoping someone would go grab that locker and get the Euros and passports out of it.
Tim had the next one. And on and off they’d go for the next eleven and a half hours, until Ziva and Draga came back to relieve them or someone finally goes for that locker.
It was a pretty basic case. Wife and boyfriend murder husband, get the hell out of Dodge, and off to happily-ever-after-land with hubby’s money. They had the wife, but she wasn’t talking, at all. Nothing. Perfect silence. (Gibbs was less than sympathetic about the stakeout being boring, because he spent eight hours in interrogation with Leslie Smith, where she said nothing, not even asked for water.) They knew, because they trailed her accounts, that she’d bought the bus tickets. They found the key to the locker. They found the receipt for the copy she’d made of the key.
They hadn’t found the boyfriend. They knew he existed. They had prints and DNA, neither of which matched anything. But they didn’t have so much as a phone number, email address, or hint as to who he was.
So, they were waiting, eventually he’d use that key, and they’d grab him, and that would be that.
But that wasn’t that, yet, and this part was deadly dull.
“So, how is your dad?” Tim asked as Tony got up, stretched, and began walking around a bit. They’re in a bus in the maintenance dock. It looked like all the other buses on the outside, but inside it’s a full surveillance center.
“Okay? I guess. Haven’t seen him since Fourth of July. Last I heard he and Delphine were in Montreal.”
“Doing what?”
“I have no idea. He usually does land deals, but the last thing I heard had something to do with the heathcare.gov reboot, website compliance, drug company bids… I zoned out five minutes into the explanation. All I know is he expects to make a ton of money at it, and it’s really complicated, and involves people in seven countries.”
“The next great score.”
“Yeah. And Delphine’s sticking around to be Bonnie to his Clyde, so they look like they’re having fun.”
“That’s good. Think you’re on the verge of a new stepmom?”
Tony sighed and rolled his eyes. “Who knows? If they follow his usual pattern, one of these days, he’ll be flush with cash, and spirit them off for a romantic weekend and come back married. Eight stepmoms at this point, and I only found out about two of them before they were married.”
“So, why’d you already have it on?” Tony asked ten minute later, after flipping through the magazine he bought without actually reading anything.
“Hmmm?” Tim didn’t look away from the monitor. He’d been thinking that during his next downtime he’d start building a worm to mess with Cybercrime’s password protections.
“The nail polish. You have a hot date or something last night?”
Tim smiled. “Or something.”
“Do I want to know?”
“I’d really doubt it.” Another minute of silence. “Why? Do you?”
“God, no! I don’t want to know what the hell it is you and Abby do that involves nail polish on you.” Another quiet minute. “You didn’t paint your toes, did you?”
Tim was fairly sure he had the facial expression equivalent of ‘The fuck?’ on his face right now. “Why would you even ask that?”
Tony rolled his eyes, feeling a little silly about asking, too. “Ever watch Californication?”
Tim shook his head.
“There’s a scene where the main character painted his girlfriend’s toe nails, and then did his own. It was kind of hot.”
Tim shook his head. “I didn’t need to know that about you.”
“Says the guy still wearing the nail polish from ‘or somethinging’ last night for everyone to see.”
“Touché.”
Both of their phones buzzed at them five minutes later. Tony grabbed his because Tim was still watching the feed, but he caught the grin on Tony’s face out of the side of his vision.
“It’s a girl.” He held the phone so Tim could see it, and watched the feed for him.
On the screen was an ultrasound shot, with Anna Palmer written under it.
Tim felt a grin spread wide across his face. He didn’t need to see to text, so he flashd back a quick YAY!! message to Jimmy and Breena.
A minute later, Tony put a cup of coffee in front of Tim along with two Advil.
Tim rubbed his temples, took the pills, and said, “Thanks.”
“You’re getting that tense look.”
“Yep.”
He’d had the headache all Monday, and just figured he was feeling off. It got better when he went home, but if something’s bugging him, he usually feels better when he gets home. Abby and Kelly are home, so home makes him happy, and little nagging pains tend not to hit too hard when he’s happy.
When, half an hour onto shift on Tuesday his head started to ache again, he put together that he was in a bus terminal, breathing in a ton of exhaust, with the fact that his head hurt, and figured out that his body didn’t like being exposed to this much pollution.
Today, he came armed with Advil, but hadn’t yet reached for it, because it wasn’t hitting him too hard. (Building up a tolerance?) But seeing it sitting in front of him reminded him that yeah, he was starting to ache some, so might as well nip it in the bud.
“So, how is ‘or somethinging’ going these days?”
He started to look away from the monitor toward Tony, but stopped that, gotta keep eyes on the locker. “Are you really asking me how my sex life is?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“New baby at home. Everyone says you never have sex again, but, well, we aren’t all only children, so that can’t be true, and Ziva’s talking more about it, so…”
Tim did look to Tony for that. “You’re doing research?”
“Yeah.” Tony said with a sheepish grin.
Tim shrugged, eyes back to the monitor. “It’s going. Kind of slow. We’re both tired, and she’s not all back to normal again. You ask Jimmy? He’s done this twice and getting ready for three.”
“I will when I get some time alone with him. What’s slow mean?”
Tim flashed him a look somewhere between perplexed and mildly annoyed. “Slow.” Once a week, once every ten days, slow. But he wasn’t going to say that. And then, because he couldn’t resist. “Probably about as often as you do it now.”
“Yeah, well, some of us are good enough at it we don’t have to do it every single day to keep our ladies happy.”
Tim laughed at that. “If that’s what you’ve got to tell yourself... How often I’m getting laid isn’t likely to have any effect on how often you get laid.”
“Thank the Lord.”
“Amen on that. What does matter is how long it takes her to heal up. Whether your baby actually sleeps. From what everyone says, Kelly is a ridiculously easy baby when it comes to sleep time, so we’re probably a bit ahead of the curve. How much sleep you actually need. I mean, if you can’t get it up on no sleep, you’re not getting laid again anytime soon. How much sleep she needs. Abby’s usually good on five hours a night, and she’s up to eightish a day right now, which with nursing makes sense. When you like to do it matters. If nursing time and sex time are at the same time, feeding the baby wins. But, look, two months, four months, six months, a year, might be a long time before you guys get back to pre-baby sex. But, at least, according to Jimmy, you get back to it.”
Tony’s nodding along, this all seemed to make sense to him.
“So, how serious of talking about it are you two doing?”
“Like, expect another DiNozzo late next year serious.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah.”
“Tony DiNozzo III?”
“Lord, no! Two of us were more than enough. But… Dave DiNozzo?”
“David DiNozzo?”
“Her last name, my middle name.”
Tim smiled at that. “Sounds awfully serious if you’ve got a time frame and names.”
“Yeah. I think we are.”
Half hour on, half hour off, on again, off again.
He spent two of his off shifts creating a--Nasty wasn’t exactly right. Not like it’s the end of the world or anything. Annoying might be better than nasty.—little worm to invade Cybercrime.
He finished it, hit enter, and sent it off to wreck a very mild version of mayhem amongst his soon to be employees. Then he sent of a quick email to Leon.
“What was that?” Tony asked as he wrapped up.
“Cybercrime test number two.”
“What are you doing to them this time?”
“You’ll like this one. You know that software that holds all of your passwords?”
Tony nodded. “Heard of it. Don’t use it.”
“Yeah, well, when you’ve only got four of them, keeping track isn’t a big deal. The guys in the basement hopefully have a different one for each login and with any luck they’re a lot more difficult than forward22, center16, halfback34, and firstbaseman01.”
“Okay, great. So what?”
“So, this goes in, sits in their computer, waits for them to log into something using that service, creeps into it, changes their password, and then logs them out.”
Tony stared at him for a moment, and then shook his head, laughing. “That’s just mean.”
“Thank you. If they’ve got decent security in place, it’ll bounce and they’ll never notice, but given how badly they did on the last test…”
“Not feeling too hopeful about this one?”
“Nope. My guess is that within a day or two, at least ten of them will be resetting their passwords, wondering what’s going on.”
By two in the afternoon, even with the Advil, his head was hurting, so Tim decided to venture out into the bus station for a more comfortable vantage point.
Of course, the thing about being out there is that other people can watch him just as easily as he can watch them, and sitting there staring at a locker isn’t subtle.
Leaning against one on the other hand…
He started in the seats. Messing around on his computer, looking like he was hunting for a better wifi connection. Moved over to besides the pay phones, spent a few minutes there. Then over to café area, more messing around, grumbling about how the wifi sucks and he needs to change carrier. He then spent another minute chatting with the guy in the seat next to him about how the wifi at the bus station sucked. After that he got up, headed over to the lockers, sat down, back against them, and got to work.
He opened his IM.
In position. Keep an eye on anyone who might come near and get scared off by me here.
Gotcha.
He was sitting so his back was against the locker two below the one their perp’s gonna want. No matter how into what he does next he is, he will notice someone basically having to stand on top of him to get to the locker in question.
Sit and wait.
He opened word and started to write up character sketches for Gabriel McGee and Lady Skye. Been a long time since he’s written anything that wasn’t based around the adventures of LJ Gibbs.
And more than that, maybe it’s time to actually be the main character in one of his stories.
Eyes on me. Tim types into his IM.
Got him. Yeah, he’s going for it. Getting into position.
Soon as he closes the door, I’ll grab him.
See you in a minute.
The pair of legs next to Tim were attached to a not terribly impressive looking specimen of manhood. Medium height. Medium build. Brown hair. Brown eyes. Somewhere in that vague space between thirty-five and forty-five. Mr. Non-Descript.
But he was leaning over Tim, getting into the locker.
“Oh, hey, am I in your way?” Tim asked as he looked up.
“Don’t worry. Almost got it.”
Tim stood up, putting his computer down, on the far side of his body. (He’d prefer it didn’t get stepped on.) “No problem. Best wifi in the place. Kind of silly really, right here. But maybe the metal lockers act like an antenna or something?”
“Yeah. Or something.” The Perp’s not looking at him, focusing in on the bag he’s tugging out of the locker. It’s shoved in pretty tight.
“So, heading far?” Tim asked, catching sight of Tony between the perp and the doorway.
“Nah. Just getting out of town for a bit.”
“Well, hope you have a good trip,” Tim said as the Perp got the bag all of the way out.
The Perp started to close the locker looking toward the doors, and Tim quickly said, “Hey, your passport’s still in there.”
The Perp turned back to the locker, and found himself shoved up against them, one wrist already cuffed. “NCIS. You’re under arrest for the murder of Captain Lionel Smith.”
He started to flail, reaching for something in his jacket but froze when he felt the barrel of Tony’s gun against the back of his neck.
“Bad plan, buddy. Don’t ever pull something out of your jacket when you’ve got a pile of cops around.”
Tim grabbed his other hand, finishing cuffing him, and going over his rights while Tony emptied his pockets, finding a tube of pepper spray.
He held it up to Tim as they were taking the perp out of the bus station, bag slung over his shoulder, and said, “Would have made for a miserable night.”
Tim nodded at that. He’s been pepper sprayed and it does hurt like a bitch.
“Got an ID?”
“Nope. Nothing like that in his pockets.”
“You gonna tell us your name?” Tim asked.
And like Leslie, the Perp shut up.
He was in the interrogation viewing room, watching Tony and Gibbs go after John Doe. They still didn’t have anything to identify him. Well, that wasn’t entirely true. They had the passport and driver’s license that had been in the bag, but they’re fairly sure that the guy in interrogation is not, in fact, Tom Hiddleton. The hint on that came from the fact that Tom Hiddleton died in 2008.
“How’s it going Agent McGee?” Vance asked as he headed in.
“Long and silent. He’s not even asking for a lawyer. Nothing, out of either of them.”
“Gibbs…” Vance seemed to notice what he was wearing, and his eyes lingered on the nail polish for a few seconds before he finished the sentence, “hasn’t gotten either of them to talk?”
“Not at all. Not sure what the game is, other than he might be recognizable by his voice. If we ever get a word out of him, we’ll try voice recognition.”
“Sounds good. I got your email about the worm you sent in, any updates yet?”
“Last I checked, two members of Cybercrime had reset their passwords on LastPass.”
Leon shook his head, eyes skittering back down to Tim’s nails and then to the wrist cuff and back up to his eyes. “Why is their security so lax?”
“I’m hoping it’s because they’re so used to the firewall I built around NCIS keeping everything out that the idea that something could get in has never occurred to them. Do you have any idea how long HR holds onto job applications and resumes?”
“No.”
“Eventually, I’ll go ask. I want to know if this is a matter of not hiring top talent, or if it’s a morale thing.”
“Sound plan.” Another pause. “I use LastPass, too. Could someone do what you just did to me?”
“You want me to send the same worm in? You’ll have to reset your password if it does.”
“Sure. Wanna see how secure I am.”
“No problem.”
Vance eyed the nail polish one last time, but didn’t say anything, and headed off.
Hour two of the Perp not talking. Tim left interrogation to head to his computer. There had to be something to identify this guy, and if they could just get a name or something on him, they could run a believable Prisoner’s Dilemma and get him talking.
He sat at his desk, tapping his mouse pad. Facial recognition software was running. But in that his prints and DNA weren’t in any system they had, he wasn’t feeling too hopeful about that. Though…
He got the parameters of the search up, and started with Leslie Smith’s Facebook page friends and friends of friends, moving from there to people local to the area. He hit her twitter feed next, making sure followers and followers of followers got checked.
Hit or miss, and it’ll probably miss, but still… Better, faster, than what he was doing right now.
He fired off a text to Tony telling him what he was doing. Got one back saying that both he and Gibbs had pulled an excited look and left Doe alone in interrogation.
Nothing much else to do right now, so he headed down to Autopsy.
“Hello?” No response. Tim looked around and didn’t see anyone. Not too unusual with no fresh bodies. Jimmy and Ducky were around here somewhere and they’d come back eventually.
He headed over to the desk they shared and checked out the pictures. Molly at the pool, piggy backed on Jimmy’s shoulders and the shot of Jon’s fingers curled around Breena’s index finger are unchanged, but the six-week-old ultrasound of Anna had been replaced by the eighteen-week-shot.
Tim’s not an ultrasound expert by any stretch of the imagination, but it looks fine to him. Fingers and toes are all accounted for.
“Tim?” Jimmy asked as he headed out from the storage closet with Ducky.
Tim took the three steps to him and gave him a warm hug. “She’s looking great!”
“Yeah!” Jimmy answered with a wide smile. “Double and triple checked, but everything looks fine.”
“You feeling like you can breathe again?”
“Almost. Eighteen weeks down, twenty-two to go. What are you doing back? Stakeout from hell over?”
“Yes, finally. Got John Doe. He’s not talking. Figured I’d pop down for a second while the computer did its thing. Wanted to share the happy.”
“Thanks.”
“Okay. Should probably go bug the guys in the lab. Make sure Doe’s prints match the ones we got from the scene.”
Jimmy nodded at that.
“Give Breena a hug for me?”
“Oh yeah.”
“Good.” And with that he headed back toward the lab and the next step of dealing with John Doe.
“Gibbs was already here, and I’ve reported to him,” Zelaz said without looking up from his computer screen.
“Wonderful. Wanna tell me what you told him?”
“Fine.” Zelaz turned, seeming annoyed to have to look away from his work and repeat himself. “Doe’s your guy. His prints and DNA match the exemplars you took from the crime scene.”
“Great.”
“Yep. All you need now is a name to go with the profile.”
“Working on it.”
Back to his desk, and the search, and… And it was still chewing through the data. Gibbs and Tony were both looking expectantly at him as he checked.
“Still got at least an hour before it’s gone through everything. You guys got anything?”
Gibbs shook his head.
“Nope,” said Tony.
“Okay. I’ll pull the data feeds from the local traffic cams, see if we can find how Doe got to the bus stop.”
“Good.”
“Yeah… Just gotta…” the sentence trailed off as a picture came up on his screen. He hit the keys to put it on the plasma. “Ninety-four percent match. Think this is our guy?”
Tony and Gibbs both stood to look at the picture on the plasma. Richard Fulp, one of Smith’s Facebook friends looked back at him.
“Went to high school together, lot of the same likes, recent messages between them… I’m feeling it. Jethro, you take on Leslie, tell her that Richard’s spilled the beans. I’ll go after Dick. Tim…”
“Yeah, going over financials, phones, etc… Getting you the evidence you need to make this stick.”
And less than two hours later, another murder was in the bag.
Next
Chapter 291: Work
Tim was rummaging around in the cabinet under the sink the next morning, looking for cotton balls. “Did we use up all the cotton balls?”
Abby popped her head into the bathroom. “Yeah. Sorry. Forgot all about that. I’ll put them on the grocery list.”
“Great.” He headed back into their room for tissues. “It never comes all the way off when I use a tissue.”
“Hmm?”
“The nail polish. I always end up with those little black lines around the edges when I use a tissue to take it off. Makes my nails look dirty.” And while there are places and times where that’s cool, work isn’t one of them.
“Then leave it on.”
He looked at her curiously.
“It’s not against the regs. Can’t be. Women can wear it, so they can’t stop you from doing it without risking a sexual discrimination suit. Besides, you’re not going into the office today, right?”
Sigh. “Not with the way this stakeout is going. Twelve more hours in the bus station, breathing in the exhaust, bored as hell with a dull, nagging headache.”
“Jeans, t-shirt, book bag, nail polish, wrist cuff, computer. You’re just another guy getting on a bus, going somewhere. Artist, musician, or something.”
“Like a writer?” he said with a wry grin.
“Yeah, you could be a writer. Hell, grab a Mountain Dew and you’re an indie game designer.”
He smiled at that. “Good point. We are trying to blend in when we go in and out. Make it harder to see we’re watching the place.”
He sat down next to Tony.
“You’re late.”
“It’s 8:01, Tony.”
The look Tony was shooting at him wasn’t a glare, but it was a none-too-subtle, hey, I’m your boss, toe the line.
The that might have worked eight years ago but isn’t going to fly now look that Tim shot back made Tony change track.
“You think they wanted to spend a single second longer here than they needed to?”
“No.” Good point. “How’s Ziva doing?”
“She didn’t kill Draga. But I’d double and triple check everything before using it, make sure it’s not booby-trapped or pranked.”
“Yay.” He sighed. One day of stakeout is about as long as their team can go before they start getting itchy and rubbing each other wrong. “Draga still in one piece?”
“He wasn’t limping when he left.”
“Good.” Tim handed over the reason he was late, a warm box of breakfast. “And yes, they’re scrambled.”
“Good. Only took you a decade to get it down pat.” Tony barely looked away from the monitor when he took the box from Tim, but he did catch sight of Tim’s thumb which was on the top of the box. “Man, that must have hurt.”
“Huh?”
“Your nail. What’d you do to bruise the whole thing up like that? Whack yourself with a hammer or something.”
Tim held up all ten of them, wiggling them. “Not a bruise.”
“Oh.” Tony rolled his eyes, taking a bit of his eggs. “Cute, McMetrosexual.”
“Says the guy with his own collection of organic bath salts.”
“She told you about that!” Tony looked horrified.
“I’ve been in your bathroom, Tony. You’ve got like nine of those little glass bottles full of them.”
“If you just saw them, you wouldn’t have known they were mine!”
Tim flashes him the I didn’t know they were yours until a second ago look. Which wasn’t actually true. Ziva must have told Breena, Breena must have mentioned it to Jimmy, Jimmy mentioned it to him. But he’s not tossing anyone under the bus for that chain of gossip.
Tony stared at him for a second, but when Tim didn’t say anything else about it, he took another bite of his eggs, and looked back to the monitor. “These are good.”
“They should be.” Tim opened up his own box, and saw a western omelet staring up at him. “Elaine sends her love.”
They both ate in silence for a few minutes. Tim noticed Tony glancing away from the monitor to his nails, then back to the monitor several times in the course of those few minutes. Finally Tony asked, “So, you just wake up this morning and think, you know, I really need some nail polish?”
“No, Tony.”
“Then why the hell are you wearing it? Not like we’re at a club.”
“A: It’s not against the regs. I checked.” (And he did. Abby’s assurances aside, he wanted to make sure.) “B: I already had it on. And C: As Abby pointed out, if I’m trying to look like a guy who rides the bus, maybe office casual isn’t precisely the look I need to be going for. I mean, not to put too fine a point on it,” he stared at Tony, eyes tracing over his navy suits, “but, who wears a suit to ride a bus?”
“My dad.”
“Does he own any non-suit clothing?”
“Bathrobe? I’d assume he does, but I don’t remember seeing it.”
“And I’d assume the suit is his way of saying, ‘I don’t really belong here.’”
Tony shrugged. “Maybe. So, you’re blending in?”
“I’m blending in.” He had put on a t-shirt, jeans, and his boots as well. He wasn’t as far away from Office Tim as he can get, but he was certainly not looking particularly professional. “T-shirt and boots are part of that, too. Get headachy enough, I might take a few hours out there. Just another guy waiting for a bus. I can watch that locker from the seats just as easily as I can from here.”
Tony nodded at that. “Can’t let me know if he moves just as easily.”
“I can text. When you’re off, take a look at the guys who are waiting. They’re all on their phones.”
Half an hour on, half an hour off. That’s how long you can watch a locker where nothing happens without losing focus. Tony had the first half hour on, eyes on the monitor, hoping someone would go grab that locker and get the Euros and passports out of it.
Tim had the next one. And on and off they’d go for the next eleven and a half hours, until Ziva and Draga came back to relieve them or someone finally goes for that locker.
It was a pretty basic case. Wife and boyfriend murder husband, get the hell out of Dodge, and off to happily-ever-after-land with hubby’s money. They had the wife, but she wasn’t talking, at all. Nothing. Perfect silence. (Gibbs was less than sympathetic about the stakeout being boring, because he spent eight hours in interrogation with Leslie Smith, where she said nothing, not even asked for water.) They knew, because they trailed her accounts, that she’d bought the bus tickets. They found the key to the locker. They found the receipt for the copy she’d made of the key.
They hadn’t found the boyfriend. They knew he existed. They had prints and DNA, neither of which matched anything. But they didn’t have so much as a phone number, email address, or hint as to who he was.
So, they were waiting, eventually he’d use that key, and they’d grab him, and that would be that.
But that wasn’t that, yet, and this part was deadly dull.
“So, how is your dad?” Tim asked as Tony got up, stretched, and began walking around a bit. They’re in a bus in the maintenance dock. It looked like all the other buses on the outside, but inside it’s a full surveillance center.
“Okay? I guess. Haven’t seen him since Fourth of July. Last I heard he and Delphine were in Montreal.”
“Doing what?”
“I have no idea. He usually does land deals, but the last thing I heard had something to do with the heathcare.gov reboot, website compliance, drug company bids… I zoned out five minutes into the explanation. All I know is he expects to make a ton of money at it, and it’s really complicated, and involves people in seven countries.”
“The next great score.”
“Yeah. And Delphine’s sticking around to be Bonnie to his Clyde, so they look like they’re having fun.”
“That’s good. Think you’re on the verge of a new stepmom?”
Tony sighed and rolled his eyes. “Who knows? If they follow his usual pattern, one of these days, he’ll be flush with cash, and spirit them off for a romantic weekend and come back married. Eight stepmoms at this point, and I only found out about two of them before they were married.”
“So, why’d you already have it on?” Tony asked ten minute later, after flipping through the magazine he bought without actually reading anything.
“Hmmm?” Tim didn’t look away from the monitor. He’d been thinking that during his next downtime he’d start building a worm to mess with Cybercrime’s password protections.
“The nail polish. You have a hot date or something last night?”
Tim smiled. “Or something.”
“Do I want to know?”
“I’d really doubt it.” Another minute of silence. “Why? Do you?”
“God, no! I don’t want to know what the hell it is you and Abby do that involves nail polish on you.” Another quiet minute. “You didn’t paint your toes, did you?”
Tim was fairly sure he had the facial expression equivalent of ‘The fuck?’ on his face right now. “Why would you even ask that?”
Tony rolled his eyes, feeling a little silly about asking, too. “Ever watch Californication?”
Tim shook his head.
“There’s a scene where the main character painted his girlfriend’s toe nails, and then did his own. It was kind of hot.”
Tim shook his head. “I didn’t need to know that about you.”
“Says the guy still wearing the nail polish from ‘or somethinging’ last night for everyone to see.”
“Touché.”
Both of their phones buzzed at them five minutes later. Tony grabbed his because Tim was still watching the feed, but he caught the grin on Tony’s face out of the side of his vision.
“It’s a girl.” He held the phone so Tim could see it, and watched the feed for him.
On the screen was an ultrasound shot, with Anna Palmer written under it.
Tim felt a grin spread wide across his face. He didn’t need to see to text, so he flashd back a quick YAY!! message to Jimmy and Breena.
A minute later, Tony put a cup of coffee in front of Tim along with two Advil.
Tim rubbed his temples, took the pills, and said, “Thanks.”
“You’re getting that tense look.”
“Yep.”
He’d had the headache all Monday, and just figured he was feeling off. It got better when he went home, but if something’s bugging him, he usually feels better when he gets home. Abby and Kelly are home, so home makes him happy, and little nagging pains tend not to hit too hard when he’s happy.
When, half an hour onto shift on Tuesday his head started to ache again, he put together that he was in a bus terminal, breathing in a ton of exhaust, with the fact that his head hurt, and figured out that his body didn’t like being exposed to this much pollution.
Today, he came armed with Advil, but hadn’t yet reached for it, because it wasn’t hitting him too hard. (Building up a tolerance?) But seeing it sitting in front of him reminded him that yeah, he was starting to ache some, so might as well nip it in the bud.
“So, how is ‘or somethinging’ going these days?”
He started to look away from the monitor toward Tony, but stopped that, gotta keep eyes on the locker. “Are you really asking me how my sex life is?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“New baby at home. Everyone says you never have sex again, but, well, we aren’t all only children, so that can’t be true, and Ziva’s talking more about it, so…”
Tim did look to Tony for that. “You’re doing research?”
“Yeah.” Tony said with a sheepish grin.
