Keryl Raist's Blog, page 27
July 17, 2013
Shards To A Whole: 146: Testing
McGee-centric character study/romance. Want to start at the beginning? Click here.
He wasn't sure how to say it to Abby. He was pretty sure she'd agree with him, but they haven't talked about it, and she might not, and, the appointment was coming up, tomorrow in fact, and he had to talk to her about it because just whipping it out in front of Dr. Draz was a bad plan.
So after dinner, as they were settling down to relax on the sofa, he said to her, "No matter what the test comes up positive for… I don't care what might be wrong with her, I don't want to abort Kelly."
Abby gently touched his face. "And if she's sick and hurting…"
He kissed the palm of her hand. "Abby, unless keeping her alive means that she'll be in constant pain or hooked to a machine, unable to survive on her own, I want to keep her. If she's not normal… We've got money, we've got family for support, and I can quit my job to take care of her if need be."
Abby snuggled in next to Tim, laying his hands on her just starting to show belly, and kissing him gently. "Tim, did you think that would be a problem for me?"
"I really hoped it wouldn't. But we haven't talked about what if…"
"We probably should have. Unless she can't survive on her own, I want to keep her. If I'd had any reservations about keeping her, I wouldn't have risked getting pregnant."
"Okay."
"You scared?" she asked.
"Yes."
She nodded at that. "I'm refusing to worrying about it."
He looks at her, and she half-smiles, and they both know that's more a statement of intent than truth. Abby's forty, almost forty-one, and both of them are more that good enough at math to know how fast the Down's Syndrome rates skyrocket at her age.
She gives him that half-smile again. "Either the DNA did what it was supposed to, or it didn't, and either way there's nothing we can do to change it and nothing we're going to do about it besides love our child and give her the best life we can."
"Good. I'm still scared."
"Me, too."
Once again they were in a dim room, staring at a grainy white-on-black screen, trying to make out features as the ultrasound tech scoots the wand around looking for a good view.
Finally she finds it, and the image of Kelly's head, neck, upper back, and arms becomes clear.
She doesn't look much like a shrimp anymore. That's very clearly a baby.
FeetThe tech is using her mouse to make different measurements, and Tim wants to pound her with questions, all along the lines of 'is this what it's supposed to look like,' but the tech doesn't know. It's her job to measure, not diagnose.
When she finishes that, she checks Kelly's heart, which was quickly thrumming away. Tim squeezes Abby's hand as they see the tiny throbbing, almost blur of her heart pumping.
She points out finger buds and gets a shot of Kelly's feet. It's very possible he cooed a little at the two tiny feet on the screen. Abby certainly did.
And after, holding a new stack of ultrasound print outs, he waited for Abby to get dressed, and to then see Dr. Draz, who would look at all the measurements and say if Kelly looked okay.
They sat in her office, looking at the scans, not really talking much, just flipping through them. He took photos of them for his phone, and then sent them to her. And they waited.
About ten minutes later Dr. Draz came in, smile on her face, mouthing the correct pleasantries, which he doesn't have much patience for today.Just get to it.
He's not sure if she read it off his face, or having done with the "How are you?" "Nice day out there." "Blah, blah, blah," she's ready to get to work, but she opens their folder, looks over something, flips through a few pages and says, "Everything looks fine. All of your baby's measurements were within the normal range."
And for the first time in more than a week Tim felt like he could breathe again.
He wasn't sure how to say it to Abby. He was pretty sure she'd agree with him, but they haven't talked about it, and she might not, and, the appointment was coming up, tomorrow in fact, and he had to talk to her about it because just whipping it out in front of Dr. Draz was a bad plan.
So after dinner, as they were settling down to relax on the sofa, he said to her, "No matter what the test comes up positive for… I don't care what might be wrong with her, I don't want to abort Kelly."
Abby gently touched his face. "And if she's sick and hurting…"
He kissed the palm of her hand. "Abby, unless keeping her alive means that she'll be in constant pain or hooked to a machine, unable to survive on her own, I want to keep her. If she's not normal… We've got money, we've got family for support, and I can quit my job to take care of her if need be."
Abby snuggled in next to Tim, laying his hands on her just starting to show belly, and kissing him gently. "Tim, did you think that would be a problem for me?"
"I really hoped it wouldn't. But we haven't talked about what if…"
"We probably should have. Unless she can't survive on her own, I want to keep her. If I'd had any reservations about keeping her, I wouldn't have risked getting pregnant."
"Okay."
"You scared?" she asked.
"Yes."
She nodded at that. "I'm refusing to worrying about it."
He looks at her, and she half-smiles, and they both know that's more a statement of intent than truth. Abby's forty, almost forty-one, and both of them are more that good enough at math to know how fast the Down's Syndrome rates skyrocket at her age.
She gives him that half-smile again. "Either the DNA did what it was supposed to, or it didn't, and either way there's nothing we can do to change it and nothing we're going to do about it besides love our child and give her the best life we can."
"Good. I'm still scared."
"Me, too."
Once again they were in a dim room, staring at a grainy white-on-black screen, trying to make out features as the ultrasound tech scoots the wand around looking for a good view.
Finally she finds it, and the image of Kelly's head, neck, upper back, and arms becomes clear.
She doesn't look much like a shrimp anymore. That's very clearly a baby.
FeetThe tech is using her mouse to make different measurements, and Tim wants to pound her with questions, all along the lines of 'is this what it's supposed to look like,' but the tech doesn't know. It's her job to measure, not diagnose.When she finishes that, she checks Kelly's heart, which was quickly thrumming away. Tim squeezes Abby's hand as they see the tiny throbbing, almost blur of her heart pumping.
She points out finger buds and gets a shot of Kelly's feet. It's very possible he cooed a little at the two tiny feet on the screen. Abby certainly did.
And after, holding a new stack of ultrasound print outs, he waited for Abby to get dressed, and to then see Dr. Draz, who would look at all the measurements and say if Kelly looked okay.
They sat in her office, looking at the scans, not really talking much, just flipping through them. He took photos of them for his phone, and then sent them to her. And they waited.
About ten minutes later Dr. Draz came in, smile on her face, mouthing the correct pleasantries, which he doesn't have much patience for today.Just get to it.He's not sure if she read it off his face, or having done with the "How are you?" "Nice day out there." "Blah, blah, blah," she's ready to get to work, but she opens their folder, looks over something, flips through a few pages and says, "Everything looks fine. All of your baby's measurements were within the normal range."
And for the first time in more than a week Tim felt like he could breathe again.
Shards To A Whole: Chapter 145
McGee-centric character study/romance. Want to start at the beginning? Click here.
Chapter 145: A Funeral and A Prayer
Of all the funerals they've been to together, this is the one that hurts the worst.
For Kate there was the fact that Ari was dead. Gibbs had killed him. And if vengeance is hollow in the light of grief, it's better than nothing.
For Jenny, at least she went out on her own terms. Instead of wasting away, or letting the bad guys win, she took control and ended things the way she wanted them. Tim's not sure if that really helped or not, he wasn't close enough to Jen to really need the comfort, hollow though it probably was. But in the long run, he doesn't think that helped, much.
All of that was true for Mike, and he had a good, long life to go with it. Though as Tim gets older, Mike's sixty-three years seems less and less like a long life. But it still didn't make standing there with Abby, crying over him, any better.
This is like Jackie Vance's funeral, times a million because Jimmy and Breena are family and Jon, or at least the hope and idea of Jon, was beloved. There's nothing to say, no platitudes that help.
This is the lightning strike, the out of control car that barrels through your living room wall. There's no context that comforts. Nothing you can do to protect yourself from it.
This is the paralyzing horror of random chance, the roll of the die coming up wrong.
And at this funeral, Tim didn't even try to not cry.
They got home and just crashed on the sofa. He pulled his tie loose and popped the top button on his collar as she kicked off her heels.
"I hate this suit."
"Huh?" Abby looked at him with puffy, red eyes, and an air of bone-deep, weary sorrow about her.
He shook his head. "I only wear it to funerals. Haven't worn it since Mike's. Right now I just want to set fire to the damn thing."
She looked at their fireplace, fifteen feet away on the opposite wall. "That would require getting up."
"True."
"Do you want to get up?"
"No." Fifteen feet might as well be the other side of the earth right now.
They just sat there. Tim picked up the remote, turned the TV on, remembered they'd gotten rid of cable in favor of all streaming content a month ago, and turned the TV off. It's not that he wants to watch anything, he just wants some blank, meaningless noise in the background, wants the empty, hypnotic feel of just flipping through the channels.
"You hungry?" Abby asked. There had been food at Jimmy and Breena's after the funeral, but neither of them had felt like eating. Tim wasn't sure if a funeral followed by a… wake he guesses—wakes in his world are loud, usually drunk affairs, with stories and songs, and this was anything but that—at Jimmy and Breena's made sense, but her parents thought it would help, and well, he figures that if anyone gets the details of the whole mourning thing, it's the Slaters.
"Nope. I'll get you something if you want it."
"Not now."
They just sit there, his arm around her, her head on his shoulder, her legs over his.
The last time they hurt this bad… he shook his head… they've never hurt this bad, not together.
Kate was probably close for her. And that certainly hurt him. Hurt in a lot of different ways on a lot of different levels, but when it came down to it, he didn't love Kate. He liked her. He really liked her. But they'd only really worked together for a year, and he was Probie to her, even if she didn't call him that the way Tony did.
Mike was closer. His death held a similar combination of sorrow and fear. But the intensity is different. This is a thousand times sharper because it happened to Jimmy and Breena, and is so close to their own life.
He kisses the top of her head, hand stroking idly over her knee.
She took her hand in his and dragged it up her leg, his palm on her mound.
"Abby?" They haven't made love since the night before they found out about Jon. He knows he hasn't felt anything even remotely like sexual desire since then, and he was fairly sure she had felt the same way.
She cups his face in her hands. "I just want to not hurt for a little bit."
"Oh." Yeah, it'll work for that. His thumb starts a slow, gentle back and forth, and she relaxes into him.