Tim shrugged, eyes back to the monitor. “It’s going. Kind of slow. We’re both tired, and she’s not all back to normal again. You ask Jimmy? He’s done this twice and getting ready for three.”
“I will when I get some time alone with him. What’s slow mean?”
Tim flashed him a look somewhere between perplexed and mildly annoyed. “Slow.” Once a week, once every ten days, slow. But he wasn’t going to say that. And then, because he couldn’t resist. “Probably about as often as you do it now.”
“Yeah, well, some of us are good enough at it we don’t have to do it every single day to keep our ladies happy.”
Tim laughed at that. “If that’s what you’ve got to tell yourself... How often I’m getting laid isn’t likely to have any effect on how often you get laid.”
“Thank the Lord.”
“Amen on that. What does matter is how long it takes her to heal up. Whether your baby actually sleeps. From what everyone says, Kelly is a ridiculously easy baby when it comes to sleep time, so we’re probably a bit ahead of the curve. How much sleep you actually need. I mean, if you can’t get it up on no sleep, you’re not getting laid again anytime soon. How much sleep she needs. Abby’s usually good on five hours a night, and she’s up to eightish a day right now, which with nursing makes sense. When you like to do it matters. If nursing time and sex time are at the same time, feeding the baby wins. But, look, two months, four months, six months, a year, might be a long time before you guys get back to pre-baby sex. But, at least, according to Jimmy, you get back to it.”
Tony’s nodding along, this all seemed to make sense to him.
“So, how serious of talking about it are you two doing?”
“Like, expect another DiNozzo late next year serious.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah.”
“Tony DiNozzo III?”
“Lord, no! Two of us were more than enough. But… Dave DiNozzo?”
“David DiNozzo?”
“Her last name, my middle name.”
Tim smiled at that. “Sounds awfully serious if you’ve got a time frame and names.”
“Yeah. I think we are.”
Half hour on, half hour off, on again, off again.
He spent two of his off shifts creating a--Nasty wasn’t exactly right. Not like it’s the end of the world or anything. Annoying might be better than nasty.—little worm to invade Cybercrime.
He finished it, hit enter, and sent it off to wreck a very mild version of mayhem amongst his soon to be employees. Then he sent of a quick email to Leon.
“What was that?” Tony asked as he wrapped up.
“Cybercrime test number two.”
“What are you doing to them this time?”
“You’ll like this one. You know that software that holds all of your passwords?”
Tony nodded. “Heard of it. Don’t use it.”
“Yeah, well, when you’ve only got four of them, keeping track isn’t a big deal. The guys in the basement hopefully have a different one for each login and with any luck they’re a lot more difficult than forward22, center16, halfback34, and firstbaseman01.”
“Okay, great. So what?”
“So, this goes in, sits in their computer, waits for them to log into something using that service, creeps into it, changes their password, and then logs them out.”
Tony stared at him for a moment, and then shook his head, laughing. “That’s just mean.”
“Thank you. If they’ve got decent security in place, it’ll bounce and they’ll never notice, but given how badly they did on the last test…”
“Not feeling too hopeful about this one?”
“Nope. My guess is that within a day or two, at least ten of them will be resetting their passwords, wondering what’s going on.”
By two in the afternoon, even with the Advil, his head was hurting, so Tim decided to venture out into the bus station for a more comfortable vantage point.
Of course, the thing about being out there is that other people can watch him just as easily as he can watch them, and sitting there staring at a locker isn’t subtle.
Leaning against one on the other hand…
He started in the seats. Messing around on his computer, looking like he was hunting for a better wifi connection. Moved over to besides the pay phones, spent a few minutes there. Then over to café area, more messing around, grumbling about how the wifi sucks and he needs to change carrier. He then spent another minute chatting with the guy in the seat next to him about how the wifi at the bus station sucked. After that he got up, headed over to the lockers, sat down, back against them, and got to work.
He opened his IM.
In position. Keep an eye on anyone who might come near and get scared off by me here.
Gotcha.
He was sitting so his back was against the locker two below the one their perp’s gonna want. No matter how into what he does next he is, he will notice someone basically having to stand on top of him to get to the locker in question.
Sit and wait.
He opened word and started to write up character sketches for Gabriel McGee and Lady Skye. Been a long time since he’s written anything that wasn’t based around the adventures of LJ Gibbs.
And more than that, maybe it’s time to actually be the main character in one of his stories.
Eyes on me. Tim types into his IM.
Got him. Yeah, he’s going for it. Getting into position.
Soon as he closes the door, I’ll grab him.
See you in a minute.
The pair of legs next to Tim were attached to a not terribly impressive looking specimen of manhood. Medium height. Medium build. Brown hair. Brown eyes. Somewhere in that vague space between thirty-five and forty-five. Mr. Non-Descript.
But he was leaning over Tim, getting into the locker.
“Oh, hey, am I in your way?” Tim asked as he looked up.
“Don’t worry. Almost got it.”
Tim stood up, putting his computer down, on the far side of his body. (He’d prefer it didn’t get stepped on.) “No problem. Best wifi in the place. Kind of silly really, right here. But maybe the metal lockers act like an antenna or something?”
“Yeah. Or something.” The Perp’s not looking at him, focusing in on the bag he’s tugging out of the locker. It’s shoved in pretty tight.
“So, heading far?” Tim asked, catching sight of Tony between the perp and the doorway.
“Nah. Just getting out of town for a bit.”
“Well, hope you have a good trip,” Tim said as the Perp got the bag all of the way out.
The Perp started to close the locker looking toward the doors, and Tim quickly said, “Hey, your passport’s still in there.”
The Perp turned back to the locker, and found himself shoved up against them, one wrist already cuffed. “NCIS. You’re under arrest for the murder of Captain Lionel Smith.”
He started to flail, reaching for something in his jacket but froze when he felt the barrel of Tony’s gun against the back of his neck.
“Bad plan, buddy. Don’t ever pull something out of your jacket when you’ve got a pile of cops around.”
Tim grabbed his other hand, finishing cuffing him, and going over his rights while Tony emptied his pockets, finding a tube of pepper spray.
He held it up to Tim as they were taking the perp out of the bus station, bag slung over his shoulder, and said, “Would have made for a miserable night.”
Tim nodded at that. He’s been pepper sprayed and it does hurt like a bitch.
“Got an ID?”
“Nope. Nothing like that in his pockets.”
“You gonna tell us your name?” Tim asked.
And like Leslie, the Perp shut up.
He was in the interrogation viewing room, watching Tony and Gibbs go after John Doe. They still didn’t have anything to identify him. Well, that wasn’t entirely true. They had the passport and driver’s license that had been in the bag, but they’re fairly sure that the guy in interrogation is not, in fact, Tom Hiddleton. The hint on that came from the fact that Tom Hiddleton died in 2008.
“How’s it going Agent McGee?” Vance asked as he headed in.
“Long and silent. He’s not even asking for a lawyer. Nothing, out of either of them.”
“Gibbs…” Vance seemed to notice what he was wearing, and his eyes lingered on the nail polish for a few seconds before he finished the sentence, “hasn’t gotten either of them to talk?”
“Not at all. Not sure what the game is, other than he might be recognizable by his voice. If we ever get a word out of him, we’ll try voice recognition.”
“Sounds good. I got your email about the worm you sent in, any updates yet?”
“Last I checked, two members of Cybercrime had reset their passwords on LastPass.”
Leon shook his head, eyes skittering back down to Tim’s nails and then to the wrist cuff and back up to his eyes. “Why is their security so lax?”
“I’m hoping it’s because they’re so used to the firewall I built around NCIS keeping everything out that the idea that something could get in has never occurred to them. Do you have any idea how long HR holds onto job applications and resumes?”
“No.”
“Eventually, I’ll go ask. I want to know if this is a matter of not hiring top talent, or if it’s a morale thing.”
“Sound plan.” Another pause. “I use LastPass, too. Could someone do what you just did to me?”
“You want me to send the same worm in? You’ll have to reset your password if it does.”
“Sure. Wanna see how secure I am.”
“No problem.”
Vance eyed the nail polish one last time, but didn’t say anything, and headed off.
Hour two of the Perp not talking. Tim left interrogation to head to his computer. There had to be something to identify this guy, and if they could just get a name or something on him, they could run a believable Prisoner’s Dilemma and get him talking.
He sat at his desk, tapping his mouse pad. Facial recognition software was running. But in that his prints and DNA weren’t in any system they had, he wasn’t feeling too hopeful about that. Though…
He got the parameters of the search up, and started with Leslie Smith’s Facebook page friends and friends of friends, moving from there to people local to the area. He hit her twitter feed next, making sure followers and followers of followers got checked.
Hit or miss, and it’ll probably miss, but still… Better, faster, than what he was doing right now.
He fired off a text to Tony telling him what he was doing. Got one back saying that both he and Gibbs had pulled an excited look and left Doe alone in interrogation.
Nothing much else to do right now, so he headed down to Autopsy.
“Hello?” No response. Tim looked around and didn’t see anyone. Not too unusual with no fresh bodies. Jimmy and Ducky were around here somewhere and they’d come back eventually.
He headed over to the desk they shared and checked out the pictures. Molly at the pool, piggy backed on Jimmy’s shoulders and the shot of Jon’s fingers curled around Breena’s index finger are unchanged, but the six-week-old ultrasound of Anna had been replaced by the eighteen-week-shot.
Tim’s not an ultrasound expert by any stretch of the imagination, but it looks fine to him. Fingers and toes are all accounted for.
“Tim?” Jimmy asked as he headed out from the storage closet with Ducky.
Tim took the three steps to him and gave him a warm hug. “She’s looking great!”
“Yeah!” Jimmy answered with a wide smile. “Double and triple checked, but everything looks fine.”
“You feeling like you can breathe again?”
“Almost. Eighteen weeks down, twenty-two to go. What are you doing back? Stakeout from hell over?”
“Yes, finally. Got John Doe. He’s not talking. Figured I’d pop down for a second while the computer did its thing. Wanted to share the happy.”
“Thanks.”
“Okay. Should probably go bug the guys in the lab. Make sure Doe’s prints match the ones we got from the scene.”
Jimmy nodded at that.
“Give Breena a hug for me?”
“Oh yeah.”
“Good.” And with that he headed back toward the lab and the next step of dealing with John Doe.
“Gibbs was already here, and I’ve reported to him,” Zelaz said without looking up from his computer screen.
“Wonderful. Wanna tell me what you told him?”
“Fine.” Zelaz turned, seeming annoyed to have to look away from his work and repeat himself. “Doe’s your guy. His prints and DNA match the exemplars you took from the crime scene.”
“Great.”
“Yep. All you need now is a name to go with the profile.”
“Working on it.”
Back to his desk, and the search, and… And it was still chewing through the data. Gibbs and Tony were both looking expectantly at him as he checked.
“Still got at least an hour before it’s gone through everything. You guys got anything?”
Gibbs shook his head.
“Nope,” said Tony.
“Okay. I’ll pull the data feeds from the local traffic cams, see if we can find how Doe got to the bus stop.”
“Good.”
“Yeah… Just gotta…” the sentence trailed off as a picture came up on his screen. He hit the keys to put it on the plasma. “Ninety-four percent match. Think this is our guy?”
Tony and Gibbs both stood to look at the picture on the plasma. Richard Fulp, one of Smith’s Facebook friends looked back at him.
“Went to high school together, lot of the same likes, recent messages between them… I’m feeling it. Jethro, you take on Leslie, tell her that Richard’s spilled the beans. I’ll go after Dick. Tim…”
“Yeah, going over financials, phones, etc… Getting you the evidence you need to make this stick.”
And less than two hours later, another murder was in the bag.
Next
February 24, 2014
Shards To A Whole: Chapter 290
McGee-centric character study/romance. Want to start at the beginning? Click here.
Chapter 290. Playtime
“Hey, you’re home,” Abby said, looking up from the book she was reading.
“I am home.”
“How’d it go?”
Tim flopped dramatically onto the sofa, resting his head on her lap, and said, “BOOOOOOORING! Single most boring day of my career.” It was day two of what he was calling the ‘never-ending stakeout of doom.’ And all day yesterday, and all day today, and likely all day tomorrow, they were spending sitting in a bus, in a bus station, staring at a monitor, waiting for someone to open a locker and take cash and travel documents out.
Abby petted his hair. “Poor baby. Having to sit around all day and do nothing using your brain. Gosh, I wonder what that’s like.”
He sat up and looked at her, stroking her cheek. “Yeah, I guess you do know. How was your day?”
“Moooooo,” she said imitating a cow.
He snorted a bit of a laugh at that, because, really, at two months old, sleeping, eating, and pooping is pretty much all a baby does.
“We could stop dithering about the nanny and get you back to work sooner.”
“I can do one more month off. Besides, I know I’m not with it enough to do my job well. I sorted the laundry, put it in the washing machine, carefully selected the right detergent, carefully picked the right setting, turned the machine on, and headed off.”
Tim thought about that, but it sounded right to him, so he wasn’t sure what the issue was. “Not seeing the problem.”
“I didn’t actually put the detergent into the machine. It was still sitting there, on top of the dryer, when I got back.”
“Ugh.”
“Yeah. I mess up the laundry, oh well, do it over. Leave out a reagent on a test…”
He nodded. That’d destroy evidence and screw up the test.
“So, do anything useful with your down time?” Abby knew they were doing half an hour on, half an hour off, watching the locker. That’s as long as any of them can focus on one thing that boring without getting distracted.
“Guess so. I rewrote the info dump in chapter three.”
She pouted at him. “I liked the info dump.”
“Baby, you’re the only one who liked the info dump.” Shadow Force started with a series of mysterious poisonings, and the info dump, in which Amy (now Amy MacGregor) explained what was going on, had been noted by both Penny and Gibbs as being slow, draggy, overly complex, and way too much science. “I wrote the info dump and I didn’t like it.”
Abby continued to pout at that. Once she got used to being “Amy,” she discovered she kind of liked having scenes, and since they tend to be kind of short and lab-oriented she didn’t want them cut.
“I didn’t cut any of your lines, just rearranged them, made them a bit more concise—“
“How is that not cutting?”
“You can read it and see. It’s better. You’ll see.”
“Okay. Anything else happen?”
“Let’s see. Sixty-three million people walked near the locker, but none of them opened it. Tony and I talked a little about how we need to do something really special for Gibbs when he retires.”
“You’re right on that; we do.”
“Any ideas?”
“Nope, but I’ll keep thinking on it.”
“We are, too. At one point, it got slow enough I almost told him I called my mom, but then the whole having to tell him why I wasn’t talking to her thing popped into my head… And, bored’s bad enough, don’t need to add sad to bored.”
“Probably a good plan.”
“Probably a good plan not to start that up at work, either.”
She nodded in agreement. “Are you going to tell him?”
Tim shook his head a little, “I don’t really want to. I mean, I don’t mind him knowing, but I just… I don’t want to say it to him. He’s okay with me not saying it, so, that’s where we are.”
“Okay. You eat?”
“Yeah. Gibbs stopped by and brought dinner.”
“Good.” They heard Kelly start crying, asking for her second supper. “So, how about we do something not boring tonight?”
That made him smile. “I’m all in favor of that.”
“Good. I’ll get Kelly. You get all pretty for me. Be in bed, waiting for me, when I get done.”
He was grinning at that. “Gonna define pretty?”
She looked him up and down. “Naked, eyeliner, nail polish, collar, wrist cuffs out but not on.”
He gave her a quick kiss, wanted to do a long, slow one, but Kelly’s getting pretty insistent about get-me-now. “I like your idea of not boring.”
“Good.”
“How do you want me on the bed?”
She thought about that for a second. “Kneeling, hands crossed behind your back.”
Tim smiled at her. Yep, this was an excellent idea for not boring.
Feeding Kelly had streamlined down to only forty-five minutes, which was… tight. He rubbed his face, and yeah, he needs to shave. Normally he’d have waited until morning, but he’s fairly sure that she’ll appreciate smooth.
And it’s not like it takes him long to shave. But shave, nails, and eyeliner, that’s a different proposition.
So, yeah, tight. He was hopping up the stairs two at a time, Abby smiling at him, looking really amused by how eager he was.
Okay, clothing went off first, that was easy and took about twenty-six seconds. Can’t do anything while his nails dry, so they have to be last. Shave first, don’t want to mess up the eyeliner. And a plan was born.
Shaving, easy enough, he did that all the time. Eyeliner, he hadn’t done for himself in more than a decade, and he had to wash it off and start over again, twice. On the upside, he had got the smudgy, rock and roll, guyliner thing Abby liked down. Sure, it was an accident, and he was thinking he might look slightly more like a raccoon than he have liked to, but only slightly.
He stared at it for a few more seconds, debated taking it off again, but a quick check on the clock said his nails weren’t going to be dry if he didn’t book, so, collar.
There was a sort of calm that went with wearing it, but that was the point, really. Well, partially. Part of the point was ownership, which was true enough. He is Abby’s, always will be, and just like the ring and the tattoos, the collar reinforced it. Part of it was the sign of submission, and since that was what he was playing tonight, it was appropriate. Part of it, which for him was the most difficult part, was the headspace, the full surrender, and like putting it on evoked a certain sort of calm, it was supposed to help him get into that headspace. And it wasn’t that he had a hard time with submitting, that part of the headspace was easy enough, it was quieting everything else, focusing solely on Abby and his desire to please her.
He always had an easy time with following orders and rules, especially the sorts of rules she was going to be laying down for him. But the ability to let all the little background voices drop away, to exist solely in the space of her words and the sensations of his body, that was a lot harder to catch.
He pulled it snug, looking in the mirror to buckle it, and then twisted it so the buckle was in the back. And while he might want to think about it more, he’s got two more jobs to do.
Okay. Nail polish. It didn’t take him long to put on, but it did take long to dry properly. He’d been told (by Abby) that the non-matte polishes dry faster, but he couldn’t see having shiny nails. Black matte is cool. Shiny black isn’t. And no, he couldn’t explain why.
Three minutes to go. Kneeling. Usually kneeling on the bed meant his butt on his feet, body facing the door. He assumed the position and then jerked up. He’d gone to get the outlining done on his Father’s Day tattoo on Saturday and sitting all of his weight onto his calf stung pretty bad.
He’d just gotten settled into kneeling up, hands crossed at the wrists behind his back, when he realized the wrist cuffs were still in the toy box.
Another quick move, put them on the bedside table, kneeling again, and…
And less than thirty seconds later, he heard the door to Kelly’s room shut.
His head was bowed, but he heard her stop at the door to their room, could feel her looking, could feel his body respond to her look, not getting hard, not that fast, not just from her looking, but longer and fuller, oh yeah. Knowing she was enjoying him on display like this always does that.
He was aware of her footsteps, very quiet, bare feet on carpet, and could track her circling around him, looking from all angles, making sure he’d done exactly as she asked.
He thought she was pleased, had the sense of a smile even though he couldn’t see her face right now.
He heard her moving again, and the sound of her hands on something plastic, phone probably, and then music, his: smooth, soft, lush jazz, filled the room.
Another step, from the dresser where his phone was to the side of the bed. Her fingers trailed down his hip, along his thigh, and then, brushed, lightly, so lightly, sending a burning itch though his leg, over the dragon tattoo.
“Dragon Knight. Captured in Cyrmu. Battle of Pontypandy. We know from your clan marker,” she traced her fingers over his cuff tattoo, “That you’re one of the McGees.”
He didn’t smile. He wanted to smile, this’ll be fun, not what he was expecting with the collar, but definitely fun.
“They tell me we’ve had you for five days, and no one’s been able to make you speak.”
He kept his head bowed, aware of her moving around him, around the bed, picking up the wrist cuffs.
“They say you take orders, so we know you understand, but you won’t say anything.”
He didn’t respond, head down, posture relaxed and loose.
“They tell me they aren’t even sure if you can speak. Of course, Dragon Knight, you wouldn’t need to, the link with your dragon was psychic. And if you’re the McGee we’ve been looking for… Well, you don’t need to know which one of you we want.”
She knelt behind him, securing his wrists to each other. “Comfortable?”
He still didn’t respond.
“Doesn’t matter much one way or another. It’s my job to find out if you can speak. And if you can, it’s my job to find out who you are. And from there… Well, we’ll get there. Stand up, off the bed.”
It was awkward to go from kneeling to standing on the bed without hands, but he did, and then stopped right next to the bed, head still bowed. He can see her feet and legs up to her hips, and while she was wearing a pair of his drawstring jammy pants when she went in to feed Kelly, they were gone now, replaced by her black robe with the cherry blossoms.
“They’re right; you’re very good at following orders.” Abby pointed to right under the hook in the ceiling, still currently providing a place for the plant. But he had a good idea of how this was going to go and what would happen depending on how good of a job he does at ‘resisting interrogation.’
He stood where he was directed to, and heard her head to the toy box, where the chain they use to tie the wrist cuffs to that hook is, along with the ropes.
“Five days is a long time to go without making a sound.”
He couldn’t see what she had gotten, but he didn’t hear any clinking so that leaned toward a rope, or a toy, but not the chain. If it was a toy, she might have picked this spot just because of the good view from the mirrors.
“But you would be good at it, wouldn’t you?” She put something on the bed, outside of his circle of vision. “Can’t be a dragon knight without a strong mind, strong magic. The dragons eat you alive if you can’t dominate them.” She stepped closer to him, tilted his head up so he was looking in her eyes.
Looking up he wanted to smile, but didn’t. Sir… whoever he is… Gabriel, Gabriel McGee, Lord of… he was probably supposed to be Irish. Cyrmu is Wales, right? Donegal. Lord of Donegal. Is Donegal a city? Doesn't matter. Sir Gabriel wouldn’t be smiling. Captured Dragon Knights don’t smile at their captors. Okay, Dragon Knight, but what was he, where did he fit? Captured for interrogation, has to be a high value captive. Has to have information worth this set up.... Commander of the… hell… dragons… what sort of dragon… Hungarian Horntails? No. Irish… Nightfuries? They're Viking dragons... Still better than Hungry. Besides, there's only outlining on the calf tattoo, so right now it is a black dragon. Good. Character set, he just had to keep it somewhere in his mind so he could whip it out when he needed it.
Holding his gaze, Abby said to him, “So, Dragon Knight, you must be used to being in charge, to giving orders and having people obey your every command.” She grinned and stepped behind him, and he felt her tie something to the collar, ribbon maybe, didn’t feel thick enough to be rope, and then she reached up, removed the plant, and after grabbing the footrest that went with the easy chair in the corner, tied whatever it is to the hook.
Okay, that was new. They’d never tried tied by his neck. He tentatively shifted a bit, getting the sense that he had about a half foot range of comfortable motion, before his collar’ll get too tight. He checked the view in the mirror, it is ribbon, not very thick, and he was certain it couldn’t hold his weight. If he let his body drop, it would snap. No chance of him strangling on this.
“I imagine this will be very different for you. Not being in charge. Taking orders rather than giving them.” She traced her hand over his chest, stopping for a second to circle a nipple, pull gently on it. “The order is simple, answer my questions.”
He looked down again, away from her gaze, not answering.
“Not feeling chatty, huh?” She sighed dramatically. “Eyes up, watching me.” He looked up to follow her with his eyes. “Do you wonder, Dragon Knight, why we’re still feeding you? Do you wonder why you’ve been asked questions, and yet not touched? You must know most interrogations don’t happen to prisoners who are well-kept, well-fed, let alone in a sumptuous bedroom, or handled by a naked woman.”
He blinked, slowly, at her. Just acknowledging that he heard her.
She strolled around him, moving deliberately, each step making her hips and breasts sway enticingly. He tracked her nipples, subtle points under her robe, and made a gleeful note of the fact that she’d taken her bra off.
“They say the Dragon Knights maintain a psychic bond with their mounts. That in order to do that they have to be strong in both magic and will power.” She was directly behind him, and he was looking into her eyes in her reflection on the mirror on the bathroom door. “I don’t know if that’s true.” Her fingers trailed very gently, just the tips, down his spine, skipping over where his hands were bound behind his back, ghosting down the cleft of his ass, and then skittering over the back of his upper thigh. “What I do know is that it’s vastly easier, and tidier to make a man talk by offering him something he wants, than it is to try and scare or beat him into compliance.”
She breathed against his shoulder, biting gently.
“Especially men like you. We could deny you water,” soft, wet kiss on his throat, just below the collar, “but you’d just conjure it for yourself. Same with food. We could try pain,” another very light stroke over the tattoo, another slow burn itch, “but you’d just pull your mind away from it.” Her hands slipped down his sides, settling on his hips. “You must know that we’ve already broken fifteen Dragon Knights looking for a successful way to interrogate you. After all, the dragons report back when their masters die. So, you must know of the others.”
He glared at her. Eyes narrow, trying to project pissed-off-captive, and probably not doing a great job of it, after all, it’s not like he’s an actor.
“But dead Knights yield no information. And we want information quite a bit more than corpses. Corpses are only good for manuring the fields. Information on the other hand, is power. And power is victory.” She gave him a gentle slap on the ass.
“And you must know about the other three. Still missing. The Dragons must have reported back that they are not yet dead. In fact, you’ve probably been getting… confusing… reports back from the dragons about the other three. About how they don’t want to be rescued any longer.
“So, you’ve been held, questioned, given food and drink, offered a soft and warm place to sleep. All in preparation for this.”
He raised an eyebrow, signaling, ‘What’s this?’
“Still not talking… How disappointing. Did you notice, Dragon Knight, that though you’ve been offered a comfortable billet, provided with good food, and treated to the most gentle of interrogations, but that the only time you’ve been given free use of your hands is when someone else has been around? Likewise, you’ve been kept in certain positions, comfortable I’m sure, but limiting your access to certain bits of your anatomy?” Her hand stroked lightly over his dick, which wasn’t full hard yet, but was certainly getting there.
“Five days without release is a long time for you, isn’t it?”
He didn’t respond to that, but did try to rub himself against her hand.
She stepped back. “Oh no. On my terms. Not yours. We know you checked your food and drink for poisons.”
He looked surprised at that.
“Yes, our casters are good enough to monitor what magics you use. You didn’t think to check for aphrodisiacs.”
He gave her a those aren’t real look.
“Aren’t they? Haven’t you been feeling more, eager, than usual. Waking up harder, dreaming more intensely, wishing for just a moment or two alone with your hands. Or maybe wishing you could roll onto your stomach and take care of it by rubbing up against those nice soft sheets in your comfortable billet.” She pointedly looks down at his dick, which is full hard now. “You’re certainly looking interested in sex.” She stepped close, and inhaled against that spot where neck becomes shoulder. “I can smell the desire on you.” Her hand slipped over him again, base to tip in a long pull. “Maybe aphrodisiacs aren’t real. Maybe it’s just been a long time for you.” Another long pull. “Or maybe, Sir Knight, every drop of water you’ve drunk, every bite of food, that gentle scent you thought was incense, maybe all of that was designed specifically to wear you down, lower your will, just a hair at a time,” she whispered against his jaw.
“Dragon Knight, have you guessed yet who I am, yet?” she asked with a kiss to his ear.
He tilted his head a bit, indicating he had a pretty good idea.
She licked her lips, and then leaned in and licked his, tongue slipping slow and easy over his bottom lip, followed by her teeth giving it a gentle pull.
“Lady Skye,” whispered against his ear, fingers of her one hand trailing down his chest, fingers of the other wrapped around his dick, providing a gentle, warm squeeze, “Mistress of the Alchemical Guild. The Dark Potioner. Or, as I’m known in a few, select circles, King William’s Encyclopedia. When he wants to know something, he asks me, and I always get the answer.”
He bowed his head and shoulders as much as he could given the tie on his neck.
“Courtly politeness.” She laughed at that, letting go of him, stepping back. “You Dragon Knights are amusing.”
He smiled widely at her, keeping his eyes hard, head tilted in acknowledgement.
“So Sir Knight, let’s start here, what is your name?”
He shook his head.
“Playing hard to get? Probably a good gambit.” She stepped in closer, lips whispering over his, “After all, if you talk immediately, you don’t get to see what happens.” Her tongue darted out, slipping between his lips, and he leaned in toward her, as far as he could, kissing her back. After a second of her body, warm and rubbing gently against his, she stepped back. “And I think we’ll both enjoy this quite a bit more, if it takes you a while to break.”
He tried to convey, not a problem, I can go all night, in a look. He’s not sure how successful that was, but she giggled at it and said, “Yes, we’ve all heard the stories of the Dragon Knights’ incredible stamina.” She took his cock in hand and gave it a gentle squeeze. “Though if memory serves those stories usually have a lot more to do with fighting all day and all night and all the next day. That you take strength from your dragons to keep going and going. But your dragon isn’t here. And besides, they lay eggs, so I’m not sure how handy your link will be for this.”
He shrugged.
“What, have you never tested it?”
Another shrug.
“Really? No words at all?” She asked while pulling her hand up his dick.
He shook his head again, but thrust in counter point to her hand, enjoying the friction quite a bit. She loosened her grip but sped up, lighter, softer friction. Almost too light.
“Do you like this?”
He shrugged. It’s okay, on his face.
“You could tell me how to do it better. Tell me exactly how you like to be handled, and who knows, you may get it.”
He smiled at that, gestured with his eyebrows come closer, tilted his head forward, like he was going to whisper into her ear, and when she moved closer to listen, he kissed her ear, licking over the shell, and gently biting the lobe.
She pulled back, amused look on her face. “That’s how you’re going to play?”
He nodded.
She let go of him and stepped back to the bed. “Do you like to watch, Dragon Knight?”
He nodded enthusiastically at that, too.
“Know what this is?” She said, reaching for the toy she placed on the bed, letting her right shoulder slip out of her robe.
He nodded, very pleased to see that. That was a glass dildo. It didn’t get out of the toy box all that often these days. It’s aesthetically pleasing, great for a show, but too hard and thick for serious play, especially on him. And these days, toys that they can’t both play with tend to spend all their time in the box.
“Man of the world then?” She was holding it between her palms, rubbing it gently, robe having fallen off of both shoulders, but still keeping her breasts and everything below covered. “Not all of your brothers were so well traveled.”
She continued to rub it between her palms and then said, "James McGee? Subcommander of William McGee's strike force. Second son of the Lord of Waterford?"
He shook his head, wondering where she came up with that, and then remembered that Waterford is a place in Ireland known for glass.
She held it out tip first. “Lick it.”
He kept his mouth shut, raised an eyebrow, and gave her his best, I don’t think so look while shaking his head.
She lay it back down on the bed, and turned to him, letting her robe drop to the floor.
She let him look his fill, and he did, trailing his eyes up and down her, lingering in a very obvious way on her curves.
“You know, I should be insulted. Here I am naked, and you say nothing. I’m beginning to think you might not like this.” She reached for her robe, and he shook his head vehemently, feeling the pull of the collar against his throat.
“Nope. Not good enough.” She began to slip the robe back on.
A soft whimper escaped from between his lips.
“So, you can make sounds! There’s a step in the right direction. Every time you cooperate, you get rewarded.” She dropped the robe, and settled back onto the bed, legs wide, letting him look all he liked. Another soft whimper of appreciation followed the first.
She picked up the dildo, trailing it over the skin of her thigh, stroking it against her pussy.
“Wet glass is so slick. It just glides over everything. Slips into nice, tight places so easily.” She continued to stroke it up and down, gently over herself, watching his eyes following her every move.
“It’d be so much easier if it was wet. You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Get to see me slip it inside?” She licked her lips. “You’d like to know it was wet with you. Your tongue getting it all slick so it could just ease inside and spread me wide.”
She lifted it away, and he saw a faint thread of her natural lube stretch between the tip of the toy and her.
That got yet another whimper as she stood up, once again holding out the dildo, and said, once more, “Lick.”
This time he did. Tongue darting out, lapping her taste off of it, adding his saliva to it.
“Like the taste, Dragon Rider?”
“Mmmmm….”
She smiled at that, trailed a finger between her pussy lips, and then lifted it to his mouth, letting him suck it off.
“You’re very good at that, Sir Knight. Are you used to sucking? You swing both ways?”
That got a quick glare.
“Pity. I like men who can give as well as get. They’re so much fun.”
She settled back onto the bed and began to play with the dildo again, stroking the whole length of the dildo up her clit in a slow, slick slide. “So much better with it all wet. The next question, Dragon Knight, is can you talk?” She shifted her grip, using the tip to circle over her again and again, then slipping down, dipping between her lips, but not penetrating.
He made another frustrated sound at that.
“You’d like to be this dildo wouldn’t you? Your cock slipping hot and wet between my lips.” She pressed the dildo in, slowly, making sure he had a great view of it as it slid into her. “You can imagine how good it would feel, can’t you…”
God, yes he can, he can imagine it, and remember it, and feel it on his skin, and he’s trusting against nothing right now, just at the idea.
“Is that a good speed for you?” She matched his movements with her own, speeding up a bit. Abby moaned, soft and low and wicked, and the sound of it ripped through him, pumping up his own excitement. “Oh… It’s a good speed for me.”
Then she lifted the toy to her mouth, sucking it, licking the tip, and sucking again. “Or maybe those lips, want to slip between them?” That got another groan from him. “Or maybe…” she slipped it down her body, dragging it over her skin, over her clit, between her lips, and down to just rest at her anus. “Maybe there… Would you like to have me there.”
“Yes.” It came out as a low groan. God yes, please, let’s do that, now!
She smiled brightly. “You can talk! Excellent! What’s your name, Dragon Knight? I don’t bed a man until I know his name.”
She pressed the toy against herself, easing it, so slowly, forward. Not really penetrating, just pushing a bit. “Good choice. So hot and so tight. You’ve never, ever felt anything that tight.” She twitched her pelvic muscles. “And I know how to ripple, how to squeeze and flex. You’ve never even imagined feeling anything so good as me.”
He groaned again, stepping the half foot forward, closer to her.
“You are eager aren’t you? All you have to do is tell me your name. Which McGee are you?”
That got another torn sounding whimper. He wants to get off, bad. Wants to keep playing, too. So he keeps holding it together, reminding himself of his name, but not saying it. Not yet.
She stood again, dropping the dildo, and he whimpered again. Keep doing that! very clear on his face.
“No, Sir Knight. You like it. I can see that. But you’re not broken yet. I think you need something more persuasive.”
She knelt elegantly. Sinking to the floor, holding him, firm, licking gently and then taking him to the root, until her chin rested against his balls and he was whimpering.
Two minutes, three? She set a quick, deep, pace, all the way up and all the way down, and fast. Fast enough his balls were crawling up, and his legs and back were tense, wanting to cum, wanting to thrust, wanting to fuck harder and faster.
Then she let go, pulled off him, looked up, and said, “Did you like that Dragon Knight? Do you want me to finish? All it takes is a name. Just a few syllables, and I’ll swallow you again, work you with my lips and tongue and hands…” she licked the tip, rubbing the flat of her tongue along the underside, while her hand jacked him, slow and steady.
He groaned again.
She blew on the tip, mouth hovering just over it. “Maybe that’s not enough? Maybe you don’t just want my mouth.” She opened her mouth, holding it around his dick, letting him feel the moist heat, and soft breath, but not closing her lips or sucking.
“Do you want to mark me, Dragon Knight? See your seed on me? Striping my face and chest.” She licked him again, and this time closed her mouth over the tip of his dick, sliding down again, starting up that quick pace again pushing him closer and closer to the edge, and he could feel his climax building, that less than thirty seconds from falling over the cliff sensation in his dick and balls, the almost ache of being so close. And there she stopped. “It just takes a name. What’s your name, Dragon Knight?”
“Gabriel!” he gasped out, very glad he’d already picked that because there had been absolutely no shot of him making it up on the fly. “Gabriel McGee, Lord of Donegal, Commander of The Nightfuries.”
“Excellent, Gabriel.” She stood up and he whimpered. Her standing up was not part of the deal. Kneeling down and finishing him off was the deal. Her standing up and walking away was really not part of the deal. She headed for the nightstand and opened it, getting the lube.
Okay, that looked good. He wasn’t sure what she was going to do with it, but as long as it involved him getting off soon, he was all in favor of anything involving lube.
“Do you want to come?”
“God, yes!”
“Excellent.” She was smiling widely at him. And once again she knelt, and he thought he knew what was coming next, adjusted his stance, shifting his legs further apart so she’d have good access, but apparently that wasn’t her game.
She took his dick in hand again, and blew all over it, making sure her saliva had dried, and then took the bottle of lube, flicked open the cap, and carefully dribbled a few drops over the head of his dick, making sure they were full enough to slide down his shaft.
He groaned at that slow, meandering drip.
Then she stood again. “So excellent. So marvelous to have someone so eager. So, ready… and…” she squeezed gently and a drop of pre-cum oozed down his dick following the path of the lube, “so wet.”
Her voice slipped over his ear, hot against his neck, as she stepped behind him and started with slow strokes to spread the lube and his pre-cum over his dick. “It’d be so easy. Just a few quick pulls and you’d be spurting, hot and wet and sticky all over my hand. Making a mess on my nice, clean carpet. But that’s for… common information. Say, confirmation of something we already know.”
He groaned, voice low. Half from sexual frustration, half trying to think of anything that could possibly qualify as ‘good information.’
“Now, for good information, say something we don’t already know, I’ll release your hands from the chains, can’t unbind them fully, can’t risk you running off, but I’ll unchain you, let you lay down on my nice, soft bed, and then let you lick me.” Long, slow pulls, all the way up and all the way down, and he was thrusting into her hands, all six of his brain cells that weren’t entirely devoted to getting off flailing away for some sort of story for her. “You like pussy, right? Succulent, wet, pussy, right on your lips. Your tongue deep inside.”
A pained breath hissed out of him.
“Oh, come now, are you not talking again? I thought we’d gotten past that. Do I need to go back to where we began? Say, let go of you all together? Leave you standing there, so hard, so full, so… needy.” She started to pull her hands away.
He had to buy more time, because he’s coming up with nothing. “What do I get for excellent information? Something you can’t find out for yourself?”
That got a wide smile, and a stronger, faster stroke. “If you give me information I truly can’t find out for myself, something useful and secret, I’ll tie you down on my bed, let you eat all the pussy you want, and then slide down your body and ride you like one of your dragons.”
Another groan. He tried to look torn, because Gabriel would be torn, but hell, he wanted to fuck, and mostly was just trying to think of anything that would work with the game. Finally something hit, and he spit it out, fast.
“Lord Ashworth has been spying for us for three years,” came out fast, in one quick breath.
Abby smiled at him in the mirror, chin on his shoulder. “Oh… I like that.” Her hand pulled faster over his dick and he could feel his climax building, wouldn’t take much to push him over, but this wasn’t how he wanted this to play out.
“No!” gasped out. “That’s not common information!”
“Are you sure?” her hand slowed, back to that keep-him-on-edge pace. “At least half a dozen people on our side know about Ashworth.”
“Like fuck they do. We wouldn’t have thrashed your men at London and Cadbury if you’d known about the intel he was sending us. If you know he’s a spy, fine, but you don’t know what intel he’s sending us.”
She let go of him, and that also got a groan. “That is… compelling.” He felt her undo the right cuff from the left one, and then she said, “Hands in front of you.”
He did, and she recuffed them to each other, and then undid his collar, leaving it dangling from the ceiling.
“Onto the bed, Sir Gabriel, Lord of Donegal.”
He sat, and then lay down, and she recuffed his hands into the slats of their headboard.
“Something so wonderfully delicious about a bound and hard man. It’s just… fabulous.” She licked gently up his thigh. “You like it, too, don’t you? Need, desire, shame, it all wraps together, makes you so hard, so eager.” Another lick, this time over his testicle and up his dick. “Mmmm… Nothing on earth tastes so good as a bound knight.”
She straddled his hips, and moved up his body, stopping when she straddled his shoulders. “Well, Sir Gabriel, we know you can talk with that tongue, can you do anything else with it?”
He started with a long, wide swipe of his tongue, getting a little bit of everything from top to bottom, and then went to town. He was turned on enough that he doesn’t want to linger on this. He wanted her riding him, hard and fast and now, and for the first time in a while, he was noticing that she’s wet, really wet, maybe not dripping, but good and slick.
He focused in on her clit, fast little circles, over and over and over, keeping the pressure light at first, waiting to feel her hips roll against him in counter point before pushing up against her. She moaned at that, gripping his hair, and he grunted in response, liking the way she was sounding very much, feeling it go straight to his cock.
She started moving faster, harder, having a more difficult time holding a rhythm, but he kept pace with her, he knew this dance, loved it, and in a minute, she was shuddering over him as he switched to light, gentle, come down licks.
Abby leaned against their headboard, breathing hard. “Sir Gabriel, I don’t think we’re ever going to ransom you. You’re way too much fun to let go.”
He smiled at that. “Are you saying you want me for your own personal harem, my lady?”
“There’s a thought. I’m sure King William would let me have you as a pet.” She leaned over to the night stand, and fished out a condom. He was already slick with lube, so she didn’t add any to the condom before slipping it down him and saying, “Would you like that? My personal plaything? Available whenever I want you.”
She glided her pussy over him a few times, letting him grind against her.
“I can think of worse jobs.”
“I’m sure you can.” She lifted up a bit, getting the angle right, and then slid down onto him in one long stroke.
“Ohhh…” escaped him in a slow exhale. “Uhhhh…” followed as an inhale as she rose up.
She set a slow pace, and he didn’t know if that’s still getting used to post-baby sex, or playing the role, but it was driving him crazy. He thrust up against her, and didn’t see any pain or discomfort on her face when he did it, so he was thinking slow was the role, but either way she rested her hands on his hips.
“Oh no, Sir Gabriel. I decide when you come. And right now, you haven’t earned it, yet.”
His brain was melting, one slow stroke at a time, and he was coming up blank on anything that might work for the game, but he knew he wanted to go faster, had to go faster, needed to get off, this was starting to hurt. So he got his feet flat on the bed, knees up, (Abby squeaked in surprise when he did it, falling forward a little, hands landing on his shoulders, and then snuck down for a quick kiss, breaking character for a moment.) and thrust up.
“Only so long you can tease, lady.” Another hard thrust, forcing her forward, this time, though, she arched back into it, moaning. Her hands were on the bed, either side of his head, and he turned his head and nipped at her wrist. “Before the dragon’ll bite.”
It was more difficult to set the pace from the bottom, but difficult wasn’t impossible, and he was so hard by then, so turned on. He used his legs for extra leverage, raising her up on his hips with each fast, hard thrust, and she was slamming down on top of him, groaning on each down stroke, tightening deliciously against him as everything besides the feel of her body on his faded away, wiped out by rushing, pulsing pleasure.
They were both lying there, happy, warm, comfortable, Abby’s head resting against his shoulder.
“You know. Gibbs hasn’t been able to break this last suspect yet. He spent eight hours with her in interrogation and she said nothing. Maybe I need to try your technique.”
Abby laughed. “Head in all naked and sexy, and see if you can seduce it out of her?”
“Why not?” he said with a giggle. “Be a hell of a lot less boring than watching that locker.”
She sat up, slapped his shoulder lightly, grabbed a tissue, and wiped them both up, tossing the condom in the trash, then uncuffed his hands. He stretched out his shoulders.
“Mmmmm… Good game. That your plan all along?”
“Nope. Saw the tatt and decided to run with it,” she said, heading for their bathroom. A minute later she was back in their bed, lying on her side, him spooned up behind her.
He said to her, feeling sleepy, “Definitely going to be another chapter of that story.”
She lifted his hand to her lips and kissed it.
A few minutes after that, they both checked out from the waking world.
Next
Chapter 290. Playtime
“Hey, you’re home,” Abby said, looking up from the book she was reading.
“I am home.”
“How’d it go?”
Tim flopped dramatically onto the sofa, resting his head on her lap, and said, “BOOOOOOORING! Single most boring day of my career.” It was day two of what he was calling the ‘never-ending stakeout of doom.’ And all day yesterday, and all day today, and likely all day tomorrow, they were spending sitting in a bus, in a bus station, staring at a monitor, waiting for someone to open a locker and take cash and travel documents out.
Abby petted his hair. “Poor baby. Having to sit around all day and do nothing using your brain. Gosh, I wonder what that’s like.”
He sat up and looked at her, stroking her cheek. “Yeah, I guess you do know. How was your day?”
“Moooooo,” she said imitating a cow.
He snorted a bit of a laugh at that, because, really, at two months old, sleeping, eating, and pooping is pretty much all a baby does.
“We could stop dithering about the nanny and get you back to work sooner.”
“I can do one more month off. Besides, I know I’m not with it enough to do my job well. I sorted the laundry, put it in the washing machine, carefully selected the right detergent, carefully picked the right setting, turned the machine on, and headed off.”
Tim thought about that, but it sounded right to him, so he wasn’t sure what the issue was. “Not seeing the problem.”
“I didn’t actually put the detergent into the machine. It was still sitting there, on top of the dryer, when I got back.”
“Ugh.”
“Yeah. I mess up the laundry, oh well, do it over. Leave out a reagent on a test…”
He nodded. That’d destroy evidence and screw up the test.
“So, do anything useful with your down time?” Abby knew they were doing half an hour on, half an hour off, watching the locker. That’s as long as any of them can focus on one thing that boring without getting distracted.
“Guess so. I rewrote the info dump in chapter three.”
She pouted at him. “I liked the info dump.”
“Baby, you’re the only one who liked the info dump.” Shadow Force started with a series of mysterious poisonings, and the info dump, in which Amy (now Amy MacGregor) explained what was going on, had been noted by both Penny and Gibbs as being slow, draggy, overly complex, and way too much science. “I wrote the info dump and I didn’t like it.”
Abby continued to pout at that. Once she got used to being “Amy,” she discovered she kind of liked having scenes, and since they tend to be kind of short and lab-oriented she didn’t want them cut.
“I didn’t cut any of your lines, just rearranged them, made them a bit more concise—“
“How is that not cutting?”
“You can read it and see. It’s better. You’ll see.”
“Okay. Anything else happen?”
“Let’s see. Sixty-three million people walked near the locker, but none of them opened it. Tony and I talked a little about how we need to do something really special for Gibbs when he retires.”
“You’re right on that; we do.”
“Any ideas?”
“Nope, but I’ll keep thinking on it.”
“We are, too. At one point, it got slow enough I almost told him I called my mom, but then the whole having to tell him why I wasn’t talking to her thing popped into my head… And, bored’s bad enough, don’t need to add sad to bored.”
“Probably a good plan.”
“Probably a good plan not to start that up at work, either.”
She nodded in agreement. “Are you going to tell him?”
Tim shook his head a little, “I don’t really want to. I mean, I don’t mind him knowing, but I just… I don’t want to say it to him. He’s okay with me not saying it, so, that’s where we are.”
“Okay. You eat?”
“Yeah. Gibbs stopped by and brought dinner.”
“Good.” They heard Kelly start crying, asking for her second supper. “So, how about we do something not boring tonight?”
That made him smile. “I’m all in favor of that.”
“Good. I’ll get Kelly. You get all pretty for me. Be in bed, waiting for me, when I get done.”
He was grinning at that. “Gonna define pretty?”
She looked him up and down. “Naked, eyeliner, nail polish, collar, wrist cuffs out but not on.”
He gave her a quick kiss, wanted to do a long, slow one, but Kelly’s getting pretty insistent about get-me-now. “I like your idea of not boring.”
“Good.”
“How do you want me on the bed?”
She thought about that for a second. “Kneeling, hands crossed behind your back.”
Tim smiled at her. Yep, this was an excellent idea for not boring.
Feeding Kelly had streamlined down to only forty-five minutes, which was… tight. He rubbed his face, and yeah, he needs to shave. Normally he’d have waited until morning, but he’s fairly sure that she’ll appreciate smooth.
And it’s not like it takes him long to shave. But shave, nails, and eyeliner, that’s a different proposition.
So, yeah, tight. He was hopping up the stairs two at a time, Abby smiling at him, looking really amused by how eager he was.
Okay, clothing went off first, that was easy and took about twenty-six seconds. Can’t do anything while his nails dry, so they have to be last. Shave first, don’t want to mess up the eyeliner. And a plan was born.
Shaving, easy enough, he did that all the time. Eyeliner, he hadn’t done for himself in more than a decade, and he had to wash it off and start over again, twice. On the upside, he had got the smudgy, rock and roll, guyliner thing Abby liked down. Sure, it was an accident, and he was thinking he might look slightly more like a raccoon than he have liked to, but only slightly.
He stared at it for a few more seconds, debated taking it off again, but a quick check on the clock said his nails weren’t going to be dry if he didn’t book, so, collar.
There was a sort of calm that went with wearing it, but that was the point, really. Well, partially. Part of the point was ownership, which was true enough. He is Abby’s, always will be, and just like the ring and the tattoos, the collar reinforced it. Part of it was the sign of submission, and since that was what he was playing tonight, it was appropriate. Part of it, which for him was the most difficult part, was the headspace, the full surrender, and like putting it on evoked a certain sort of calm, it was supposed to help him get into that headspace. And it wasn’t that he had a hard time with submitting, that part of the headspace was easy enough, it was quieting everything else, focusing solely on Abby and his desire to please her.
He always had an easy time with following orders and rules, especially the sorts of rules she was going to be laying down for him. But the ability to let all the little background voices drop away, to exist solely in the space of her words and the sensations of his body, that was a lot harder to catch.
He pulled it snug, looking in the mirror to buckle it, and then twisted it so the buckle was in the back. And while he might want to think about it more, he’s got two more jobs to do.
Okay. Nail polish. It didn’t take him long to put on, but it did take long to dry properly. He’d been told (by Abby) that the non-matte polishes dry faster, but he couldn’t see having shiny nails. Black matte is cool. Shiny black isn’t. And no, he couldn’t explain why.
Three minutes to go. Kneeling. Usually kneeling on the bed meant his butt on his feet, body facing the door. He assumed the position and then jerked up. He’d gone to get the outlining done on his Father’s Day tattoo on Saturday and sitting all of his weight onto his calf stung pretty bad.
He’d just gotten settled into kneeling up, hands crossed at the wrists behind his back, when he realized the wrist cuffs were still in the toy box.
Another quick move, put them on the bedside table, kneeling again, and…
And less than thirty seconds later, he heard the door to Kelly’s room shut.
His head was bowed, but he heard her stop at the door to their room, could feel her looking, could feel his body respond to her look, not getting hard, not that fast, not just from her looking, but longer and fuller, oh yeah. Knowing she was enjoying him on display like this always does that.
He was aware of her footsteps, very quiet, bare feet on carpet, and could track her circling around him, looking from all angles, making sure he’d done exactly as she asked.
He thought she was pleased, had the sense of a smile even though he couldn’t see her face right now.
He heard her moving again, and the sound of her hands on something plastic, phone probably, and then music, his: smooth, soft, lush jazz, filled the room.
Another step, from the dresser where his phone was to the side of the bed. Her fingers trailed down his hip, along his thigh, and then, brushed, lightly, so lightly, sending a burning itch though his leg, over the dragon tattoo.
“Dragon Knight. Captured in Cyrmu. Battle of Pontypandy. We know from your clan marker,” she traced her fingers over his cuff tattoo, “That you’re one of the McGees.”
He didn’t smile. He wanted to smile, this’ll be fun, not what he was expecting with the collar, but definitely fun.
“They tell me we’ve had you for five days, and no one’s been able to make you speak.”
He kept his head bowed, aware of her moving around him, around the bed, picking up the wrist cuffs.
“They say you take orders, so we know you understand, but you won’t say anything.”
He didn’t respond, head down, posture relaxed and loose.
“They tell me they aren’t even sure if you can speak. Of course, Dragon Knight, you wouldn’t need to, the link with your dragon was psychic. And if you’re the McGee we’ve been looking for… Well, you don’t need to know which one of you we want.”
She knelt behind him, securing his wrists to each other. “Comfortable?”
He still didn’t respond.
“Doesn’t matter much one way or another. It’s my job to find out if you can speak. And if you can, it’s my job to find out who you are. And from there… Well, we’ll get there. Stand up, off the bed.”
It was awkward to go from kneeling to standing on the bed without hands, but he did, and then stopped right next to the bed, head still bowed. He can see her feet and legs up to her hips, and while she was wearing a pair of his drawstring jammy pants when she went in to feed Kelly, they were gone now, replaced by her black robe with the cherry blossoms.
“They’re right; you’re very good at following orders.” Abby pointed to right under the hook in the ceiling, still currently providing a place for the plant. But he had a good idea of how this was going to go and what would happen depending on how good of a job he does at ‘resisting interrogation.’
He stood where he was directed to, and heard her head to the toy box, where the chain they use to tie the wrist cuffs to that hook is, along with the ropes.
“Five days is a long time to go without making a sound.”
He couldn’t see what she had gotten, but he didn’t hear any clinking so that leaned toward a rope, or a toy, but not the chain. If it was a toy, she might have picked this spot just because of the good view from the mirrors.
“But you would be good at it, wouldn’t you?” She put something on the bed, outside of his circle of vision. “Can’t be a dragon knight without a strong mind, strong magic. The dragons eat you alive if you can’t dominate them.” She stepped closer to him, tilted his head up so he was looking in her eyes.
Looking up he wanted to smile, but didn’t. Sir… whoever he is… Gabriel, Gabriel McGee, Lord of… he was probably supposed to be Irish. Cyrmu is Wales, right? Donegal. Lord of Donegal. Is Donegal a city? Doesn't matter. Sir Gabriel wouldn’t be smiling. Captured Dragon Knights don’t smile at their captors. Okay, Dragon Knight, but what was he, where did he fit? Captured for interrogation, has to be a high value captive. Has to have information worth this set up.... Commander of the… hell… dragons… what sort of dragon… Hungarian Horntails? No. Irish… Nightfuries? They're Viking dragons... Still better than Hungry. Besides, there's only outlining on the calf tattoo, so right now it is a black dragon. Good. Character set, he just had to keep it somewhere in his mind so he could whip it out when he needed it.
Holding his gaze, Abby said to him, “So, Dragon Knight, you must be used to being in charge, to giving orders and having people obey your every command.” She grinned and stepped behind him, and he felt her tie something to the collar, ribbon maybe, didn’t feel thick enough to be rope, and then she reached up, removed the plant, and after grabbing the footrest that went with the easy chair in the corner, tied whatever it is to the hook.
Okay, that was new. They’d never tried tied by his neck. He tentatively shifted a bit, getting the sense that he had about a half foot range of comfortable motion, before his collar’ll get too tight. He checked the view in the mirror, it is ribbon, not very thick, and he was certain it couldn’t hold his weight. If he let his body drop, it would snap. No chance of him strangling on this.
“I imagine this will be very different for you. Not being in charge. Taking orders rather than giving them.” She traced her hand over his chest, stopping for a second to circle a nipple, pull gently on it. “The order is simple, answer my questions.”
He looked down again, away from her gaze, not answering.
“Not feeling chatty, huh?” She sighed dramatically. “Eyes up, watching me.” He looked up to follow her with his eyes. “Do you wonder, Dragon Knight, why we’re still feeding you? Do you wonder why you’ve been asked questions, and yet not touched? You must know most interrogations don’t happen to prisoners who are well-kept, well-fed, let alone in a sumptuous bedroom, or handled by a naked woman.”
He blinked, slowly, at her. Just acknowledging that he heard her.
She strolled around him, moving deliberately, each step making her hips and breasts sway enticingly. He tracked her nipples, subtle points under her robe, and made a gleeful note of the fact that she’d taken her bra off.
“They say the Dragon Knights maintain a psychic bond with their mounts. That in order to do that they have to be strong in both magic and will power.” She was directly behind him, and he was looking into her eyes in her reflection on the mirror on the bathroom door. “I don’t know if that’s true.” Her fingers trailed very gently, just the tips, down his spine, skipping over where his hands were bound behind his back, ghosting down the cleft of his ass, and then skittering over the back of his upper thigh. “What I do know is that it’s vastly easier, and tidier to make a man talk by offering him something he wants, than it is to try and scare or beat him into compliance.”
She breathed against his shoulder, biting gently.
“Especially men like you. We could deny you water,” soft, wet kiss on his throat, just below the collar, “but you’d just conjure it for yourself. Same with food. We could try pain,” another very light stroke over the tattoo, another slow burn itch, “but you’d just pull your mind away from it.” Her hands slipped down his sides, settling on his hips. “You must know that we’ve already broken fifteen Dragon Knights looking for a successful way to interrogate you. After all, the dragons report back when their masters die. So, you must know of the others.”
He glared at her. Eyes narrow, trying to project pissed-off-captive, and probably not doing a great job of it, after all, it’s not like he’s an actor.
“But dead Knights yield no information. And we want information quite a bit more than corpses. Corpses are only good for manuring the fields. Information on the other hand, is power. And power is victory.” She gave him a gentle slap on the ass.
“And you must know about the other three. Still missing. The Dragons must have reported back that they are not yet dead. In fact, you’ve probably been getting… confusing… reports back from the dragons about the other three. About how they don’t want to be rescued any longer.
“So, you’ve been held, questioned, given food and drink, offered a soft and warm place to sleep. All in preparation for this.”
He raised an eyebrow, signaling, ‘What’s this?’
“Still not talking… How disappointing. Did you notice, Dragon Knight, that though you’ve been offered a comfortable billet, provided with good food, and treated to the most gentle of interrogations, but that the only time you’ve been given free use of your hands is when someone else has been around? Likewise, you’ve been kept in certain positions, comfortable I’m sure, but limiting your access to certain bits of your anatomy?” Her hand stroked lightly over his dick, which wasn’t full hard yet, but was certainly getting there.
“Five days without release is a long time for you, isn’t it?”
He didn’t respond to that, but did try to rub himself against her hand.
She stepped back. “Oh no. On my terms. Not yours. We know you checked your food and drink for poisons.”
He looked surprised at that.
“Yes, our casters are good enough to monitor what magics you use. You didn’t think to check for aphrodisiacs.”
He gave her a those aren’t real look.
“Aren’t they? Haven’t you been feeling more, eager, than usual. Waking up harder, dreaming more intensely, wishing for just a moment or two alone with your hands. Or maybe wishing you could roll onto your stomach and take care of it by rubbing up against those nice soft sheets in your comfortable billet.” She pointedly looks down at his dick, which is full hard now. “You’re certainly looking interested in sex.” She stepped close, and inhaled against that spot where neck becomes shoulder. “I can smell the desire on you.” Her hand slipped over him again, base to tip in a long pull. “Maybe aphrodisiacs aren’t real. Maybe it’s just been a long time for you.” Another long pull. “Or maybe, Sir Knight, every drop of water you’ve drunk, every bite of food, that gentle scent you thought was incense, maybe all of that was designed specifically to wear you down, lower your will, just a hair at a time,” she whispered against his jaw.
“Dragon Knight, have you guessed yet who I am, yet?” she asked with a kiss to his ear.
He tilted his head a bit, indicating he had a pretty good idea.
She licked her lips, and then leaned in and licked his, tongue slipping slow and easy over his bottom lip, followed by her teeth giving it a gentle pull.
“Lady Skye,” whispered against his ear, fingers of her one hand trailing down his chest, fingers of the other wrapped around his dick, providing a gentle, warm squeeze, “Mistress of the Alchemical Guild. The Dark Potioner. Or, as I’m known in a few, select circles, King William’s Encyclopedia. When he wants to know something, he asks me, and I always get the answer.”
He bowed his head and shoulders as much as he could given the tie on his neck.
“Courtly politeness.” She laughed at that, letting go of him, stepping back. “You Dragon Knights are amusing.”
He smiled widely at her, keeping his eyes hard, head tilted in acknowledgement.
“So Sir Knight, let’s start here, what is your name?”
He shook his head.
“Playing hard to get? Probably a good gambit.” She stepped in closer, lips whispering over his, “After all, if you talk immediately, you don’t get to see what happens.” Her tongue darted out, slipping between his lips, and he leaned in toward her, as far as he could, kissing her back. After a second of her body, warm and rubbing gently against his, she stepped back. “And I think we’ll both enjoy this quite a bit more, if it takes you a while to break.”
He tried to convey, not a problem, I can go all night, in a look. He’s not sure how successful that was, but she giggled at it and said, “Yes, we’ve all heard the stories of the Dragon Knights’ incredible stamina.” She took his cock in hand and gave it a gentle squeeze. “Though if memory serves those stories usually have a lot more to do with fighting all day and all night and all the next day. That you take strength from your dragons to keep going and going. But your dragon isn’t here. And besides, they lay eggs, so I’m not sure how handy your link will be for this.”
He shrugged.
“What, have you never tested it?”
Another shrug.
“Really? No words at all?” She asked while pulling her hand up his dick.
He shook his head again, but thrust in counter point to her hand, enjoying the friction quite a bit. She loosened her grip but sped up, lighter, softer friction. Almost too light.
“Do you like this?”
He shrugged. It’s okay, on his face.
“You could tell me how to do it better. Tell me exactly how you like to be handled, and who knows, you may get it.”
He smiled at that, gestured with his eyebrows come closer, tilted his head forward, like he was going to whisper into her ear, and when she moved closer to listen, he kissed her ear, licking over the shell, and gently biting the lobe.
She pulled back, amused look on her face. “That’s how you’re going to play?”
He nodded.
She let go of him and stepped back to the bed. “Do you like to watch, Dragon Knight?”
He nodded enthusiastically at that, too.
“Know what this is?” She said, reaching for the toy she placed on the bed, letting her right shoulder slip out of her robe.
He nodded, very pleased to see that. That was a glass dildo. It didn’t get out of the toy box all that often these days. It’s aesthetically pleasing, great for a show, but too hard and thick for serious play, especially on him. And these days, toys that they can’t both play with tend to spend all their time in the box.
“Man of the world then?” She was holding it between her palms, rubbing it gently, robe having fallen off of both shoulders, but still keeping her breasts and everything below covered. “Not all of your brothers were so well traveled.”
She continued to rub it between her palms and then said, "James McGee? Subcommander of William McGee's strike force. Second son of the Lord of Waterford?"
He shook his head, wondering where she came up with that, and then remembered that Waterford is a place in Ireland known for glass.
She held it out tip first. “Lick it.”
He kept his mouth shut, raised an eyebrow, and gave her his best, I don’t think so look while shaking his head.
She lay it back down on the bed, and turned to him, letting her robe drop to the floor.
She let him look his fill, and he did, trailing his eyes up and down her, lingering in a very obvious way on her curves.
“You know, I should be insulted. Here I am naked, and you say nothing. I’m beginning to think you might not like this.” She reached for her robe, and he shook his head vehemently, feeling the pull of the collar against his throat.
“Nope. Not good enough.” She began to slip the robe back on.
A soft whimper escaped from between his lips.
“So, you can make sounds! There’s a step in the right direction. Every time you cooperate, you get rewarded.” She dropped the robe, and settled back onto the bed, legs wide, letting him look all he liked. Another soft whimper of appreciation followed the first.
She picked up the dildo, trailing it over the skin of her thigh, stroking it against her pussy.
“Wet glass is so slick. It just glides over everything. Slips into nice, tight places so easily.” She continued to stroke it up and down, gently over herself, watching his eyes following her every move.
“It’d be so much easier if it was wet. You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Get to see me slip it inside?” She licked her lips. “You’d like to know it was wet with you. Your tongue getting it all slick so it could just ease inside and spread me wide.”
She lifted it away, and he saw a faint thread of her natural lube stretch between the tip of the toy and her.
That got yet another whimper as she stood up, once again holding out the dildo, and said, once more, “Lick.”
This time he did. Tongue darting out, lapping her taste off of it, adding his saliva to it.
“Like the taste, Dragon Rider?”
“Mmmmm….”
She smiled at that, trailed a finger between her pussy lips, and then lifted it to his mouth, letting him suck it off.
“You’re very good at that, Sir Knight. Are you used to sucking? You swing both ways?”
That got a quick glare.
“Pity. I like men who can give as well as get. They’re so much fun.”
She settled back onto the bed and began to play with the dildo again, stroking the whole length of the dildo up her clit in a slow, slick slide. “So much better with it all wet. The next question, Dragon Knight, is can you talk?” She shifted her grip, using the tip to circle over her again and again, then slipping down, dipping between her lips, but not penetrating.
He made another frustrated sound at that.
“You’d like to be this dildo wouldn’t you? Your cock slipping hot and wet between my lips.” She pressed the dildo in, slowly, making sure he had a great view of it as it slid into her. “You can imagine how good it would feel, can’t you…”
God, yes he can, he can imagine it, and remember it, and feel it on his skin, and he’s trusting against nothing right now, just at the idea.
“Is that a good speed for you?” She matched his movements with her own, speeding up a bit. Abby moaned, soft and low and wicked, and the sound of it ripped through him, pumping up his own excitement. “Oh… It’s a good speed for me.”
Then she lifted the toy to her mouth, sucking it, licking the tip, and sucking again. “Or maybe those lips, want to slip between them?” That got another groan from him. “Or maybe…” she slipped it down her body, dragging it over her skin, over her clit, between her lips, and down to just rest at her anus. “Maybe there… Would you like to have me there.”
“Yes.” It came out as a low groan. God yes, please, let’s do that, now!
She smiled brightly. “You can talk! Excellent! What’s your name, Dragon Knight? I don’t bed a man until I know his name.”
She pressed the toy against herself, easing it, so slowly, forward. Not really penetrating, just pushing a bit. “Good choice. So hot and so tight. You’ve never, ever felt anything that tight.” She twitched her pelvic muscles. “And I know how to ripple, how to squeeze and flex. You’ve never even imagined feeling anything so good as me.”
He groaned again, stepping the half foot forward, closer to her.
“You are eager aren’t you? All you have to do is tell me your name. Which McGee are you?”
That got another torn sounding whimper. He wants to get off, bad. Wants to keep playing, too. So he keeps holding it together, reminding himself of his name, but not saying it. Not yet.
She stood again, dropping the dildo, and he whimpered again. Keep doing that! very clear on his face.
“No, Sir Knight. You like it. I can see that. But you’re not broken yet. I think you need something more persuasive.”
She knelt elegantly. Sinking to the floor, holding him, firm, licking gently and then taking him to the root, until her chin rested against his balls and he was whimpering.
Two minutes, three? She set a quick, deep, pace, all the way up and all the way down, and fast. Fast enough his balls were crawling up, and his legs and back were tense, wanting to cum, wanting to thrust, wanting to fuck harder and faster.
Then she let go, pulled off him, looked up, and said, “Did you like that Dragon Knight? Do you want me to finish? All it takes is a name. Just a few syllables, and I’ll swallow you again, work you with my lips and tongue and hands…” she licked the tip, rubbing the flat of her tongue along the underside, while her hand jacked him, slow and steady.
He groaned again.
She blew on the tip, mouth hovering just over it. “Maybe that’s not enough? Maybe you don’t just want my mouth.” She opened her mouth, holding it around his dick, letting him feel the moist heat, and soft breath, but not closing her lips or sucking.
“Do you want to mark me, Dragon Knight? See your seed on me? Striping my face and chest.” She licked him again, and this time closed her mouth over the tip of his dick, sliding down again, starting up that quick pace again pushing him closer and closer to the edge, and he could feel his climax building, that less than thirty seconds from falling over the cliff sensation in his dick and balls, the almost ache of being so close. And there she stopped. “It just takes a name. What’s your name, Dragon Knight?”
“Gabriel!” he gasped out, very glad he’d already picked that because there had been absolutely no shot of him making it up on the fly. “Gabriel McGee, Lord of Donegal, Commander of The Nightfuries.”
“Excellent, Gabriel.” She stood up and he whimpered. Her standing up was not part of the deal. Kneeling down and finishing him off was the deal. Her standing up and walking away was really not part of the deal. She headed for the nightstand and opened it, getting the lube.
Okay, that looked good. He wasn’t sure what she was going to do with it, but as long as it involved him getting off soon, he was all in favor of anything involving lube.
“Do you want to come?”
“God, yes!”
“Excellent.” She was smiling widely at him. And once again she knelt, and he thought he knew what was coming next, adjusted his stance, shifting his legs further apart so she’d have good access, but apparently that wasn’t her game.
She took his dick in hand again, and blew all over it, making sure her saliva had dried, and then took the bottle of lube, flicked open the cap, and carefully dribbled a few drops over the head of his dick, making sure they were full enough to slide down his shaft.
He groaned at that slow, meandering drip.
Then she stood again. “So excellent. So marvelous to have someone so eager. So, ready… and…” she squeezed gently and a drop of pre-cum oozed down his dick following the path of the lube, “so wet.”
Her voice slipped over his ear, hot against his neck, as she stepped behind him and started with slow strokes to spread the lube and his pre-cum over his dick. “It’d be so easy. Just a few quick pulls and you’d be spurting, hot and wet and sticky all over my hand. Making a mess on my nice, clean carpet. But that’s for… common information. Say, confirmation of something we already know.”
He groaned, voice low. Half from sexual frustration, half trying to think of anything that could possibly qualify as ‘good information.’
“Now, for good information, say something we don’t already know, I’ll release your hands from the chains, can’t unbind them fully, can’t risk you running off, but I’ll unchain you, let you lay down on my nice, soft bed, and then let you lick me.” Long, slow pulls, all the way up and all the way down, and he was thrusting into her hands, all six of his brain cells that weren’t entirely devoted to getting off flailing away for some sort of story for her. “You like pussy, right? Succulent, wet, pussy, right on your lips. Your tongue deep inside.”
A pained breath hissed out of him.
“Oh, come now, are you not talking again? I thought we’d gotten past that. Do I need to go back to where we began? Say, let go of you all together? Leave you standing there, so hard, so full, so… needy.” She started to pull her hands away.
He had to buy more time, because he’s coming up with nothing. “What do I get for excellent information? Something you can’t find out for yourself?”
That got a wide smile, and a stronger, faster stroke. “If you give me information I truly can’t find out for myself, something useful and secret, I’ll tie you down on my bed, let you eat all the pussy you want, and then slide down your body and ride you like one of your dragons.”
Another groan. He tried to look torn, because Gabriel would be torn, but hell, he wanted to fuck, and mostly was just trying to think of anything that would work with the game. Finally something hit, and he spit it out, fast.
“Lord Ashworth has been spying for us for three years,” came out fast, in one quick breath.
Abby smiled at him in the mirror, chin on his shoulder. “Oh… I like that.” Her hand pulled faster over his dick and he could feel his climax building, wouldn’t take much to push him over, but this wasn’t how he wanted this to play out.
“No!” gasped out. “That’s not common information!”
“Are you sure?” her hand slowed, back to that keep-him-on-edge pace. “At least half a dozen people on our side know about Ashworth.”
“Like fuck they do. We wouldn’t have thrashed your men at London and Cadbury if you’d known about the intel he was sending us. If you know he’s a spy, fine, but you don’t know what intel he’s sending us.”
She let go of him, and that also got a groan. “That is… compelling.” He felt her undo the right cuff from the left one, and then she said, “Hands in front of you.”
He did, and she recuffed them to each other, and then undid his collar, leaving it dangling from the ceiling.
“Onto the bed, Sir Gabriel, Lord of Donegal.”
He sat, and then lay down, and she recuffed his hands into the slats of their headboard.
“Something so wonderfully delicious about a bound and hard man. It’s just… fabulous.” She licked gently up his thigh. “You like it, too, don’t you? Need, desire, shame, it all wraps together, makes you so hard, so eager.” Another lick, this time over his testicle and up his dick. “Mmmm… Nothing on earth tastes so good as a bound knight.”
She straddled his hips, and moved up his body, stopping when she straddled his shoulders. “Well, Sir Gabriel, we know you can talk with that tongue, can you do anything else with it?”
He started with a long, wide swipe of his tongue, getting a little bit of everything from top to bottom, and then went to town. He was turned on enough that he doesn’t want to linger on this. He wanted her riding him, hard and fast and now, and for the first time in a while, he was noticing that she’s wet, really wet, maybe not dripping, but good and slick.
He focused in on her clit, fast little circles, over and over and over, keeping the pressure light at first, waiting to feel her hips roll against him in counter point before pushing up against her. She moaned at that, gripping his hair, and he grunted in response, liking the way she was sounding very much, feeling it go straight to his cock.
She started moving faster, harder, having a more difficult time holding a rhythm, but he kept pace with her, he knew this dance, loved it, and in a minute, she was shuddering over him as he switched to light, gentle, come down licks.
Abby leaned against their headboard, breathing hard. “Sir Gabriel, I don’t think we’re ever going to ransom you. You’re way too much fun to let go.”
He smiled at that. “Are you saying you want me for your own personal harem, my lady?”
“There’s a thought. I’m sure King William would let me have you as a pet.” She leaned over to the night stand, and fished out a condom. He was already slick with lube, so she didn’t add any to the condom before slipping it down him and saying, “Would you like that? My personal plaything? Available whenever I want you.”
She glided her pussy over him a few times, letting him grind against her.
“I can think of worse jobs.”
“I’m sure you can.” She lifted up a bit, getting the angle right, and then slid down onto him in one long stroke.
“Ohhh…” escaped him in a slow exhale. “Uhhhh…” followed as an inhale as she rose up.
She set a slow pace, and he didn’t know if that’s still getting used to post-baby sex, or playing the role, but it was driving him crazy. He thrust up against her, and didn’t see any pain or discomfort on her face when he did it, so he was thinking slow was the role, but either way she rested her hands on his hips.
“Oh no, Sir Gabriel. I decide when you come. And right now, you haven’t earned it, yet.”
His brain was melting, one slow stroke at a time, and he was coming up blank on anything that might work for the game, but he knew he wanted to go faster, had to go faster, needed to get off, this was starting to hurt. So he got his feet flat on the bed, knees up, (Abby squeaked in surprise when he did it, falling forward a little, hands landing on his shoulders, and then snuck down for a quick kiss, breaking character for a moment.) and thrust up.
“Only so long you can tease, lady.” Another hard thrust, forcing her forward, this time, though, she arched back into it, moaning. Her hands were on the bed, either side of his head, and he turned his head and nipped at her wrist. “Before the dragon’ll bite.”
It was more difficult to set the pace from the bottom, but difficult wasn’t impossible, and he was so hard by then, so turned on. He used his legs for extra leverage, raising her up on his hips with each fast, hard thrust, and she was slamming down on top of him, groaning on each down stroke, tightening deliciously against him as everything besides the feel of her body on his faded away, wiped out by rushing, pulsing pleasure.
They were both lying there, happy, warm, comfortable, Abby’s head resting against his shoulder.
“You know. Gibbs hasn’t been able to break this last suspect yet. He spent eight hours with her in interrogation and she said nothing. Maybe I need to try your technique.”
Abby laughed. “Head in all naked and sexy, and see if you can seduce it out of her?”
“Why not?” he said with a giggle. “Be a hell of a lot less boring than watching that locker.”
She sat up, slapped his shoulder lightly, grabbed a tissue, and wiped them both up, tossing the condom in the trash, then uncuffed his hands. He stretched out his shoulders.
“Mmmmm… Good game. That your plan all along?”
“Nope. Saw the tatt and decided to run with it,” she said, heading for their bathroom. A minute later she was back in their bed, lying on her side, him spooned up behind her.
He said to her, feeling sleepy, “Definitely going to be another chapter of that story.”
She lifted his hand to her lips and kissed it.
A few minutes after that, they both checked out from the waking world.
Next
February 14, 2014
Shards To A Whole: Chapter 289
McGee-centric character study/romance. Want to start at the beginning? Click here.
Chapter 289: Smile
Tim’s sitting on the floor, Kelly on his legs, looking up at him, one hand wrapped around each of his index fingers. She’s cooing and gurgling, and he’s doing it back to her, or she’s doing it back to him, either way, it’s happening.
He’s rubbing the tip of his nose against hers and then pulls back, “Gooo.”
Her eyes are bright, and she smiles at him. Wide open, happy, smiling.
And he feels so wrapped in love with that, so awash in adoration for this tiny person and how much she’s his whole world and…
And he snags his phone and gets a quick shot of it.
And before he puts the phone down he hit the call button.
“Oh My God! Tim! Honey, are you okay!” his mom answers on the first ring, sounding breathless.
“Hi, Mom, Kelly just smiled at me for the first time.”
“Oh, baby.” He can hear the smile in her voice, and some confusion, and excitement, and fear. “Is she still doing it?”
“No. Not anymore, staring at me, looking confused.”
“Is that her I’m hearing?” ‘Staring at me’ also involved blowing bubbles and cooing at him.
“Yeah, that’s her. I just… She smiled at me, and I wanted to tell you about it.”
“I’m glad you did. Did you get a picture?”
“Yeah. I can send you—“
“No!” he can feel the way she’s biting her lip on that, not wanting to demand anything, but terrified she’ll scare him off. “Just, please, don’t hang up, please… keep talking to me, okay?”
“Okay.” But he’s not sure what to say. And she’s just listening, listening hard. He can imagine the look on her face, can hear the fact that she’s excited by the way she’s breathing. Can feel how nervous she is right now, terrified of saying the wrong thing and scaring him off. “I miss you.”
“I miss you, too, Tim. Miss you so much.”
“And I’m really angry,” he hears the edge in his voice as he says that, and feels her flinch at the heat in his voice.
“I know. I’m sorry. I… just… I’m sorry.”
“And I’m going to be angry for a long time.”
“It’s okay.”
“But I miss you, and she smiled at me, and I wanted to tell you about it.”
“I want to hear about it, about all of it.”
Kelly makes a little fussy noise, one he’s got characterized as the naptime five minute warning.
“I’ve got to go put her down before she gets overtired.”
“Okay.”
“Bye.”
“Wait… Tim?”
“Yeah?”
“Can I call you?”
“Sure. Might not answer, but yeah, you can call.”
“Okay. That’s good enough for now.”
“Okay. Bye, Mom.”
“Bye.”
His hands are shaking as he hangs up the phone, and he didn’t know what to call the emotion flooding through him.
But he does know he’s a dad, and it’s his job to make sure his little girl gets down to sleep before she gets overtired.
So he picks her up, gently, cradling her against his chest, and carries her up to her room.
And he spends too long sitting with her in the rocking chair, lips against the crown of her head, his hands wrapped around her, feeling her heart beating against his, because she’s dead asleep before he felt like he could let her go.
But she didn’t mind.
“Tim?” Abby asks him curiously as he heads out of Kelly’s room. She knows something’s up; it doesn’t take half an hour to put Kelly down.
He nods toward their room, not wanting to have this conversation right outside Kelly’s door. Sure, she’ll sleep through whatever comes her way, but it still feels odd to chat right next to where she’s sleeping.
He sits on their bed, in the middle, back against the headboard and pillows, and she follows, settling in next to him.
He fishes his phone out of his pocket and shows her the picture of Kelly smiling.
“Ohhh…” she half-says it, half-breathes it, eyes soft, smile wide. “She’s smiling.”
“Yeah,” he says it softly, rubbing his hand up and down her back.
“Why didn’t you call me?”
“You were sleeping.”
She nods a little at that. As of this point, she has not yet lifted the wake me up and die rule. She snuggles in close to him, head against his shoulder, legs draped over his, holding his phone, gazing at Kelly’s first smile. Then she looks back up at him and raises an eyebrow, that’s not all clear on her face.
He rests his head against the headboard, staring up at the ceiling and sighed long and deep. “I called my mom.”
“Oh.” She squeezes him a little tighter and kisses his shoulder. “How’d that go?”
“Okay. I guess. She said she was sorry. I said I was mad and that I was going to be mad for a long time, but that I wanted to tell her that Kelly smiled.”
She nods. “Are you all right?”
He shakes his head. “I don’t know. She was sorry and nervous I’d run away and scared and misses me and… And I don’t know.”
“Angry?”
“Maybe.” He closes his eyes, and his posture slumps a bit. “Hurting again. I hold Kelly and…” He opens them and looks at Abby. “And she’s my world. Just, so much love and joy and hope and… And I just want to protect her from everything. And how could either of them, but especially her… She’s my mom. I grew in her body. How could she have thought that what they did was all right?”
“I don’t know.”
He shakes his head again. And Abby snuggled with him, holding him, not saying anything, letting him process as well as he can.
Eventually, Kelly wakes up again, asking for yet more food. Abby starts to get up, but Tim shakes his head, kisses her, and gets up.
“Hey, baby girl.”
She looks up at him from her crib, eyes tracking him as he leans over to pick her up.
“Let’s get you clean and ready for second dinner.”
She seems to appreciate that idea. She’s quietly sitting in his arms, waiting to get changed.
He lays her down, takes care of business, tickling her feet a little, which gets a startled look and an indignant squawk out of Kelly. He chirps back at her, mimicking the sound. “You know, when you can laugh, you might get tickled a lot.” He lifts her to his shoulder. “I can’t imagine your Pop’ll ever turn up a chance to tickle his favorite girl. And your Uncle Jimmy, he’s a tickle maniac. Your cousin Molly’ll tell you all about it.” He kisses the top of her head. “But if you don’t like getting tickled, I won’t do it. And I won’t let them do it, either.
“You don’t have to be any tougher than you are. Or softer. Or girlier. Or more butch. Or anything else. You just figure out who you are, and that’ll be good enough for me,” he whispers to her as he takes her to Abby.
He thinks she might have caught what he said, because she smiles, takes Kelly from him, and says as she gets Kelly set to nurse, “Goes for me, too.” Then she kisses Tim. “And it goes to you, too. You never have to be anyone else for me, or for Kelly. No matter who you are, we’re here for you.”
“Thanks.”
It’s a pretty sad smile on his face, so she kisses him again. “I know we can’t fix it, or make it better, but we can stop it. We can break the pattern and fill it up with love.”He nods. “That sounds really good.”
Next
Chapter 289: Smile
Tim’s sitting on the floor, Kelly on his legs, looking up at him, one hand wrapped around each of his index fingers. She’s cooing and gurgling, and he’s doing it back to her, or she’s doing it back to him, either way, it’s happening.
He’s rubbing the tip of his nose against hers and then pulls back, “Gooo.”
Her eyes are bright, and she smiles at him. Wide open, happy, smiling.
And he feels so wrapped in love with that, so awash in adoration for this tiny person and how much she’s his whole world and…
And he snags his phone and gets a quick shot of it.
And before he puts the phone down he hit the call button.
“Oh My God! Tim! Honey, are you okay!” his mom answers on the first ring, sounding breathless.
“Hi, Mom, Kelly just smiled at me for the first time.”
“Oh, baby.” He can hear the smile in her voice, and some confusion, and excitement, and fear. “Is she still doing it?”
“No. Not anymore, staring at me, looking confused.”
“Is that her I’m hearing?” ‘Staring at me’ also involved blowing bubbles and cooing at him.
“Yeah, that’s her. I just… She smiled at me, and I wanted to tell you about it.”
“I’m glad you did. Did you get a picture?”
“Yeah. I can send you—“
“No!” he can feel the way she’s biting her lip on that, not wanting to demand anything, but terrified she’ll scare him off. “Just, please, don’t hang up, please… keep talking to me, okay?”
“Okay.” But he’s not sure what to say. And she’s just listening, listening hard. He can imagine the look on her face, can hear the fact that she’s excited by the way she’s breathing. Can feel how nervous she is right now, terrified of saying the wrong thing and scaring him off. “I miss you.”
“I miss you, too, Tim. Miss you so much.”
“And I’m really angry,” he hears the edge in his voice as he says that, and feels her flinch at the heat in his voice.
“I know. I’m sorry. I… just… I’m sorry.”
“And I’m going to be angry for a long time.”
“It’s okay.”
“But I miss you, and she smiled at me, and I wanted to tell you about it.”
“I want to hear about it, about all of it.”
Kelly makes a little fussy noise, one he’s got characterized as the naptime five minute warning.
“I’ve got to go put her down before she gets overtired.”
“Okay.”
“Bye.”
“Wait… Tim?”
“Yeah?”
“Can I call you?”
“Sure. Might not answer, but yeah, you can call.”
“Okay. That’s good enough for now.”
“Okay. Bye, Mom.”
“Bye.”
His hands are shaking as he hangs up the phone, and he didn’t know what to call the emotion flooding through him.
But he does know he’s a dad, and it’s his job to make sure his little girl gets down to sleep before she gets overtired.
So he picks her up, gently, cradling her against his chest, and carries her up to her room.
And he spends too long sitting with her in the rocking chair, lips against the crown of her head, his hands wrapped around her, feeling her heart beating against his, because she’s dead asleep before he felt like he could let her go.
But she didn’t mind.
“Tim?” Abby asks him curiously as he heads out of Kelly’s room. She knows something’s up; it doesn’t take half an hour to put Kelly down.
He nods toward their room, not wanting to have this conversation right outside Kelly’s door. Sure, she’ll sleep through whatever comes her way, but it still feels odd to chat right next to where she’s sleeping.
He sits on their bed, in the middle, back against the headboard and pillows, and she follows, settling in next to him.
He fishes his phone out of his pocket and shows her the picture of Kelly smiling.
“Ohhh…” she half-says it, half-breathes it, eyes soft, smile wide. “She’s smiling.”
“Yeah,” he says it softly, rubbing his hand up and down her back.
“Why didn’t you call me?”
“You were sleeping.”
She nods a little at that. As of this point, she has not yet lifted the wake me up and die rule. She snuggles in close to him, head against his shoulder, legs draped over his, holding his phone, gazing at Kelly’s first smile. Then she looks back up at him and raises an eyebrow, that’s not all clear on her face.
He rests his head against the headboard, staring up at the ceiling and sighed long and deep. “I called my mom.”
“Oh.” She squeezes him a little tighter and kisses his shoulder. “How’d that go?”
“Okay. I guess. She said she was sorry. I said I was mad and that I was going to be mad for a long time, but that I wanted to tell her that Kelly smiled.”
She nods. “Are you all right?”
He shakes his head. “I don’t know. She was sorry and nervous I’d run away and scared and misses me and… And I don’t know.”
“Angry?”
“Maybe.” He closes his eyes, and his posture slumps a bit. “Hurting again. I hold Kelly and…” He opens them and looks at Abby. “And she’s my world. Just, so much love and joy and hope and… And I just want to protect her from everything. And how could either of them, but especially her… She’s my mom. I grew in her body. How could she have thought that what they did was all right?”
“I don’t know.”
He shakes his head again. And Abby snuggled with him, holding him, not saying anything, letting him process as well as he can.
Eventually, Kelly wakes up again, asking for yet more food. Abby starts to get up, but Tim shakes his head, kisses her, and gets up.
“Hey, baby girl.”
She looks up at him from her crib, eyes tracking him as he leans over to pick her up.
“Let’s get you clean and ready for second dinner.”
She seems to appreciate that idea. She’s quietly sitting in his arms, waiting to get changed.
He lays her down, takes care of business, tickling her feet a little, which gets a startled look and an indignant squawk out of Kelly. He chirps back at her, mimicking the sound. “You know, when you can laugh, you might get tickled a lot.” He lifts her to his shoulder. “I can’t imagine your Pop’ll ever turn up a chance to tickle his favorite girl. And your Uncle Jimmy, he’s a tickle maniac. Your cousin Molly’ll tell you all about it.” He kisses the top of her head. “But if you don’t like getting tickled, I won’t do it. And I won’t let them do it, either.
“You don’t have to be any tougher than you are. Or softer. Or girlier. Or more butch. Or anything else. You just figure out who you are, and that’ll be good enough for me,” he whispers to her as he takes her to Abby.
He thinks she might have caught what he said, because she smiles, takes Kelly from him, and says as she gets Kelly set to nurse, “Goes for me, too.” Then she kisses Tim. “And it goes to you, too. You never have to be anyone else for me, or for Kelly. No matter who you are, we’re here for you.”
“Thanks.”
It’s a pretty sad smile on his face, so she kisses him again. “I know we can’t fix it, or make it better, but we can stop it. We can break the pattern and fill it up with love.”He nods. “That sounds really good.”
Next
February 13, 2014
Shards To A Whole: Chapter 288
McGee-centric character study/romance. Want to start at the beginning? Click here.
Chapter 288: Distance
Professional distance is something that, if you could get her to admit it, Cranston finds difficult with some clients. Not that that’s terribly shocking or anything, every counselor has that client who, for whatever reason, is hard to keep off in a nice, safe little box.
Sometimes you just like people, and when you like people, they get inside, and when they get inside, that’s bad for professional objectivity.
Which is part of the reason why she’s got Gibbs mailing her stuff ahead of time. She does like him, and she is finding it difficult to keep the distance she needs from him.
She was skimming through what he wrote about his failed loves, saw, not just the length, but the intensity, and knew that part of keeping her own emotional cool would involve making sure she had time to read, think, feel, and process before she added him and his emotions to the mix as well.
She can feel her own inner ethicists yelling at her. She likes Gibbs. They do not have a good starting relationship for a client therapist relationship. The power dynamics are wrong. The history is wrong. Kate is a great, big, neon flag of wrong. (Some of the things Kate told Rachel about Gibbs, which is part of why she’s interested in knowing him better is also a massive heaping pile of wrong.) The way he sees her is wrong. But she’s also dead certain that, unlike Tony, whom she could refer off to someone else, Gibbs will not talk to another person about this. If she refers him off, that’ll be the end of this. He’ll curl back into his shell and never crawl out again. (You’re justifying. Yeah, well, I’m also right.)
And she doesn’t want that for him.
So, (her inner ethicist thinks this is BS excuse making and that she knows what she needs to do, and not doing it is wrong) she gives him homework assignments so she’s got enough time to deal with what he’s giving her and can then listen to him with a calm mind.
Still, even with all of that, she was very excited to see 1000 Pictures One Word show up in her inbox. And very, very curious to see that it had 70 attachments.
She opened the email and saw they were pictures.
She wasn’t expecting pictures. She probably should have. ‘Tell me what love means to you?’ What’d she expect, poetry? Another essay? The guy rarely talks if he can avoid it.
Next assignment, he’ll probably carve her something.
She goes through his pictures, watching the love story unfold, (amazed at how young Gibbs and Shannon are in the beginning. She knew they had to have married young, but, Lord, they’re teenagers in the first shots.) seeing them slowly age, seeing Kelly join the family. Mostly she makes note of the joy. She knows that most people only take photos of happy times, but there’s a deep, settled quality to the happy in these.
She was mildly surprised to see how far he took the photos. (And somehow, not very surprised at all to see he had photos like that to share.)
She’s not sure what the purple heart means, but does take note of the fact that it’s dented and scratched. Unusual for a medal. Especially for a man like Gibbs, she’s expect his medals to be kept in pristine shape. She assumes the scar that’s clearly his goes with the purple heart. She’s not sure what, besides a c-section, the scar on Shannon means. (Or why it’s off with the purple heart and the scar on his leg, and not with the shots of Kelly as a baby.)
Likewise she isn’t sure what he’s telling her with the badge.
But tomorrow she’ll find out.
She makes a few notes for herself as she looks through. Questions as to what this or that means. (Like the laundry room, badge, and the Purple Heart.)
But when she gets to the end of the pictures one thing sticks out, and she wonders if he knows he was doing this.
What does love mean to you?
Shannon.
That’s his answer. And she wonders if he thinks he’s showing her examples of what a loving relationship looked like, or if he knows that what he’s saying is that, to him, love is Shannon?
Closing her email, she stands up, and heads to her book shelf. She has a decent-sized collection of Mark Twain and knows which one she wants. Her fingers find the Diary of Adam and Eve and skip to the back cover, and then back a few pages to Adam’s final words, spoken standing over Eve’s grave.
“Wheresoever she was, there was Eden.”
She sits down, finger marking the page, book in her lap, forefinger gently tapping the cover, and sees that this is Gibbs’ fall. That life with Shannon and Kelly was grace, Eden, and a bullet tore it to pieces.
This isn’t just the loss of love, this is the loss of innocence.
And no matter what, innocence is one thing Gibbs can’t get back.
“Three cups?” Rachel asks as Gibbs hobbles in on Monday morning. She notices that he’s got one in his hand, go bag slung over his shoulder and down to one crutch.
He handed the cup over. “Thought you might like one.”
“You’re getting me coffee?”
“Sure. You drink coffee, right?” he says while unpacking the cups he brought for himself from the go bag.
“Yes.” There’s some tension in her voice. Part of it is wariness from her own reactions to Gibbs, part of it is wondering how he’s reacting to her. After all this is an emotionally vulnerable guy who doesn’t have intimate relationships with women who are equals and has a bad track record when it comes to not sexualizing relationships with redheads.
He catches that wariness. “It’s not a problem is it?”
“That depends, why did you get it?”
He shrugs. “I thought you might like it.”
“Really?”
She can see by the look on his face he knows he’s tripped over a line, but he’s not sure what line or why. “It’s friendly?”
She raises an eyebrow.
“It’s easier to talk if we’re just two people sitting around talking over coffee.”
She nods and takes a sip. It’s good. Hot, creamy, sweet, hint of nutmeg. The way she likes it, and very much not how he’d fix it for himself. “That’s fine. If it makes talking easier, then I’m happy to have coffee with you. But somewhere in your mind, you need to remember that this isn’t a date, we aren’t just getting to know each other, and I’m not another redhead you’re working on charming. There are lines, Jethro, hard rules, and this doesn’t work if we don’t follow them.”
He nods. “I know.”
“Do you?”
“Yeah.” He nods, suddenly very aware of how easy it would be to slip into the idea of Rachel as another woman he was courting, and how that would fuck everything sideways. He nods again, voice serious as he says, “I do.”
“Good.” She sees the smile on his face. “What?”
He shakes his head, licks his lips, looks away, sheepish, and then looks back at her. “You might not want to know.”
“Try me.”
“Just bringing back the memory of slapping myself upside the back of my head about your sister. Had a very long conversation with myself about how she was my employee, and too damn young, and I’d already made that mistake once and no one ended up better off for it.”
He sees the smile on Rachel’s face. There’s a knowing flavor to the amusement in her eyes.
“But you already knew about that…”
Rachel nods. And she’d heard the other half of it. The frustration of too old, too divorced, too bitter, too married to the job, too much of a bastard, too much her boss.
Gibbs shrugs. He wasn’t surprised that Kate felt it, too. Would have been a whole lot easier if she hadn’t been interested in him because, for whatever reason, he never sparked for a girl who wasn’t at least mildly interested in him back.
“So, tell me about the photo essay. How long did it take…”
They spent most of the hour going over what he’d taken pictures of, what different details meant, how it fall fit together.
By the end of it Rachel was sure that, yes, to Jethro, love meant Shannon. And as long as that was true, there wasn’t going to be any getting past this.
“Jethro, try to put it into words. Just a few of them. What is love?”
He stares at her, swallows his coffee, takes another sip, stares some more, thinking, that’s clear on his face, but eventually he shakes his head.
“Are there any words in your head right now? Is it that you can’t say it, won’t say it, or there’s nothing to say?”
“There’s nothing to say.”
“Give me your wallet.”
He’s looking at her like she’s crazy, but he hands it over.
She very carefully took the picture of Shannon out, feeling the years of attachment, the decades of love in the frayed edges of the picture, and then held it out to him. “Jethro, is this love?”
He nods.
“And that’s why it never works, why you never fall in love with anyone else, because you keep trying to get this, again, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
She tucks the picture back into his wallet and hands it back to him.
“Jethro, you are never going to have her again. That life is gone. Shannon is dead. Kelly is dead. The man you used to be, is dead. None of it is ever going to come back.”
“I know.”
“Do you? Do you know it in your guts and bones, can you feel it in your soul, that this is never coming back, that you can never rebuild this, and hoping and praying and trying is never, ever going to get it back for you?”
He blinks, slowly, silently, and swallows, hard.
“Have you ever said the words?”
He looks at her, pained, curious.
“Have you ever said, 'My wife, Shannon, is dead?'”
He thinks about it, sure he must have at some point, but he also realizes that he’s never said it to any of his women, even with Susan, he’d never said the word. He told her he was a widower, but left the details vague, and the word dead never crossed his lips.
“No.”
“Can you?”
He opens his mouth and feels every word he’s ever had go skittering off. Then he closes his mouth and shakes his head. No. Not right now. Not today. Not to her. Especially not after the hours he spent looking at the pictures.
“That’s next week’s homework assignment. Say it to someone.”
He nods, and begins to pack his stuff up.
Next
Chapter 288: Distance
Professional distance is something that, if you could get her to admit it, Cranston finds difficult with some clients. Not that that’s terribly shocking or anything, every counselor has that client who, for whatever reason, is hard to keep off in a nice, safe little box.
Sometimes you just like people, and when you like people, they get inside, and when they get inside, that’s bad for professional objectivity.
Which is part of the reason why she’s got Gibbs mailing her stuff ahead of time. She does like him, and she is finding it difficult to keep the distance she needs from him.
She was skimming through what he wrote about his failed loves, saw, not just the length, but the intensity, and knew that part of keeping her own emotional cool would involve making sure she had time to read, think, feel, and process before she added him and his emotions to the mix as well.
She can feel her own inner ethicists yelling at her. She likes Gibbs. They do not have a good starting relationship for a client therapist relationship. The power dynamics are wrong. The history is wrong. Kate is a great, big, neon flag of wrong. (Some of the things Kate told Rachel about Gibbs, which is part of why she’s interested in knowing him better is also a massive heaping pile of wrong.) The way he sees her is wrong. But she’s also dead certain that, unlike Tony, whom she could refer off to someone else, Gibbs will not talk to another person about this. If she refers him off, that’ll be the end of this. He’ll curl back into his shell and never crawl out again. (You’re justifying. Yeah, well, I’m also right.)
And she doesn’t want that for him.
So, (her inner ethicist thinks this is BS excuse making and that she knows what she needs to do, and not doing it is wrong) she gives him homework assignments so she’s got enough time to deal with what he’s giving her and can then listen to him with a calm mind.
Still, even with all of that, she was very excited to see 1000 Pictures One Word show up in her inbox. And very, very curious to see that it had 70 attachments.
She opened the email and saw they were pictures.
She wasn’t expecting pictures. She probably should have. ‘Tell me what love means to you?’ What’d she expect, poetry? Another essay? The guy rarely talks if he can avoid it.
Next assignment, he’ll probably carve her something.
She goes through his pictures, watching the love story unfold, (amazed at how young Gibbs and Shannon are in the beginning. She knew they had to have married young, but, Lord, they’re teenagers in the first shots.) seeing them slowly age, seeing Kelly join the family. Mostly she makes note of the joy. She knows that most people only take photos of happy times, but there’s a deep, settled quality to the happy in these.
She was mildly surprised to see how far he took the photos. (And somehow, not very surprised at all to see he had photos like that to share.)
She’s not sure what the purple heart means, but does take note of the fact that it’s dented and scratched. Unusual for a medal. Especially for a man like Gibbs, she’s expect his medals to be kept in pristine shape. She assumes the scar that’s clearly his goes with the purple heart. She’s not sure what, besides a c-section, the scar on Shannon means. (Or why it’s off with the purple heart and the scar on his leg, and not with the shots of Kelly as a baby.)
Likewise she isn’t sure what he’s telling her with the badge.
But tomorrow she’ll find out.
She makes a few notes for herself as she looks through. Questions as to what this or that means. (Like the laundry room, badge, and the Purple Heart.)
But when she gets to the end of the pictures one thing sticks out, and she wonders if he knows he was doing this.
What does love mean to you?
Shannon.
That’s his answer. And she wonders if he thinks he’s showing her examples of what a loving relationship looked like, or if he knows that what he’s saying is that, to him, love is Shannon?
Closing her email, she stands up, and heads to her book shelf. She has a decent-sized collection of Mark Twain and knows which one she wants. Her fingers find the Diary of Adam and Eve and skip to the back cover, and then back a few pages to Adam’s final words, spoken standing over Eve’s grave.
“Wheresoever she was, there was Eden.”
She sits down, finger marking the page, book in her lap, forefinger gently tapping the cover, and sees that this is Gibbs’ fall. That life with Shannon and Kelly was grace, Eden, and a bullet tore it to pieces.
This isn’t just the loss of love, this is the loss of innocence.
And no matter what, innocence is one thing Gibbs can’t get back.
“Three cups?” Rachel asks as Gibbs hobbles in on Monday morning. She notices that he’s got one in his hand, go bag slung over his shoulder and down to one crutch.
He handed the cup over. “Thought you might like one.”
“You’re getting me coffee?”
“Sure. You drink coffee, right?” he says while unpacking the cups he brought for himself from the go bag.
“Yes.” There’s some tension in her voice. Part of it is wariness from her own reactions to Gibbs, part of it is wondering how he’s reacting to her. After all this is an emotionally vulnerable guy who doesn’t have intimate relationships with women who are equals and has a bad track record when it comes to not sexualizing relationships with redheads. He catches that wariness. “It’s not a problem is it?”
“That depends, why did you get it?”
He shrugs. “I thought you might like it.”
“Really?”
She can see by the look on his face he knows he’s tripped over a line, but he’s not sure what line or why. “It’s friendly?”
She raises an eyebrow.
“It’s easier to talk if we’re just two people sitting around talking over coffee.”
She nods and takes a sip. It’s good. Hot, creamy, sweet, hint of nutmeg. The way she likes it, and very much not how he’d fix it for himself. “That’s fine. If it makes talking easier, then I’m happy to have coffee with you. But somewhere in your mind, you need to remember that this isn’t a date, we aren’t just getting to know each other, and I’m not another redhead you’re working on charming. There are lines, Jethro, hard rules, and this doesn’t work if we don’t follow them.”
He nods. “I know.”
“Do you?”
“Yeah.” He nods, suddenly very aware of how easy it would be to slip into the idea of Rachel as another woman he was courting, and how that would fuck everything sideways. He nods again, voice serious as he says, “I do.”
“Good.” She sees the smile on his face. “What?”
He shakes his head, licks his lips, looks away, sheepish, and then looks back at her. “You might not want to know.”
“Try me.”
“Just bringing back the memory of slapping myself upside the back of my head about your sister. Had a very long conversation with myself about how she was my employee, and too damn young, and I’d already made that mistake once and no one ended up better off for it.”
He sees the smile on Rachel’s face. There’s a knowing flavor to the amusement in her eyes.
“But you already knew about that…”
Rachel nods. And she’d heard the other half of it. The frustration of too old, too divorced, too bitter, too married to the job, too much of a bastard, too much her boss.
Gibbs shrugs. He wasn’t surprised that Kate felt it, too. Would have been a whole lot easier if she hadn’t been interested in him because, for whatever reason, he never sparked for a girl who wasn’t at least mildly interested in him back.
“So, tell me about the photo essay. How long did it take…”
They spent most of the hour going over what he’d taken pictures of, what different details meant, how it fall fit together.
By the end of it Rachel was sure that, yes, to Jethro, love meant Shannon. And as long as that was true, there wasn’t going to be any getting past this.
“Jethro, try to put it into words. Just a few of them. What is love?”
He stares at her, swallows his coffee, takes another sip, stares some more, thinking, that’s clear on his face, but eventually he shakes his head.
“Are there any words in your head right now? Is it that you can’t say it, won’t say it, or there’s nothing to say?”
“There’s nothing to say.”
“Give me your wallet.”
He’s looking at her like she’s crazy, but he hands it over.
She very carefully took the picture of Shannon out, feeling the years of attachment, the decades of love in the frayed edges of the picture, and then held it out to him. “Jethro, is this love?”
He nods.
“And that’s why it never works, why you never fall in love with anyone else, because you keep trying to get this, again, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
She tucks the picture back into his wallet and hands it back to him.
“Jethro, you are never going to have her again. That life is gone. Shannon is dead. Kelly is dead. The man you used to be, is dead. None of it is ever going to come back.”
“I know.”
“Do you? Do you know it in your guts and bones, can you feel it in your soul, that this is never coming back, that you can never rebuild this, and hoping and praying and trying is never, ever going to get it back for you?”
He blinks, slowly, silently, and swallows, hard.
“Have you ever said the words?”
He looks at her, pained, curious.
“Have you ever said, 'My wife, Shannon, is dead?'”
He thinks about it, sure he must have at some point, but he also realizes that he’s never said it to any of his women, even with Susan, he’d never said the word. He told her he was a widower, but left the details vague, and the word dead never crossed his lips.
“No.”
“Can you?”
He opens his mouth and feels every word he’s ever had go skittering off. Then he closes his mouth and shakes his head. No. Not right now. Not today. Not to her. Especially not after the hours he spent looking at the pictures.
“That’s next week’s homework assignment. Say it to someone.”
He nods, and begins to pack his stuff up.
Next
February 12, 2014
Shards To A Whole: Chapter 287
McGee-centric character study/romance. Want to start at the beginning? Click here.
Chapter 287: Context and Tradition
When five Sundays went by without them setting foot at St. Sebastian’s, Father John called Abby. It was polite, gentle, wanting to see how she and Kelly were, reminding them that even if they weren’t happy about the whole baptism thing, that they were still more than welcome at the church.
“He sounded a little nervous,” Abby says to Tim as they eat dinner, after telling him about it.
“Like his plan won’t work if we don’t get back there?”
“Maybe.” She tickles the bottom of Kelly’s foot while she flails a bit in her bouncy chair.
“Sooo…” Tim asks, bite of grilled zucchini hallway to his mouth, “You want to wait another week and then have me try again? I can tell him that we’re church shopping, that we’ve been to Jimmy and Breena’s for the last few weeks and liked it, and that if he won’t budge on this, we won’t be back, and if he doesn’t fold, then I will.”
She shrugs.
“It’s up to you. You want, we can be there next week, and I’ll tell him Sister Rosita is fine.”
“I actually do like Jimmy and Breena’s church.”
Tim nods. It’s still church, so it’s not like one’s much better than another to him, but Jimmy and Breena are there, and the nursery seems nice, and everyone’s friendly, and okay, yeah, he doesn’t adore having an extra five hours a week with Ed Slater, but as downsides go, especially post-Bootcamp, post-Gibbs (Gibbs!) telling stories of them all kicking ass and taking names, it’s not a horrific one.
“Whatever you want on this,” Tim says, stroking her hand.
“More time to think.”
“As long as you want. I don’t mind if Father John sweats this.”
Okay, it’s not likely, at all, but it has been more than two weeks, and there’s no other way to tell, because she’s not menstruating again, yet…
“We going to do another pregnancy test?” he asks while walking Kelly around, patting her back gently, trying to get that last burp out of her before taking her for the second of her nighttime sleeps.
Abby sticks her head out of the bathroom, toothbrush between her lips. “I had the water running, what did you say?”
“Pregnancy test? I know it’s not likely, but…”
She nods and heads back into the bathroom.
Kelly belches loudly, and Tim kisses the top of her head. “Good girl. Okay, back to bed for you.” She settled in against his chest more closely. “Yeah, I bet you do feel better, don’t you?”
A sleepy and content little chirp answers him.
Rocking, lullaby, sleepy baby back in bed, and then back to his own room he goes. Abby’s already in their bed, so he looks at her expectantly, and she shakes her head.
“Oh.”
She’s got a kind of disappointed half-smile on her face. “Yeah.”
He sits down next to her. “You okay?”
“Yeah. Just… I don’t know, about half-relieved and half-disappointed. Didn’t want to be pregnant again, not yet, didn’t want to not be, either.”
He nods at that and kisses her, same half-disappointed smile on his face. “Yeah.”
Okay, it’s not his most riveting story ever. Mostly just how Tony and Ziva are finally both back, which means Tony’s in charge of the team again, and this was their first case out at full strength again, and sure, she’s heard the whole, we found a dead body, we processed evidence, and then I spent the next six hours mucking about on the computers to find out more, is pretty routine, but it’s not actually boring.
“What’s up, you’re a million miles away?” he finally asks, because she’s not following the story at all.
She shakes her head. “Sorry. Just been thinking a lot today.”
“About?”
“You asked, a while back, what being Catholic means to me, and, I think I’ve got it, now.”
Ah, back to that. Well, it’s Thursday, and yet another Sunday is looming. Okay, he can see how it’d be on her mind.
“Okay,” he says, keep talking on his face.
“It’s a line of traditions, tying me to my family. Mostly to people who aren’t here anymore, people you’ve never met. And I don’t want to break that line. Every Sunday we’re there, I take communion just like I did with my mom and dad and my aunts and uncles and grandparents.”
“That’s good enough for me.”
She flashes him the not quite done yet look. “But… maybe it doesn’t have to be that line. There are other traditions out there. King cakes for Easter, Jambalaya for Christmas, the tree, stuff like that. Just… you know, if it’s you and me, it doesn’t matter that gays can’t marry and women can’t be ordained and no birth control, well, I mean it does, but…”
“I got ya.” He’s nodding, knowing that she doesn’t mean that those aren’t issues, but that they’re grown-ups so they’ve got their own contexts for them.
“It can just be little idiosyncrasies that we ignore or tolerate, and the links matter more than they do.”
Another nod. They’re on the same page here.
“But Kelly’d be learning this from scratch. She and any other kids we have are a new start, and… And I don’t want them burned on this the way you are.”
He smiles ruefully at that. “You’ve got to actively work on it to get my past with this. This isn’t some sort of accident.”
“You didn’t like the fact that this was just empty symbolism for your dad. You going to a church you don’t believe in looks like setting up that pattern all over again, and I don’t want that for our kids.”
That stops him short. And for a moment he has to think about it, because he hasn’t wondered what their kids might think about this, and if they’ll see it as him just going through the motions to provide a certain image. But, eventually, he decides no, it won’t be. “It’s not empty for me, it’s just… not what most people mean by it.”
Abby smiles at that.
He gently strokes her wedding ring. “For me, this is part of our marriage. This is part of the vow to put you first. And that matters more to me than everything else.”
That got a kiss.
“It’s not just your dad that burned you on it.”
True. Granted, his dad set the pattern that made him loathe empty symbolism, but he thinks even if he hadn’t grown up with John it’d still bug him. “I’d have probably been a lot more tolerant of it if it hadn’t been for him. Probably a lot more like how Penny deals with it.”
“True. But the point I’m trying to get to, is that there is a lot of empty crap that goes with this, and… when I think about it, what being a Christian is, what I want and need from a church, and from faith, and what I want to do with it, the heart of it is love. God’s love for everyone. And if it’s about love, and if we’re all sinners trying to do better… Then anything that encourages hate, that gives it space to grow and nourishes it, is the problem, and a lot of the stuff I don’t like about being Catholic just encourages hate. And it’s not a problem for me, I’ve got context for it, but Kelly doesn’t and… maybe she doesn’t need to hear about homosexuals going to hell, or that there’s something bad about pleasure, or that it’s her job to crank out as many babies as she can, or that she can never be equal to a man. Maybe, we don’t need to try to teach her God loves everyone all the time and in all ways, while also teaching her that He’s constantly judging everything and that eternal pain and torment is waiting for the people who don’t measure up.”
Tim smiles at her. “I’m good with that.”
“And Jimmy and Breena’s church isn’t perfect, but they ordain women and marry gays and that’s two pretty big steps.”
He nods.
“And they’re a lot less focused on doing things the ‘right way’ and more focused on doing the ‘right thing.’”
“I like that part, too.”
Abby smiles at that. “I bet Ducky would have something to say about Pharisees right now.”
“I don’t remember who they are.”
“The guys Jesus was rebelling against. They were so caught up in the letter of the law that they forgot the spirit of it.”
“Seems appropriate. So, St. Mary’s?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay.”
On Sunday, Tim and Abby had a chat with Pastor Brons about what was involved in joining St. Mary’s. They offered new members’ classes which Brons said were basically Episcopalianism 101. They started new ones every other month, and the next class began in September.
Abby signed up for it. Tim didn’t. He’ll attend St. Mary’s, but won’t formally join any church. (Brons found that… amusing is probably the best word. He has the sense that she’s thinking she’ll eventually get her claws into him, but he’s doubtful. Okay, he thinks she’s out and out insane, but he’s vastly too polite to say it.)
They also set the date for Kelly’s baptism. November 9, 2015, they’ll stand up there with the Palmers and officially welcome their daughter into the church.
And while various Slaters hadn't been thrilled at the idea of Tim and Abby as Molly’s godparents, when word started to get around the family over the course of Sunday dinner that Jimmy and Breena would be Kelly’s godparents, there was some hardcore celebrating.
Next
Chapter 287: Context and Tradition
When five Sundays went by without them setting foot at St. Sebastian’s, Father John called Abby. It was polite, gentle, wanting to see how she and Kelly were, reminding them that even if they weren’t happy about the whole baptism thing, that they were still more than welcome at the church.
“He sounded a little nervous,” Abby says to Tim as they eat dinner, after telling him about it.
“Like his plan won’t work if we don’t get back there?”
“Maybe.” She tickles the bottom of Kelly’s foot while she flails a bit in her bouncy chair.
“Sooo…” Tim asks, bite of grilled zucchini hallway to his mouth, “You want to wait another week and then have me try again? I can tell him that we’re church shopping, that we’ve been to Jimmy and Breena’s for the last few weeks and liked it, and that if he won’t budge on this, we won’t be back, and if he doesn’t fold, then I will.”
She shrugs.
“It’s up to you. You want, we can be there next week, and I’ll tell him Sister Rosita is fine.”
“I actually do like Jimmy and Breena’s church.”
Tim nods. It’s still church, so it’s not like one’s much better than another to him, but Jimmy and Breena are there, and the nursery seems nice, and everyone’s friendly, and okay, yeah, he doesn’t adore having an extra five hours a week with Ed Slater, but as downsides go, especially post-Bootcamp, post-Gibbs (Gibbs!) telling stories of them all kicking ass and taking names, it’s not a horrific one.
“Whatever you want on this,” Tim says, stroking her hand.
“More time to think.”
“As long as you want. I don’t mind if Father John sweats this.”
Okay, it’s not likely, at all, but it has been more than two weeks, and there’s no other way to tell, because she’s not menstruating again, yet…
“We going to do another pregnancy test?” he asks while walking Kelly around, patting her back gently, trying to get that last burp out of her before taking her for the second of her nighttime sleeps.
Abby sticks her head out of the bathroom, toothbrush between her lips. “I had the water running, what did you say?”
“Pregnancy test? I know it’s not likely, but…”
She nods and heads back into the bathroom.
Kelly belches loudly, and Tim kisses the top of her head. “Good girl. Okay, back to bed for you.” She settled in against his chest more closely. “Yeah, I bet you do feel better, don’t you?”
A sleepy and content little chirp answers him.
Rocking, lullaby, sleepy baby back in bed, and then back to his own room he goes. Abby’s already in their bed, so he looks at her expectantly, and she shakes her head.
“Oh.”
She’s got a kind of disappointed half-smile on her face. “Yeah.”
He sits down next to her. “You okay?”
“Yeah. Just… I don’t know, about half-relieved and half-disappointed. Didn’t want to be pregnant again, not yet, didn’t want to not be, either.”
He nods at that and kisses her, same half-disappointed smile on his face. “Yeah.”
Okay, it’s not his most riveting story ever. Mostly just how Tony and Ziva are finally both back, which means Tony’s in charge of the team again, and this was their first case out at full strength again, and sure, she’s heard the whole, we found a dead body, we processed evidence, and then I spent the next six hours mucking about on the computers to find out more, is pretty routine, but it’s not actually boring.
“What’s up, you’re a million miles away?” he finally asks, because she’s not following the story at all.
She shakes her head. “Sorry. Just been thinking a lot today.”
“About?”
“You asked, a while back, what being Catholic means to me, and, I think I’ve got it, now.”
Ah, back to that. Well, it’s Thursday, and yet another Sunday is looming. Okay, he can see how it’d be on her mind.
“Okay,” he says, keep talking on his face.
“It’s a line of traditions, tying me to my family. Mostly to people who aren’t here anymore, people you’ve never met. And I don’t want to break that line. Every Sunday we’re there, I take communion just like I did with my mom and dad and my aunts and uncles and grandparents.”
“That’s good enough for me.”
She flashes him the not quite done yet look. “But… maybe it doesn’t have to be that line. There are other traditions out there. King cakes for Easter, Jambalaya for Christmas, the tree, stuff like that. Just… you know, if it’s you and me, it doesn’t matter that gays can’t marry and women can’t be ordained and no birth control, well, I mean it does, but…”
“I got ya.” He’s nodding, knowing that she doesn’t mean that those aren’t issues, but that they’re grown-ups so they’ve got their own contexts for them.
“It can just be little idiosyncrasies that we ignore or tolerate, and the links matter more than they do.”
Another nod. They’re on the same page here.
“But Kelly’d be learning this from scratch. She and any other kids we have are a new start, and… And I don’t want them burned on this the way you are.”
He smiles ruefully at that. “You’ve got to actively work on it to get my past with this. This isn’t some sort of accident.”
“You didn’t like the fact that this was just empty symbolism for your dad. You going to a church you don’t believe in looks like setting up that pattern all over again, and I don’t want that for our kids.”
That stops him short. And for a moment he has to think about it, because he hasn’t wondered what their kids might think about this, and if they’ll see it as him just going through the motions to provide a certain image. But, eventually, he decides no, it won’t be. “It’s not empty for me, it’s just… not what most people mean by it.”
Abby smiles at that.
He gently strokes her wedding ring. “For me, this is part of our marriage. This is part of the vow to put you first. And that matters more to me than everything else.”
That got a kiss.
“It’s not just your dad that burned you on it.”
True. Granted, his dad set the pattern that made him loathe empty symbolism, but he thinks even if he hadn’t grown up with John it’d still bug him. “I’d have probably been a lot more tolerant of it if it hadn’t been for him. Probably a lot more like how Penny deals with it.”
“True. But the point I’m trying to get to, is that there is a lot of empty crap that goes with this, and… when I think about it, what being a Christian is, what I want and need from a church, and from faith, and what I want to do with it, the heart of it is love. God’s love for everyone. And if it’s about love, and if we’re all sinners trying to do better… Then anything that encourages hate, that gives it space to grow and nourishes it, is the problem, and a lot of the stuff I don’t like about being Catholic just encourages hate. And it’s not a problem for me, I’ve got context for it, but Kelly doesn’t and… maybe she doesn’t need to hear about homosexuals going to hell, or that there’s something bad about pleasure, or that it’s her job to crank out as many babies as she can, or that she can never be equal to a man. Maybe, we don’t need to try to teach her God loves everyone all the time and in all ways, while also teaching her that He’s constantly judging everything and that eternal pain and torment is waiting for the people who don’t measure up.”
Tim smiles at her. “I’m good with that.”
“And Jimmy and Breena’s church isn’t perfect, but they ordain women and marry gays and that’s two pretty big steps.”
He nods.
“And they’re a lot less focused on doing things the ‘right way’ and more focused on doing the ‘right thing.’”
“I like that part, too.”
Abby smiles at that. “I bet Ducky would have something to say about Pharisees right now.”
“I don’t remember who they are.”
“The guys Jesus was rebelling against. They were so caught up in the letter of the law that they forgot the spirit of it.”
“Seems appropriate. So, St. Mary’s?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay.”
On Sunday, Tim and Abby had a chat with Pastor Brons about what was involved in joining St. Mary’s. They offered new members’ classes which Brons said were basically Episcopalianism 101. They started new ones every other month, and the next class began in September.
Abby signed up for it. Tim didn’t. He’ll attend St. Mary’s, but won’t formally join any church. (Brons found that… amusing is probably the best word. He has the sense that she’s thinking she’ll eventually get her claws into him, but he’s doubtful. Okay, he thinks she’s out and out insane, but he’s vastly too polite to say it.)
They also set the date for Kelly’s baptism. November 9, 2015, they’ll stand up there with the Palmers and officially welcome their daughter into the church.
And while various Slaters hadn't been thrilled at the idea of Tim and Abby as Molly’s godparents, when word started to get around the family over the course of Sunday dinner that Jimmy and Breena would be Kelly’s godparents, there was some hardcore celebrating.
Next
February 3, 2014
Shards To A Whole: Chapter 285
McGee-centric character study/romance. Want to start at the beginning? Click here.
Chapter 285: Two Cups of Coffee
This time, he brought two cups of coffee.
“Planning on settling in?” Cranston asks as she sees him unpack them from his go bag.
“Ran out last time.”
“And we wouldn’t want you to go half an hour sans coffee.”
He nods definitively, and then handed over the nine pages (back and front) paper-clipped together.
“You really are aiming for the gold star, aren’t you?” she says, unclipping them as she sits down.
He sits down, flashes her a look that might have been wry, or possibly flirty, she isn’t entirely sure, maybe sarcastic might have been in there, too, and says, “Hoo Rah, Ma’am.”
She laughs. “I wasn’t expecting this much. Give me a few minutes, let me read the… plan. Is this…” Her eyes scan the pages. “Okay, sixteen pages of your different last times, and one page of plan. Let me read the plan. We’ll work on that first.”
It doesn’t take her long to get through the tenish lines of his plan. As he takes a sip of his first coffee, she says, “Do you think, maybe there might be an even earlier first step?”
He looks at her blankly.
“How do you feel about taking that ring off? Wearing it again is recent, right?”
“Yeah, since after Susan.”
“Ah.” She makes a note, flips through the pages, and sees Susan’s the last of the ladies.
“Ah, what?”
“I want to know the story behind that. I don’t want to distract from how you feel about taking it off. We’ll get to why you’re wearing it again sooner or later.” He doesn’t say anything, so she nudges him a little with, “Well…”
He extends his fingers, looking at the ring. “Not a clothes guy. Not a jewelry guy.” He taps his watch. “Have had this for fifteen years. I probably won’t bother with a new one when it dies; phone tells time just as well. I’ve got a box in the sock drawer filled with medals. Shannon put them in the box, collected them. I never cared about it. The ribbons, sure, they go on the uniform. But the medals? Couldn’t care less. Tony’s got something like six other ones in his desk.” He touches his ring again, tapping his thumb against the underside of it. “This and the uniform are the only things I ever wanted to wear. Only symbols that I wanted to carry on my body.”
“Marine, husband, and father were who you wanted to be. No symbol for Kelly?”
He shrugs. “Didn’t do stuff like that, then.” He taps the ring again. “This was it. My life, Shannon’s, and a promise to shelter and love any lives we made.”
She nods, understanding that. “You took the uniform off intentionally.”
“Yeah.”
“How about the ring? Tell me about taking it off the first time.”
He’s staring at it, rubbing it around his finger. “Night before I left for FLETC. You wear the ring, people ask questions. I didn’t want to answer them. I yanked it off, put it in the box with the medals, buried it under my socks.” He feels like he maybe should mention how he kept waking up that night, feeling it gone, how he almost got up to put it back on, but he doesn’t. He gets the sense from how she’s looking at him that she knows there’s more than what he just said.
“And no one asked if you were married?”
“No one asked much of anything.”
Cranston smiles. “I take it you weren’t exactly easy to talk to in FLETC?”
Gibbs nods, small smile on his face. “Wasn’t the first place I heard the second B was for bastard, was the most often.”
“I can imagine. Make any friends?”
“No.”
“All work all the time?”
“Yeah. If I wasn’t sleeping or in class, my head was in a book. I had the highest graduating score from FLETC for the DC Branch until Tim showed up.”
That also gets an amused smile, but there’s a bit of edge to the smile, a silent, back on track, Jethro.
He shrugs. “I don’t know how I feel about taking it off. I don’t intend to wear it forever. I know there’s an end to this. But I don’t want to take it off, yet.”
She nods at that. It’s honest, and that’s a solid place to start. “You’ll take it off when it feels right?”
“I guess.”
“Any idea what feels right might be?”
“No.” And he doesn’t. It’s not time yet. It will be time eventually. Beyond that, he doesn’t know. But, he’s thinking this might, maybe, help speed up getting to eventually.
“But you’re good with ‘feels right?’ That’s a natural way for you to deal with issues.”
He nods.
“The infamous ‘gut’ I heard so much about back in the day.”
“Yeah.” He can imagine what she might have heard about that. Then something else occurs to him. “Shannon liked that. She had rules for everything. I just kind of went with it. We worked on that, together. I got more rules; she got more gut. Met in the middle, both of us got better for it.”
Rachel nods at that, and makes a quick note about it. Then gets back to her first question. “So, are you going to take it off as step one?”
“Probably a good idea. Woman who doesn’t care if I’m married isn’t a good plan.”
She nods in agreement with that. “Probably not. Not if the goal is to build a home with someone. So why did you put it back on?”
“After Susan. Tim told me I wasn’t done being married, so I should still be wearing the ring. And, that made a lot of sense, so I went upstairs, got it, and put it back on.”
“Still in the box with the medals hidden under the socks?”
He nods.
“You were willing to talk to Tim about that?”
“I was being enough of an asshole when I broke it off with Susan that he and Tony decided I needed a bottle of alcohol poured into me to get over it. He drew the short straw and ended up administering it.”
“And let me guess, you and Tony would have just gotten wasted, but Tim got you talking, too?”
“I think so. Something about wakes and telling stories. It’s a blurry night. But I still remembered putting the ring on once I stopped wishing to die from the hangover."
She chuckles a little at that, clearly imagining it. Gibbs finds himself smiling. She really is amazingly easy to talk to. Of course, that probably makes this job a lot easier. He makes a quick note to remember that this is her job, that she’s a professional, and just because this is comfortable and she’s female doesn’t mean he needs to get interested in her.
“How does it feel to be wearing it again?”
He thinks about it. “Good. Once the ‘You get married again?’ stuff died down. Got a call from Susan two weeks later about how she’d gotten several extremely awkward congratulations from people who’d seen me wearing the ring.”
“Difficult conversation?”
He’s had way worse. “Uncomfortable. She thought it was a good idea, but… She was so sad for me, and that hurt. She was hurting for me, and I’m the jerk who can’t get out of his own past enough to do right by her, love her the way she should be loved. And I felt bad about sticking her in an awkward situation. And… it was really quiet on my end of the phone.”
The look on Cranston’s face is gentle and knowing. “I’d imagine. So, how long has it been since you’ve been on a date?”
“Since January of ’14.”
“Longest time on your own since…”
“Since before I started dating Shannon.”
She wasn’t expecting that. “How long between Shannon’s death and your next girlfriend?”
He was about to answer when he realized they may not be talking about the same thing. “Girlfriend or hookup?”
That answer gets a very curious look out of Rachel. “Is there a difference?”
“Big one.”
“Both then.”
“Four months for a hook up. Hannah was the first girlfriend, and that was a little over two years. That was part of the reason I was hitting the bars so hard that week, it was the anniversary.”
“Why did you go back to dating so fast?”
He shakes his head. Not sure if this is her not really getting him, not really getting men, or if she’s being euphemistic, or if she’s trying to get him to put it all out there. “Wasn’t dating. Just screwing.”
“Ah. Did you find what you were looking for?”
“Got off. Didn’t hurt for a few seconds. That was all I was aiming for.”
“Really?” There’s that look, curious, wanting to dig deeper, and he can feel there’s more she’s looking for here, but he’s not getting what it might be. After all, he doesn’t feel like this is an issue that’s got any real depth to it. He wanted to get laid. He got laid. This isn’t rocket science.
“Yeah.” He’s nodding, still not sure where she wants to take this.
“Like you said last time, now-a-days you can scratch that itch for yourself. What changed? Why seek out another person?”
He looks at her curiously--It’s a good question. Why was he looking for another person? Not like he wanted any sort of company; he practically sprinted out of the room the second they were done.--sips his coffee, and sips it again. He hasn’t thought about that, or any of this, not in any depth for a very long time, so it’s taking him a while to remember who he was back then. (Let alone this aspect of who he was, because it’s not the sort of thing he dwells on.)
Finally he puts it back together. “On my own, I’d think about her. Too much. Thought about her with other women, too, but less. Easier to focus on here and now if there’s a real woman there.”
“Could you get off on your own?” She asks it completely deadpan, staring him right in the eyes.
He makes a sound eerily similar to “gack” but did not spit out the coffee.
“Sorry, not trying to startle you, not like that. And you don’t have to answer any questions that make you uncomfortable."
Really, you think that might make me uncomfortable, what on earth could possibly give you that idea? Is both very clear, and very sarcastic, on his face.
But she just waits patiently for him to either answer her question or respond with something other than that look.
“No.” He shakes his head and looks away. “Not for close to three years. Couldn’t even get it up on my own for the first year. Too sad.”
“So, for a while, other women were a distraction and a release you couldn’t find on your own?”
“Yeah. Guess so. A way to get out of my head for a little bit.”
She nods at that, index finger pressed to her temple, looking like she was putting something together. “And was Hannah the first time you got past not hurting?”
“No. Just the first time I managed to make it last for more than a minute at a time.”
“So, why did you go back to screwing so fast?”
He’s not sure what she’s asking. So he gives her that curious look, fairly certain they just covered this.
She sees the confusion. “Why was that your distraction of choice?”
“It wasn’t. Work was my distraction of choice. But work didn’t last all day every day. And we didn’t have hot cases every day. Bourbon was my second choice, filled the hours between cases. Sex came in third.”
“You build boats and do woodworking, right?”
“Yeah.”
“But you didn’t then?”
“I tried. That used to be how I got out of my head, got calm and focused. But I couldn’t do it. You’ve got to feel the wood, figure out what it wants to be, coax it gently into shape. Go at it hard, and it splinters. Those days I’d touch wood, and it’d shatter in my hands. But bourbon doesn’t care. Drink it hard, drink it slow, drink it steady, drink it fast. Bourbon’s happy with all of it.”
Rachel nods at that. “Anything besides women and bourbon?”
“Like harder drugs?”
She nods. “Everything here is confidential, and anything like this, I don’t write down or keep notes on. Even if I got a court subpoena, nothing illegal will be in my notes. So, yeah, harder drugs, cutting, picking fights, adrenaline junkie? How were you medicating yourself?”
“No harder drugs, I’m not sure what cutting is, and yeah, I drove like a maniac and picked fights, and scared the shit out of the guys I took in and took risks that no one else would even dream of. It was the early nineties, NCIS got the bottom of the barrel when it came to investigative talent, and I closed cases. Otherwise they would have canned my ass so fast, I’d have never made it past Probie. I’ve got Death Wish in my files from those days, and Mike and I didn’t have an easy time finding other partners because we did have a reputation as the two guys most likely to end up dead.”
This also makes Rachel look interested. “Mike enabled you in this?”
Gibbs smiles. “Mike was a cowboy of the old style. Go in guns blazing, shoot first, ask questions later, take the bad guys in dead or alive. He had a partner, Vera, who kept him toned down some. Kept me in line, too. But she got her own team, and then it was just the two of us. I don’t even want to count how many times we should have died once she left.”
“Did you like her?”
“Yeah.”
“Romantically?”
“No. More like a big sister. Half the time she was annoying me, making sure I’d do things like eat. Half the time she was treating me like… Like the Probie I was.”
Rachel nods. “Tell me about the first hook up.”
“What about it?”
“Anything.”
“I was drunk, and probably awfully sad looking, and she and her buddies were having a divorce party. I was a guy with a pulse and a dick and still sober enough to sit upright. Still wearing the ring. She didn’t notice or care. I guess I was pretty enough she thought I’d be fun.”
“We’re you?”
“No.” He shakes his head. It was certainly the most depressing sex of his life, and he can’t imagine it was one of her better encounters. “And I felt like shit after. Wanted to peel my skin off felt so dirty. For a few seconds there, I wasn’t hurting. And I didn’t deserve not hurting.”
“But you did it again?”
“Yeah, few months later.”
“Did you need to be drunk to hook up?”
“Yeah. Tried sober a few times. Didn’t work.”
“Didn’t work physically or…”
“Never got far enough to find out if it worked physically when I was sober. Sober, I’d shoot down any woman that got within talking range.”
“Were you sober a lot?”
“I was reliably sober, hung over maybe, but sober, every minute I was at work, and every minute we were on call. I was not reliably sober at any other time for the first two years.”
“Are you an alcoholic, Jethro?”
He shrugs. He probably was then. He might be one now. He does know that he prefers dealing with sad, uncomfortable, or tense if he’s got some alcohol in him. He’s certain that if he did find himself in emotional trouble again, he’d start drinking like a fish again. He also knows that one drink doesn’t mean he has to finish the bottle. And he knows that right now, he doesn’t crave alcohol. Doesn’t find himself thinking about the next drink at 4:30 in the afternoon the way he did back when he was first working with Mike and they were having a paperwork day.
“Unless I had a case to focus on, I wouldn’t have been able to go a night without a drink, and usually closer to five, back then. Smoked, too. After Hannah, I got to the point where I could do some woodworking without breaking anything my hands touched.” He rolls up his left sleeve and shows off a long, thin scar on his forearm, and several other small ones on his hands. “Woodworking with hand tools halfway into a bottle of Jack isn’t a good plan if you don’t like scars.” He doesn’t say anything, but she can see that they’re all old and faded. There are a few fresh scratches, but they’re from the explosion, and small enough they won’t scar. “I have about four drinks a week now, usually two of them are wine at Shabbos. Haven’t smoked since… 2002? 2004? It’s been a while.”
“Are there any aspects of your life that aren’t healthier now than they used to be?”
“Can’t think of any.”
“Good.”
She looks at his list. “So, I’m guessing ‘Meet woman, not in a bar, not red hair’ is you noticing that never worked well.”
Another nod.
“’Common ground, good.’ What does that mean?”
“Just that it’s easier with someone who gets it.”
She taps the pages in front of her, obviously hasn’t had the chance to read them, but wants to know more. “The one that worked best, that you got closest with? Did she get it?”
“Yeah. Hollis. Light colonel. Army CID. Ran her own team.”
“Female version of you?”
“Nah, that’s Borin, and we know we’re too much alike to even try.”
Rachel makes note of that, too. “How did common ground make things easier?”
“She understood I couldn’t make really solid plans. She got why I wasn’t affectionate in front of my team, or hers for that matter. She knew that sometimes I needed to bury myself in the basement and work on the boat until I got it out. She knew that sometimes I needed to be at work all day and all night and all the next day because the bad guys were still out there.”
“Some of the other women have issues with that?”
“Yeah. Part of what killed Hannah and I. Worst possible case they could have put me on. Serial killer going after kids. And she didn’t know about my girls. Didn’t know why I couldn’t pull out of it. Stephanie didn’t like the fact that the job came first, either.” He doesn’t mention that part of what she didn’t like about the job coming first was the job meant Jen, but Rachel’ll read those pages and get to know that soon enough.
Rachel nods, puts a note about that on her paper, and asks, “What does ‘Get to know her’ mean?”
“Stop looking for Shannon. Get to know the woman who’s actually there. Stop trying to shove her into a mold she was never meant to fit.”
“Very good advice.”
“’Let her get to know you/Talk/Tell her about Shannon and Kelly/Tell her about cases’ all seem related. Tell me about that.”
The smiles. “Did you know Tony calls me a functional mute?”
She nods. “I heard that somewhere along the line.”
“Let me guess, you heard some other things about me not talking?”
“On occasion.” She’s got a smile that puts him in mind of Kate very intensely right now.
“In the job I find out all about everyone else, but they don’t get to find out about me.”
“You like that, don’t you?”
“Yeah. It’s safe. And…” he looks up, self-depreciating smile on his face “I’ve been told by various wives and girlfriends, that I can be awfully charming in a silent and mysterious sort of way—“
“No!”
He laughs a little, appreciating the shocked look on her face. “Yes. Rumor has it I was awfully pretty once upon a time, too.”
That gets a gentle smile and a little laugh. “You’re still pretty.”
“I’m pretty old.”
“That happens to all of us who are still up and moving around. So…”
“So, I found that I could be silent, and charming, and attractive, and keep all of me inside me. And women like Hannah would fall in love with the image. And Diane fell in love with the challenge, and the hints of what might have been under there. I don’t know if Stephanie actually loved me or not. She doesn’t hate me anymore, so that’s a step in the right direction, I guess. There are seven women on that list, and only one of them ever knew my whole story.”
“But that one didn’t work?”
“No. Susan and I parted friends. I don’t think she wanted to break it off, but… I knew it wasn’t going to happen, and by the time we got done talking, she could feel it, too.”
“’Introduce her to your family.’”
“Yeah. These days they’re part of the deal. Won’t even try with a woman they don’t like.”
Rachel nods, makes a mark of that, and asks, “What does slow mean?”
“I don’t know, but I do know I’ve gone from first date to engaged to married to divorced in less time than any of my boys took to go from first date to married.”
“That’s fast.”
“Yeah. And it didn’t work all that well.”
“Slow, then. ‘Get to know her family?’”
“If she’s old enough to be interesting to me, she’s got family. She’s probably divorced or widowed. Likely has kids. Maybe has grandkids. I don’t want to be the step-dad from hell.”
“How old are you thinking?”
“Within ten years of my age? I don’t know. She won’t be twenty-two.” That triggers a memory. “Okay, I do know, she will not be younger than Tony. He’d never shut up about it if I tried that.”
“Sounds like there’s a story there?”
“He’s had more than a few step-moms over the years, and I think he was twenty-one when his dad married the first one that was younger than he was.”
Rachel winces.
“Yeah.”
“’Reassess?’”
“Take the time to find out if it’s actually going the way I think it is. Jimmy and Tim are really good at being married. Get their input. See how they think it’s going.”
“Sounds like a solid plan, Jethro.” She checks her clock. “So, that’s it for session two. You’re ready to go back to work, if that’s all you want out of this.” Rachel just let that hang.
“And if I don’t?” Gibbs asks, quietly.
“Then I’ve got another assignment for you.”
“Oh, great.”
She smiles at his put upon expression. “You talk about these women with obvious affection, but you tell me you didn’t love them. Next up: what does it mean to be in love?”
Gibbs slouches and gives her his best are you fucking kidding me? look.
She’s smiling again, this time you can do this, in her expression. “No, no joke. Can’t find what you’re looking for if you don’t know what it is. Like with planning, if it’s easier to go at it by looking at what didn’t work, take Hollis and Susan, those are the two least complicated and most recent,” she decides to hazard a guess, “Only two where you weren’t actively depressed?” He nods. He was coming out of it by the time things ended with Elizabeth, but he certainly was when they started. “Come up with what was missing. What is love, and what wasn’t there with them to make it love?”
He rolls his eyes a bit, shakes his head, and starts to stand up. “Monday mornings good for you?”
“Yes, Jethro. This time works fine. If you want to make this even easier, come up with your answer, and email it to me ahead of time. That way I can read it, and we can talk about it.”
He nods, then turns and heads out.
An hour later, he hobbled into the bullpen. Tim didn’t look surprised to see him, but he wouldn’t, Rachel’s email would have gotten there way before he did. He just nodded, waited for Gibbs to get settled, and then took half of the pile of paperwork off of his desk, and a third of what was on Draga’s and plopped it on his.
“Paperwork day.”
“Great.”
An hour later, when Draga wandered off in search of drinks for them, Tim headed over again, half sitting against Gibbs’ desk.
“You gonna see her again?”
Gibbs nodded.
Tim gave his shoulder a squeeze. “Good.”
February 1, 2014
Shards To A Whole: Chapter 284
McGee-centric character study/romance. Want to start at the beginning? Click here.
Chapter 284: Gibbs' Ladies
When he was in school the first time, Gibbs hated homework. There were so many other things he wanted to do and being buried in books or writing essays just wasn’t on the list.
Part of what he liked about the idea of the military was that he’d be done with homework.
There are times when he laughs at how he thought that.
The Marines was tons of homework, sure not a whole lot of it was bookwork (at first), but there was some, and though he was naturally handy, he did have to practice to get drills down and his rifle mastered, and all the rest of it.
And sniper school… As he told Tim, half of it is pulling the trigger. The other half… The other half is math. (Okay, technically physics, but still, it’s math.) Hard math. Hard math you tried to get done ahead of time (like the rest of the snipers he carried around a small notebook with his calculations in it) but if something shifted, which is often the case with combat sniping, sometimes you’ve got to calculate a trajectory on the fly, in your head, under pressure, while taking wind readings, distance readings, and deciding which gun or bullet to use. And you fucking can’t be wrong.
It was a ton of work. Work he liked, but there were still a lot of days when he felt like his brain was going to melt.
He can remember Shannon rubbing his shoulders as he sat at the kitchen table, staring at the book, willing himself to shove just one more fact into his head. Then she stepped away for a moment, and came back, with a Q-tip. “Here.”
He looked up, really confused.
“So you can wipe up the brains dripping out your ears,” she said with a smile, sitting in his lap, kissing his nose. “You’ve been at it three hours. It works better if you take breaks every now and again.”
He leaned back in the chair and rubbed his eyes; she snuggled in closer. “What sort of break do you suggest?”
She smiled at him warm and saucy. “I know what I’d like, but how about you eat something first, before you get cranky on top of burned out.” She kissed him one more time, standing up, taking away the coffee cup sitting next to him. “Man can’t live on coffee alone, Gibbs.”
He’s sitting at his kitchen table, cup of coffee next to him, pad of paper in front, pen in hand, looking at a piece of paper that says: Dream Home: Steps.
Tactical planning. Great. Somehow he has the feeling that what he’s got on the first page (crumpled up and tossed out) meet woman, get to know her, fall in love, move in together, isn’t exactly a plan.
After all, if Eisenhower had said: Land in France, defeat Germans, win the war, everyone else would have laughed him out of the room.
The jump from Gunnery Sergeant to Master Sergeant is a pretty big one. One he had been hoping to make. And as such, he kept hitting the books.
They’d been hinting that come the end of the ground war in Iraq, he’d be up for Master Sergeant.
But that didn’t happen.
And, for a while, when he was floundering in the dark during the months between killing Hernandez and heading back to see Mike Franks again, the idea that he’d ever have enough interest in anything, let alone a new job, seemed ridiculous.
But he did eventually wander over to see Franks.
And Mike looked up at him from the paperwork on his desk, looked him up and down, and said, “Back, huh?”
Gibbs nodded.
“I can use ya. Ya don’t waste good, and yer good.” Then he wrote down FLETC and a phone number. “Gotta go back to school first. Shouldn’t have any trouble getting in. Gettin’ out’s a different story, but if ya get out, and I’ve got a job for ya.”
FLETC felt a lot more like high school than he was hoping. But it was… distracting. It was different. New place, new people, new jobs. It was a goal. And he got through. (It was harder than he was expecting. He was used to memorizing regulations, did lots of that in the Marines. And the physical requirements were way easier than the Corp. Plus he could out shoot the instructor. Most of the skills he didn’t have any issues with, and honestly, evasive driving was a lot of fun. Civil liberties law was a different subject, though… Possibly because he wasn’t naturally inclined to being sympathetic to the rights of the accused. When he realized he was going to get yanked out on the psych evals if he couldn’t fake it, he learned to fake it. That was also when he realized that if he talked about Shannon and Kelly, he wasn’t going to be able to fake it. So he stopped talking about them.)
Few years later, he was in Okinawa with Franks, so he learned Japanese. More work, more hours spent with books and ear phones and listening to tapes over and over. But it ate up time, and it was useful. And it meant that everyone else learned he could pick up a new language pretty quickly. So, in ’96, when Franks had his own, I can’t take this anymore moment, Gibbs got a new Probie to go with Burley, a new set of assignments, tickets to Paris, and a copy of Rosetta Stone: French. (And then there was Russian. He picked up a bit of German, too.)
So, it’s true that it’s been more than ten years since he’s done any sort of real homework assignments. And he hasn’t worried about being graded on something and not passing muster since he was sixteen, sitting in his English Literature class, getting called on to give a speech about Messianiac figures in Red Badge of Courage.
But the paper in front of him is blank. And 'Meet woman' just isn’t going to cut it.
When he got to the Corp, when there was finally a concrete goal (Private First Class was the first of them.) Gibbs had no problem doing the work he needed (and more on top of it) to get the gold star.
And staring at the blank page, he’s thinking that he might have an easier time looking at this from the point of view of what he’s already done.
It’s easier to criticize a plan than it is to come up with one in the first place.
So he got up, poured himself some more coffee, poured a slug of bourbon in it, sat back down, and started to write down how he went about getting his various exes.
HannahHe met Hannah at a bar. Not that unusual. Those days he met lots of women at bars. (As Ducky said, back in the day Gibbs was a lot like Tony.) And those days, less than two months out of FLETC, nothing much to do when he wasn’t working, too burnt to even woodwork. (Kept destroying the projects he tried to start.) Gibbs spent most of his free nights, sometimes with Franks, sometimes without, at bars, sucking down bourbon, looking to get laid. He didn’t plan to get her name, or number, or anything beyond the use of her body for an hour or so, but her hair was red, and her laugh light, and the perfume… It wasn’t the same, but it was similar, and if he closed his eyes, (or, as it turned out, if he was behind her) it was close enough.
And for a little while he felt better.
So, he did get her name, and he did get her number, and he did call the next day to see if she’d like some dinner sometime.
And she did.
They made it two years, longer than either of the other two, but he started hunting a serial killer, pulling further and further into the case, seeing more and more haunted faces of victims’ families, more and more parents who’d lost their children, parents he wasn’t saving from this pain.
He worked until he dropped, worked until Mike started sending him home, but he couldn’t go home, couldn’t talk about it, so he headed back to the bar, to more bourbon and more women.
By the time he got out of it, by the time he killed the man, he was alone again.
And, honestly, he didn’t mind.
Diane when they were dating.Diane was all heat and fire. He doesn’t even remember where they met. (She does. And she’s still pissed that he doesn’t.) He does remember seeing her and the feeling of heat. How time and space sort of slipped away as dark, primitive, sexual heat swelled between them.He remembers the sparks in her eyes.
The passion in the way she teased him, and how he teased back. How he wanted to tease her back.
And the blinding scorch of slipping into her body.
He remembers how that heat pulled him out of the dull, moving-through-fog sensation of depression. He remembers how looking forward to seeing her, fucking her, arguing with her, just being with her, was the first thing he had enjoyed, genuinely enjoyed, in years.
And if Hannah was the first time the pain stopped, Diane was the first brush of actual pleasure.
But it wasn’t enough. Fondness wasn’t enough. Great sex wasn’t enough.
She was smart. She knew he didn’t love her. She knew there was a core of him she couldn’t touch. Didn’t know why. And when she found out…
When erotic heat turned to anger, and she burned just as hot in that direction.
StephanieHe does remember where he met Stephanie. Beautiful, classic, enticing Stephanie, olive on a toothpick between her teeth, nibbling gently.Vodka martini. Why not? They were in Moscow. And again, it was a bar, and again, red hair, slim build, beautiful eyes, and a whiff of something that smelled like home.
They’d been married for two months when the case took him back to Paris. He and Jen went. Stephanie hated the fact that his partner was a woman (especially another slim redhead with long hair and green eyes) and loathed that there was a part of his life she’d never touch, but that Jen got to be part of every day.
She begged him to take Burley. He wouldn’t budge. It was going to be him and Jen. Two guys roaming around Paris looked weird. A man and a woman, romantic city, they’d blend better.
By the time he got back to Moscow, four months later, the thing with Jen had started and ended, and he never said anything about it, but Stephanie knew.
They moved back to the States a month after that.
For six months their relationship limped along. He buried himself in work, picked up a new partner from Baltimore, and he fucked other women, and she slept with other men, and she screamed at him, hit him with a baseball bat, and practically set fire to the house, but when it came down to it, she couldn’t hurt him the way he hurt her, because really, he just didn’t care.
(He still feels guilty about that.)
“You wanna work with me? You gotta learn the rules.”“The rules?” Jenny Shepard, or, as he was calling her, Probie, said.
“Yeah, got a lot of them. Number one, ‘Never screw your partner.”
Jen smiled up at him, wicked glint in those beautiful green eyes. “Never? How painfully limiting.”
And he knew he was lost. He made it two and a half years between Jen being made his Probie, and then Partner, and not once did he touch her, or beyond some mild flirting, step out of line. Because he knew where it’d go if he did.
ParisBut they were in Paris, and the cover was a couple, (and God, he knew he was playing with fire when he set that up, knew it was going to end how it ended, but he did it anyway.) and somehow pretending stopped being pretending. (Or maybe the we’re-just-co-workers was the pretend part, and the couple was real.) Somehow a dinner out to keep an eye on suspects turned into a real dinner when he never showed, and dinner turned into a romantic walk (where they were supposedly scouting the turf ahead of time) and somehow that ended up with them in bed and her fingernails leaving trails down his back. Four months later the op was done, and so were they.
She was kind about it. They’d done so well on the mission she’d been offered a post, a team, of her own, (some sort of liaison work with Mossad or something) and she was taking it. He was to go back to DC, take their Medical Examiner with him, work with Burley until he had a start on a new team, at least one new hire, and then Burley would head for Agent Afloat assignments.
And in the end, she kissed his cheek, wished him well, and he was annoyed because even though he wasn’t in love with her, he did really like her, and she was a great partner, and… That was bullshit.
It hurt to get left, and that was the beginning and end of it, she was leaving him.
But the part of him that remembered he had a wife in Moscow, and more importantly, one in the grave, knew he’d never be more than deeply fond of Jenny Shepard, and she deserved better than that.
He went back to Moscow, no idea what to say or do about Stephanie, but his rules had changed, and he added one more: Number 12: Don’t date your partner, because obviously Number 1 hadn’t been specific enough.
“When the case is done, let it go.” Mike said that to him, over and over and over.
The case was done. Or should have been. But this one did go to trial, and Elizabeth had been one of the technical witnesses. She was a banker, worked for First Columbia, and had been instrumental in letting them know enough about how check fraud worked so they could catch the guy.
The job was over. He’d let it go.
And then bumped into her at the courthouse.
Twice.
Tall, slim build, curly red hair, fire in her eyes. Yeah, he was interested. So, he asked her out for coffee. She gave his wedding ring a long, pointed look. He saw her check it, noticed the one on her finger.
“Is it a problem?” he asked.
She shook her head. “For you?”
He shook his head and offered her his hand.
“Coffee” ended up being a motel four streets down.
Mysterious RedheadThey’d meet a few times a month. Mostly for stress relief. She’d pick him up from work when she had a bad day. Occasionally he’d pick her up when he’d had one. She never saw his home. He never saw hers. They usually made it to a hotel or motel, but occasionally they took advantage of the fact that her car was a convertible. Drove Tony, and eventually Kate, and after another year Tim, bonkers that they never even got her name. Just, the mysterious red-head they’d occasionally see give Gibbs a lift at the end of a long day.
One day, not long after they met, he stopped wearing his ring. Another day, two years later, she stopped wearing hers.
They never talked about it.
Eventually she told him she’d gotten a new job in Miami. She didn’t ask for anything. Didn’t indicate he had any choice in the matter. It was a good job, better pay, more power, she was going. She was not inviting him to come along. (Though if he ended up down there on a case, he was welcome to look her up.)
He wished her luck, and genuinely meant it.
And for a year after, he’d think about her on occasion, and miss her.
“When the case is done, let it go.”
Mike said it. He said it. He had it written down and tucked into his box of rules.
There’s an unwritten one in there, too. “When the relationship is done, let it go.”
Yes, Director. So, of course, the new Director of NCIS was Jenny. He didn’t play the politics close enough to even know she was in the running. (Best he knew twenty years of service was a requirement for the job, and she didn’t have it. He doesn’t know if they bent that for her, or if it was just an NCIS legend.)She was still beautiful, still driven, still… everything... she’d been in Paris.
And now she was his Boss.
The attraction was still there. The desire hadn’t been lessened by time apart. If anything the fact that she was his Boss, that it was forbidden, made it even hotter. But she had bigger goals than him, and the fact that he liked her, that he enjoyed her, that he wanted her body under his, (and for some reason, probably because she was his boss, in all the fantasies he was on top) and could still remember the taste of her skin slick with sweat and cum, still didn’t mean he was in love.
So, he enjoyed the flirtation, he enjoyed playing the power games with her. He enjoyed their relationship in a way that was probably quite a bit more sexual than it needed to be, but wasn’t sexual enough to cross the line.
And it felt like a punch in the gut when he watched her play DiNozzo, watched her wrap him in a similar web of sexual intrigue when she thought he wasn’t looking.
But that’s who she was, driven, and she’d use any tool, break any rule, do whatever was necessary, screw the consequence to get what she wanted.
And when she died, he lit a candle for her, too.
BaseballMaybe he and Hollis had had a chance. Probably not.
But, sometimes, he likes to think, that… maybe…
Okay, she said she’d done a profile on him. He assumed (Stupid. Don’t assume.) that meant that she already knew about Shannon and Kelly. (After all, Ziva’s profile had included that.)
Turned out she didn’t. So, of course, she never brought it up, because she didn’t know. And he never brought it up, because he never voluntarily talked about it.
By the time she found out, they’d been together for almost nine months, long time to not mention something like that.
He couldn’t say to her ‘I thought you knew.’
And she couldn’t say ‘Can you move on from this? Can we do this?’
So they didn’t. He found her listening to the recording in his basement. She looked up at him, so sad, and he sort of did that little shrug thing he does, and she shook her head, and next thing he knew, she was moving to Hawaii.
Sometimes he wishes he’d called her. Or taken some damn time off and gone to her. But he’s fairly sure it would have ended badly. Or as Tony said, ‘We just met the fourth ex-Mrs. Gibbs.”
And he’s out of the new ex-wife business.
SusanLong time between Hollis and Susan. Long time before he found a spark that lit more than passing interest. Not that Hart or Ryan weren’t fond of him. Not that he wasn’t fond of them. But… They never really got past friendly sex. Susan though… She was different. Less challenging. He likes women that stand up to him, that challenge him, and she did, but there was a sweetness there…
Diane was all sharp corners and edges, the razor-edged cuts he needed to feel alive then. Jen used her attractiveness to underscore her upper hand. For her, sexuality was a tool that she used to make sure the men under her obeyed. Hollis was that same drive and need to do the job he had. And all of them stood up to him, teased him, kept him on his toes, made him toe the line, and he adored it.
Susan was… gentle. What do they call them, Steel Magnolias? Those lovely, polite, gentle southern women who’ll go to hell and back and enjoy the trip rather than let you screw them over? Yeah. Something like that.
But she was from Michigan, so maybe not.
However it worked, sometimes she’d just give him a look, and he’d know she was drawing a line just to see if he’d cross it.
And he liked that.
He liked her.
Even brought her home. Introduced her to the family. Told her about Shannon and Kelly before it could become an issue.
And six months on, he still liked her. Really liked her.
But she still wasn’t Shannon, and he didn’t feel that way about her.
And in the end, he wants more than just a pleasant companion to end his days with. And she was never going to be much more than that.
It was close to three in the morning when he finished writing. Most of it was just what he remembered about his ladies, how he met them, good bits, bad bits, very bad bits.
On the page on top was a list.
Dream Home: Plan
Meet woman. Not in a bar Not redhead. Common ground good (cop, military) but not required.Get to know her.Let her get to know you.Talk. Women like words, so talk to her. Don’t hide Kelly or Shannon. Don’t hide cases.Introduce her to family. See if they like her.Take it slow. Get to know her family. (See if you like them.)
Reassess and go from there.
Next
January 31, 2014
Shards To A Whole: Chapter 283
McGee-centric character study/romance. Want to start at the beginning? Click here.
Chapter 283: Normalish
Honestly, Gibbs would rather skip church this morning. But they’ve skipped the past few weeks, and Breena was sort of sending psychic puppy-dog eyes at them during Shabbos (Which was tense, but not painfully so. There’s still friction between Tony and Ziva, and Gibbs’s not her favorite person, either, right now, but they’re still family.) dinner yesterday when the question came up, and Elaine has informed him that he will produce Kelly for inspection in the not wildly distant future.
So, he’s standing in front of his closet, leaning against the crutch, trying to figure out which of his suit pants are loose enough he can wear the brace under them, or if he should just wrap up in ace bandages and hope that’ll do it.
Gray one’ll probably do.
It did. Add in a white shirt and a sharp blue tie, and he’s presentable. Be nice if it wasn’t 93 degrees out already with a high set for the low hundreds to go with his gray wool suit, but he’ll live.
Pre-church Sunday breakfast at Elaine’s struck him as a tradition he could get behind building.
He got there before the McGees, headed in, toward a booth. He was two steps in when Elaine looked him up and down and said, “You getting married again, Hon?”
He smiled at her. “We get dressed up for church.”
“Dressed up mighty fine.”
That got another smile.
“Getting your usual?”
“Yeah. Tim, Abby, and Kelly are coming, too…”
“Honey, you think I don’t know you’re expecting company when you head to a booth? I’ll hold it until I see ‘em.” Then she notice Kelly was on the list. “You’re finally bringing her in?”
“Yep. Might be a little late…” Because getting anywhere with a baby is always a challenge, but Elaine knows that.
“Doesn’t matter, can’t wait to see your darlin’ girl.”
Which was when he noticed the McGee’s Highlander pull in. “’Bout two minutes.” His first instinct is to head out and offer to help lug baby stuff, but, first of all, he can’t, and, second of all, they’ve just got the diaper bag and the car seat/baby carrier, so it’s only one thing for each of them.
He can, however, head to the door and hold it open, which he does. Abby gives him a little, are you taking care of yourself look, while kissing his cheek.
He sends her a I’m fine. Stop mothering me. look back.
She just looked him up and down and then said, “Uh huh. Which booth is yours?”
He nodded toward the one that now has one cup of coffee, black, one iced coffee, with milk, and some sort of pink smoothie (Turns out it was frozen watermelon lemonade, really nice on a day as hot as this.)
The source of those drinks wrapped Abby in a warm hug, and even warmer words about how good she was looking, which lasted for a few seconds until Tim and Kelly got in, and all of Elaine’s attention focused into a lazer like beam on the baby girl.
“Oh my God, Jethro, she’s so precious! May I?”
Both Tim and Abby are a bit amused to see she’s asking Gibbs’ permission to pick Kelly up, but they also get this is some sort of grandparent bonding thing, and that they don’t get to really be part of it for at least another twenty-years.
Gibbs does check with Abby though, and she nods, so he very carefully hands Kelly over for snuggles and soft words. Elaine gently rubs her cheek against the top of Kelly’s head, inhaling deeply. “Nothing on earth smells like a new baby. I could just eat you up, precious girl!”
Kelly’s looking a bit startled by this, not sure if she likes it, (it’s kind of loud and smells different, and she doesn’t know the person petting her) but it’s not unpleasant, so she doesn’t fuss.
Elaine is gently patting Kelly’s back, cuddling her against her shoulder, whispering gently to her, “You be good to your Pop, now. He loves you more than anything else in the world. You should have seen him, showing off pictures of you when you were the size of a salad shrimp.”
Kelly stares intently at Elaine, and then flops her hand onto her nose, squeezing tight.
“I’ll take that as a yes, precious girl,” Elaine says with a smile. She kisses Kelly’s forehead, detaches her hand from her nose, and hands her back to Gibbs. “Well, let’s get you all fed and ready for church. Abby, I know what those two want, but what about you?”
Outside of work, they don’t really talk a whole lot about what exactly it is they do. They just don’t. Gibbs doesn’t know if that’s a cop thing in general, or just something that’s true for his team.
But he’s very obviously injured, and he does want to hammer home exactly how important Tim and Jimmy are and how what they do is vital to protecting people and keeping them alive.
So, when Mark? Jeff? (For whatever reason every Slater on earth showed up for church and Sunday dinner today. There’s got to be close to a hundred people in the house) one of Breena’s extended collection of relatives asked why he was on crutches, he said, “You hear about that warehouse explosion down in Norfolk?”
“Uh. Yeah.”
And Gibbs just gave him a long, long look. And from there, questions, answers, and choice details of the case started to leak out and circulate around the Slater family.
And he did notice, that by the time the ham and the turkey had been carved, and plates piled high with succulent meats, manicotti, penne with sausage and peppers, and lasagna, that the Slaters were looking at Tim and Jimmy with a lot more respect.
What he wasn’t expecting when he started making sure that the Slaters knew his boys had seen some serious action recently was that he was injured, almost died, and is sitting in a house full of morticians and funeral home directors.
So, about half an hour after the first bits of what had happened started to circulate, Ed’s brother Wes wandered over and asked him, “So, have you given any thought to your final arrangements?”
That took Gibbs by surprise. Yes, he’s given it more thought than a lot of guys, and not for reasons he ever wanted to, but… Back in the Marines, they’d joke about guys who ‘bought the plot’ the plot being the bit of ground they’d dig your grave out of. Get badly wounded, you’d buy ‘half a plot,’ stuff like that. Well, he does in fact own his plot. It’s next to Kelly and Shannon’s. (There's space for his name on the headstone, too.) But between that and the flag, he’s never given it any thought.
“You know, if you want to plan things ahead of time, it’s a lot easier on the people you leave behind.”
Gibbs nods silently, sure that that’s true, and also sure that he’s really not wanting to have this conversation.
“Plus, if you plan it yourself, they don’t have to deal with the whole, ‘Would Dad have wanted this?’ issue.”
“Okay.”
“We also offer competitive pricing and the ability to pay over time. That way no one gets hit with a large bill right after what’s sure to be a traumatic time.”
“I’m sure you do.” Gibbs is looking for a way out. Abby catches his eye, sees that Help! Get me out of this look in it, and heads over, wrapping her arm in his.
“Telling Wes more stories?”
Gibbs smiles at him and shakes his head.
“Just asking him if he had his final plans made. With as dangerous as your line of work is…” Wes lets that trail off.
“Ahhh. At this point, the family plan is to let Breena handle it. We know she’ll treat us right. She took care of Jethro’s dad, and did a great job.”
Wes smiles at that, nods, and heads off.
Tim had told him about fighting with Jimmy, and how the two of them together took out Ziva. He mentioned that the music helped them keep track of each other, and coordinate their fight.
He’d been really excited about showing Gibbs, too. And he saw that from Jimmy, too. For a second it was hard to remember that these are two thirty-seven-year-old men, because they both had that puppyish I-did-something-really-good-c’mon-Dad-come-see-it! attitude when it came to explaining how this worked.
So, he’s at the gym, changed into his workout clothing, though God alone knows why, not like he’s going to do anything besides stand there, watching, leaning against his crutches, while Tim messes around with his sound equipment and then a wave of… something… Gibbs isn’t going to call it music, goes blaring through the gym.
(He’s actually quite pleased that they generally have the combat area to themselves on Sundays. This would be really annoying if you weren’t part of it.)
Yeah, this is music that’ll make you want to fight. Granted, it’s making Gibbs want to punch the asshole that inflicted it on the world. The fact that people voluntarily listen to this (Hell, that Tim listens to this. He knows Abby listens to weird stuff, but Tim’s Mr. Smooth Jazz.) boggles him.
But, he’s watching, can’t do much else, and he has to admit, that, yeah, it helps. Probably help their one on one fighting, too. He knows that when they’re on their own, warming up, working on their form, they usually have ear buds in.
They were two rounds in, warmed up, not too tired when Gibbs decided to see what would happen if he swapped it up again. He’s sure Ziva’ll cope well with this, but for Tim and Jimmy it should make things even more challenging.
He hits the off switch on the… thing… the music comes out of, and all three of them stop and look at him. “One on one on one.”
Both of the boys are giving him the are you kidding me look. Ziva’s grinning.
Then Tim is, too. Gibbs isn’t sure what that grin means, not in any sort of detail, just that Tim’s got a plan.
Jimmy’s shaking his head, probably less than thrilled about having to keep track of Ziva and Tim.
“Have at it.” He turns the music back on, and three notes died what, to him, sounds like horribly painful deaths, and then something peppy, fast, and sure, it’s not anything he’s going to listen to anytime soon, but it’s not awful either (must be Ziva’s music) comes up.
Jimmy’s shaking his head. One on one on one, and it’s Ziva’s music. They’re going to get killed again.
Tim tilts his head, in a way that Jimmy knows means, follow my lead.
Gibbs watches them do it and realizes they are not exactly embracing the spirit of one on one on one, but he’s interested in seeing what they do.
It wasn’t a brilliant plan or anything, but it was solid. Tim made sure Ziva was between him and Jimmy at all times. Which meant even though they took occasional shots at each other, they were still concentrating force against the most dangerous target, trying to take her out first.
That lasted for ninety-two seconds, until Ziva got her back to the ropes, which meant both guys could still flank her, but they had to be pretty close to each other to do it. That used their size against them, (getting in each other’s way) and in her favor. Then she did some sort of flip thing with the rope, Jimmy’s knee, and Tim’s shoulder, and ended up behind Tim. (This was when Gibbs decided he needed to record these, because all three of them need instant replay to figure out what the hell it was she did.)
But whatever it was, it worked, while they were gaping at the spot where she had been, Ziva tidily tripped Tim into Jimmy and took both of them down.
As she helped Jimmy up, he said to her, “How can you possibly be that fast?”
“Years of practice.”
They were in the parking lot, having finished for the day when Gibbs said to her, “Ziver, come home with me?”
“Gibbs?”
“Wanna show you something.”
She’s got a curious look in her eyes, and wary, and still some anger, but she nods and slips into her car.
“Come on up. Still haven’t figured out how to do stairs while holding anything.” And while that’s true, even if he could carry something while crutching down the steps, he’d still invite her up for this. He wants the symbol of the intimacy of his bedroom for it.
She follows, looking around, scanning everything, the sort of training that never leaves a person. He knows he still does it every time he’s in a strange place. Should do it every time he’s anywhere, but he’s used to this being home, and doesn’t give it a proper look through when he gets in.
They head up to his room, and he pats the bed, signaling for her to sit down, before heading to his dresser, taking a moment to figure out the mechanics of how to do it, and then opened the bottom drawer, and got one of the photo albums out.
She’s still standing between the bed and the dresser, watching him intensely.
“Look, I’m not doing this standing up.” He put the album on the bed, rested the crutches against the bedside table, and then sat down, scooting over so his back was against the headboard and he was in the middle of the bed. Then he held out one arm to her, while putting the album on her lap.
“Come on, look at some pictures with me.”
“We are going to look at pictures?” she asks, sitting next to him, cross-legged, looking across him, shoulder toward the headboard, very much not snuggling into the offered arm, so he drops it.
“Yeah. When you left to deal with Tony, you said we weren’t done. I know we aren’t. Just…” He licks his lips and inhales deeply, then meets her eyes. “Context.”
It’s the last of the albums. The one where Kelly’s oldest. There are all the usual shots, holidays like Christmas and Halloween, vacation shots of the three of them, school shots, Kelly’s first ballet recital. Just lots of little, common, snaps of a series of intersecting lives. There’s nothing unique about a grandfather spinning his granddaughter around, but it’s Jackson and Kelly. Everyone who’s grown up in places with snow have shots of kiddies playing in the snow, but the ones of Kelly and Gibbs making the snowman together make Ziva smile. (And the one of Shannon standing on the porch, hot chocolate in both hands, watching them, waiting to welcome them in with delicious warmth Gibbs strokes reverently.)
He doesn’t say much while looking at them. Mostly just short answers to her questions, like where is this, or in a few cases, who is that. Mostly he’s letting her see them, letting the content of the pictures say what his voice won’t, can’t.
By half way through the album, she is sitting back against the headboard, his arm around her shoulders.
The last page is two thirds of the way through the album. The last picture is Gibbs kissing Kelly at midnight on New Year’s Eve; they’re both wearing goofy hats that say 1991 on them, and Shannon framed it to get the clock in the shot. That was the first New Year's she was old enough to stay up until midnight.
“Went back to Iraq on the second.” His fingers trace over the shot, and he closes the album.
“I’ve already buried one daughter. I can’t do it again. And like it or not, you aren’t just Special Agent David… or DiNozzo… anymore.” He squeezes her a little more tightly and kisses the side of her head. “Somewhere along the line, maybe when I was walking you down the aisle, maybe when I was holding onto you, trying to keep you from freezing, maybe when I stood in your home and watched you light the candles, but somewhere along the line you became mine.” He smiles at her. “Mine in a way you didn’t used to be. Shifted from being someone I treated like a daughter to my daughter. And I’ll try to do a better job about not pissing you off with it, but I’ve done this once, and I’m not doing it again.”
Ziva looked at the closed album on his lap, snuggled in a little closer to Gibbs, but being careful of his knee. “How about we make a deal? I will do what I can to keep you from burying another daughter. But you will do whatever you can to keep me from burying another father?”
Gibbs smiled at her, kissed her forehead again, and said, “Deal.”
Next
Chapter 283: Normalish
Honestly, Gibbs would rather skip church this morning. But they’ve skipped the past few weeks, and Breena was sort of sending psychic puppy-dog eyes at them during Shabbos (Which was tense, but not painfully so. There’s still friction between Tony and Ziva, and Gibbs’s not her favorite person, either, right now, but they’re still family.) dinner yesterday when the question came up, and Elaine has informed him that he will produce Kelly for inspection in the not wildly distant future.
So, he’s standing in front of his closet, leaning against the crutch, trying to figure out which of his suit pants are loose enough he can wear the brace under them, or if he should just wrap up in ace bandages and hope that’ll do it.
Gray one’ll probably do.
It did. Add in a white shirt and a sharp blue tie, and he’s presentable. Be nice if it wasn’t 93 degrees out already with a high set for the low hundreds to go with his gray wool suit, but he’ll live.
Pre-church Sunday breakfast at Elaine’s struck him as a tradition he could get behind building.
He got there before the McGees, headed in, toward a booth. He was two steps in when Elaine looked him up and down and said, “You getting married again, Hon?”
He smiled at her. “We get dressed up for church.”
“Dressed up mighty fine.”
That got another smile.
“Getting your usual?”
“Yeah. Tim, Abby, and Kelly are coming, too…”
“Honey, you think I don’t know you’re expecting company when you head to a booth? I’ll hold it until I see ‘em.” Then she notice Kelly was on the list. “You’re finally bringing her in?”
“Yep. Might be a little late…” Because getting anywhere with a baby is always a challenge, but Elaine knows that.
“Doesn’t matter, can’t wait to see your darlin’ girl.”
Which was when he noticed the McGee’s Highlander pull in. “’Bout two minutes.” His first instinct is to head out and offer to help lug baby stuff, but, first of all, he can’t, and, second of all, they’ve just got the diaper bag and the car seat/baby carrier, so it’s only one thing for each of them.
He can, however, head to the door and hold it open, which he does. Abby gives him a little, are you taking care of yourself look, while kissing his cheek.
He sends her a I’m fine. Stop mothering me. look back.
She just looked him up and down and then said, “Uh huh. Which booth is yours?”
He nodded toward the one that now has one cup of coffee, black, one iced coffee, with milk, and some sort of pink smoothie (Turns out it was frozen watermelon lemonade, really nice on a day as hot as this.)
The source of those drinks wrapped Abby in a warm hug, and even warmer words about how good she was looking, which lasted for a few seconds until Tim and Kelly got in, and all of Elaine’s attention focused into a lazer like beam on the baby girl.
“Oh my God, Jethro, she’s so precious! May I?”
Both Tim and Abby are a bit amused to see she’s asking Gibbs’ permission to pick Kelly up, but they also get this is some sort of grandparent bonding thing, and that they don’t get to really be part of it for at least another twenty-years.
Gibbs does check with Abby though, and she nods, so he very carefully hands Kelly over for snuggles and soft words. Elaine gently rubs her cheek against the top of Kelly’s head, inhaling deeply. “Nothing on earth smells like a new baby. I could just eat you up, precious girl!”
Kelly’s looking a bit startled by this, not sure if she likes it, (it’s kind of loud and smells different, and she doesn’t know the person petting her) but it’s not unpleasant, so she doesn’t fuss.
Elaine is gently patting Kelly’s back, cuddling her against her shoulder, whispering gently to her, “You be good to your Pop, now. He loves you more than anything else in the world. You should have seen him, showing off pictures of you when you were the size of a salad shrimp.”
Kelly stares intently at Elaine, and then flops her hand onto her nose, squeezing tight.
“I’ll take that as a yes, precious girl,” Elaine says with a smile. She kisses Kelly’s forehead, detaches her hand from her nose, and hands her back to Gibbs. “Well, let’s get you all fed and ready for church. Abby, I know what those two want, but what about you?”
Outside of work, they don’t really talk a whole lot about what exactly it is they do. They just don’t. Gibbs doesn’t know if that’s a cop thing in general, or just something that’s true for his team.
But he’s very obviously injured, and he does want to hammer home exactly how important Tim and Jimmy are and how what they do is vital to protecting people and keeping them alive.
So, when Mark? Jeff? (For whatever reason every Slater on earth showed up for church and Sunday dinner today. There’s got to be close to a hundred people in the house) one of Breena’s extended collection of relatives asked why he was on crutches, he said, “You hear about that warehouse explosion down in Norfolk?”
“Uh. Yeah.”
And Gibbs just gave him a long, long look. And from there, questions, answers, and choice details of the case started to leak out and circulate around the Slater family.
And he did notice, that by the time the ham and the turkey had been carved, and plates piled high with succulent meats, manicotti, penne with sausage and peppers, and lasagna, that the Slaters were looking at Tim and Jimmy with a lot more respect.
What he wasn’t expecting when he started making sure that the Slaters knew his boys had seen some serious action recently was that he was injured, almost died, and is sitting in a house full of morticians and funeral home directors.
So, about half an hour after the first bits of what had happened started to circulate, Ed’s brother Wes wandered over and asked him, “So, have you given any thought to your final arrangements?”
That took Gibbs by surprise. Yes, he’s given it more thought than a lot of guys, and not for reasons he ever wanted to, but… Back in the Marines, they’d joke about guys who ‘bought the plot’ the plot being the bit of ground they’d dig your grave out of. Get badly wounded, you’d buy ‘half a plot,’ stuff like that. Well, he does in fact own his plot. It’s next to Kelly and Shannon’s. (There's space for his name on the headstone, too.) But between that and the flag, he’s never given it any thought.
“You know, if you want to plan things ahead of time, it’s a lot easier on the people you leave behind.”
Gibbs nods silently, sure that that’s true, and also sure that he’s really not wanting to have this conversation.
“Plus, if you plan it yourself, they don’t have to deal with the whole, ‘Would Dad have wanted this?’ issue.”
“Okay.”
“We also offer competitive pricing and the ability to pay over time. That way no one gets hit with a large bill right after what’s sure to be a traumatic time.”
“I’m sure you do.” Gibbs is looking for a way out. Abby catches his eye, sees that Help! Get me out of this look in it, and heads over, wrapping her arm in his.
“Telling Wes more stories?”
Gibbs smiles at him and shakes his head.
“Just asking him if he had his final plans made. With as dangerous as your line of work is…” Wes lets that trail off.
“Ahhh. At this point, the family plan is to let Breena handle it. We know she’ll treat us right. She took care of Jethro’s dad, and did a great job.”
Wes smiles at that, nods, and heads off.
Tim had told him about fighting with Jimmy, and how the two of them together took out Ziva. He mentioned that the music helped them keep track of each other, and coordinate their fight.
He’d been really excited about showing Gibbs, too. And he saw that from Jimmy, too. For a second it was hard to remember that these are two thirty-seven-year-old men, because they both had that puppyish I-did-something-really-good-c’mon-Dad-come-see-it! attitude when it came to explaining how this worked.
So, he’s at the gym, changed into his workout clothing, though God alone knows why, not like he’s going to do anything besides stand there, watching, leaning against his crutches, while Tim messes around with his sound equipment and then a wave of… something… Gibbs isn’t going to call it music, goes blaring through the gym.
(He’s actually quite pleased that they generally have the combat area to themselves on Sundays. This would be really annoying if you weren’t part of it.)
Yeah, this is music that’ll make you want to fight. Granted, it’s making Gibbs want to punch the asshole that inflicted it on the world. The fact that people voluntarily listen to this (Hell, that Tim listens to this. He knows Abby listens to weird stuff, but Tim’s Mr. Smooth Jazz.) boggles him.
But, he’s watching, can’t do much else, and he has to admit, that, yeah, it helps. Probably help their one on one fighting, too. He knows that when they’re on their own, warming up, working on their form, they usually have ear buds in.
They were two rounds in, warmed up, not too tired when Gibbs decided to see what would happen if he swapped it up again. He’s sure Ziva’ll cope well with this, but for Tim and Jimmy it should make things even more challenging.
He hits the off switch on the… thing… the music comes out of, and all three of them stop and look at him. “One on one on one.”
Both of the boys are giving him the are you kidding me look. Ziva’s grinning.
Then Tim is, too. Gibbs isn’t sure what that grin means, not in any sort of detail, just that Tim’s got a plan.
Jimmy’s shaking his head, probably less than thrilled about having to keep track of Ziva and Tim.
“Have at it.” He turns the music back on, and three notes died what, to him, sounds like horribly painful deaths, and then something peppy, fast, and sure, it’s not anything he’s going to listen to anytime soon, but it’s not awful either (must be Ziva’s music) comes up.
Jimmy’s shaking his head. One on one on one, and it’s Ziva’s music. They’re going to get killed again.
Tim tilts his head, in a way that Jimmy knows means, follow my lead.
Gibbs watches them do it and realizes they are not exactly embracing the spirit of one on one on one, but he’s interested in seeing what they do.
It wasn’t a brilliant plan or anything, but it was solid. Tim made sure Ziva was between him and Jimmy at all times. Which meant even though they took occasional shots at each other, they were still concentrating force against the most dangerous target, trying to take her out first.
That lasted for ninety-two seconds, until Ziva got her back to the ropes, which meant both guys could still flank her, but they had to be pretty close to each other to do it. That used their size against them, (getting in each other’s way) and in her favor. Then she did some sort of flip thing with the rope, Jimmy’s knee, and Tim’s shoulder, and ended up behind Tim. (This was when Gibbs decided he needed to record these, because all three of them need instant replay to figure out what the hell it was she did.)
But whatever it was, it worked, while they were gaping at the spot where she had been, Ziva tidily tripped Tim into Jimmy and took both of them down.
As she helped Jimmy up, he said to her, “How can you possibly be that fast?”
“Years of practice.”
They were in the parking lot, having finished for the day when Gibbs said to her, “Ziver, come home with me?”
“Gibbs?”
“Wanna show you something.”
She’s got a curious look in her eyes, and wary, and still some anger, but she nods and slips into her car.
“Come on up. Still haven’t figured out how to do stairs while holding anything.” And while that’s true, even if he could carry something while crutching down the steps, he’d still invite her up for this. He wants the symbol of the intimacy of his bedroom for it.
She follows, looking around, scanning everything, the sort of training that never leaves a person. He knows he still does it every time he’s in a strange place. Should do it every time he’s anywhere, but he’s used to this being home, and doesn’t give it a proper look through when he gets in.
They head up to his room, and he pats the bed, signaling for her to sit down, before heading to his dresser, taking a moment to figure out the mechanics of how to do it, and then opened the bottom drawer, and got one of the photo albums out.
She’s still standing between the bed and the dresser, watching him intensely.
“Look, I’m not doing this standing up.” He put the album on the bed, rested the crutches against the bedside table, and then sat down, scooting over so his back was against the headboard and he was in the middle of the bed. Then he held out one arm to her, while putting the album on her lap.
“Come on, look at some pictures with me.”
“We are going to look at pictures?” she asks, sitting next to him, cross-legged, looking across him, shoulder toward the headboard, very much not snuggling into the offered arm, so he drops it.
“Yeah. When you left to deal with Tony, you said we weren’t done. I know we aren’t. Just…” He licks his lips and inhales deeply, then meets her eyes. “Context.”
It’s the last of the albums. The one where Kelly’s oldest. There are all the usual shots, holidays like Christmas and Halloween, vacation shots of the three of them, school shots, Kelly’s first ballet recital. Just lots of little, common, snaps of a series of intersecting lives. There’s nothing unique about a grandfather spinning his granddaughter around, but it’s Jackson and Kelly. Everyone who’s grown up in places with snow have shots of kiddies playing in the snow, but the ones of Kelly and Gibbs making the snowman together make Ziva smile. (And the one of Shannon standing on the porch, hot chocolate in both hands, watching them, waiting to welcome them in with delicious warmth Gibbs strokes reverently.)
He doesn’t say much while looking at them. Mostly just short answers to her questions, like where is this, or in a few cases, who is that. Mostly he’s letting her see them, letting the content of the pictures say what his voice won’t, can’t.
By half way through the album, she is sitting back against the headboard, his arm around her shoulders.
The last page is two thirds of the way through the album. The last picture is Gibbs kissing Kelly at midnight on New Year’s Eve; they’re both wearing goofy hats that say 1991 on them, and Shannon framed it to get the clock in the shot. That was the first New Year's she was old enough to stay up until midnight.
“Went back to Iraq on the second.” His fingers trace over the shot, and he closes the album.
“I’ve already buried one daughter. I can’t do it again. And like it or not, you aren’t just Special Agent David… or DiNozzo… anymore.” He squeezes her a little more tightly and kisses the side of her head. “Somewhere along the line, maybe when I was walking you down the aisle, maybe when I was holding onto you, trying to keep you from freezing, maybe when I stood in your home and watched you light the candles, but somewhere along the line you became mine.” He smiles at her. “Mine in a way you didn’t used to be. Shifted from being someone I treated like a daughter to my daughter. And I’ll try to do a better job about not pissing you off with it, but I’ve done this once, and I’m not doing it again.”
Ziva looked at the closed album on his lap, snuggled in a little closer to Gibbs, but being careful of his knee. “How about we make a deal? I will do what I can to keep you from burying another daughter. But you will do whatever you can to keep me from burying another father?”
Gibbs smiled at her, kissed her forehead again, and said, “Deal.”
Next