Eventually she's reaching for his fly, shifting from sitting across his lap to straddling him. He's not even particularly hard. Enough to get it in, and that's all that matters. This isn't about pleasure, it's not even sex as sex, it's barely comfort, just surcease.
It's what you hope to find when you reach for a bottle. But Abby can't do that right now, and he won't.
And in the end they were crying again. And that doesn't help, either. Doesn't make anything better.
There's just clinging to each other, hoping time will be merciful and peace will eventually come.
"Does it help?" Tim asked as he sat on the second-from-the-bottom step in Gibbs' basement. It's well after one AM, and Tim figured that after lying in bed, staring at the ceiling for three hours he wasn't going to fall asleep anytime soon, so he headed to Gibbs' place.
Gibbs poked his head out of the Shannon.
"Does what help?"
Tim shrugged. "Never mind."
"You sure?" You look like you need to talk was on Gibbs' face, but he's also not going to press Tim for words.
"The pastor kept talking about the promise of eternal life. That one day we'll all meet again. You believe that, right?"
Gibbs nodded as he got out of the boat.
"I don't. Jimmy doesn't. Does it help?"
"Sometimes. Not right now. Not this close to it. This close and nothing helps. Later's not much comfort when you need something now. But later, when the pain dulls down some, yeah, it helps. Makes it easier to get through the hard times."
"Abby's been praying."
"Not a bad plan."
"Not sure I like the idea of a God who gets off on dangling the idea in front of you that if you beg hard enough, He might do what you want, but really He's going to do whatever the hell He was going to do anyway."
Gibbs shook his head, sighing, and sat next to Tim, wrapping an arm around him. "Your dad's a real son of a bitch, isn't he?"
Tim snorted at that. "No, he's an asshole. Calling him a son of a bitch is an insult to my grandmother. And yes, he is a complete asshole who gets off on that, too."
Gibbs pets the back of Tim's head a little, shaking his own.
"You pray because it makes you feel better, Tim. God's gonna do what He's gonna do whether you pray or not. You don't do it because if you ask hard enough the hand of God comes down and cups a little protective shield over you and yours. That's not how it works, not for anyone I've ever met. You do it because it helps you see better, clearer, and sometimes it gives you the perspective you need to find some peace. You do it because sometimes you need a place to scream 'This sucks' and 'I hate it' and 'It's not fair' and 'Why me' and 'I'm scared' and all the rest of the stuff the rest of the world calls whining. And you pray, because if you're any sort of decent man, and I know you are, sometimes you heart is so full of love and thanks that there's nothing else that makes any sense to do."
Tim nods, he knows that feeling.
"You pray, Tim, because the world is hard enough, and being alone just makes it that much harder. You pray because you need it. And, look, maybe it doesn't help, maybe nothing changes and nothing gets better, but it feels better, and sometimes you need that to keep you going."
"Sometimes I wish I believed. Wish I could make myself do it."
Gibbs didn't say anything for a long time, but finally he said, "I know they're waiting for me."
"Jethro?"
"My girls, Mike, too. They talk to me, sometimes."
Tim just stared at Gibbs, eyes wide.
"You think I'm insane."
Tim's shocked enough by that he tells the truth. "It sounds insane."
Gibbs smirks a little at that. "Which is why I don't tell people about it."
"Like, voice in your head?"
"No. I see them, too. Been almost dead enough times that sometimes they visit."
"Oh." Tim nodded a little, his eyebrows high, but that sort of makes sense to him, too.
Gibbs squeezed him a little tighter. "It works out, Tim. And in cases like Sammy… Jonathon… I don't know how. Maybe when they're together again he'll be the man he would have been. Maybe not. I don't know. But it works out. I do know that. One of these days, you'll meet my girls, and I'll be damn proud to introduce you."
"God, Jethro." Tim took a long shaking breath, and looked away, trying to stop his tears.
"Hey. Hey," Gibbs said soothingly, rubbing his back. "It's okay to cry when you're having this bad of a day."
"It didn't happen to me."
"Of course it happened to you. Your best friends, your nephew. You're allowed to grieve for that. It happened to all of us."
"No Jethro," Tim wipes his eyes. "It didn't happen to me, to us. She's forty, and there's like a one in seventy chance there's something seriously wrong with our baby… and… it's stupid, and it feels horrible, really, really horrible, but it's almost a relief. A sort of, lightning struck Jimmy so it won't hit us sort of thing. And that's shit, because it doesn't work that way, but there's still a sense of relief."
Gibbs kept rubbing Tim's back. "That's okay, too, Tim. Anyone who's been in combat has felt that. The bullet didn't hit you. He'll never say it, but Tony felt it when Kate died. He felt terrible about it because he's a good man, but it was there and it was real."
"Did you?"
"No. But… especially then, I wasn't as attached enough to my life to feel it."
"Oh."
"I felt it when the bomb went off. Me and mine came through. Those other poor bastards didn't, but we had a few minutes of charmed life. Made it a whole lot easier to go to Dearing's house."
"Oh."
"Yeah. He didn't punch my ticket the first time, so it wasn't going to happen. You take whatever comfort you can find where you can find it, especially for the things where there's nothing you can do. And this especially is something where there's nothing you can do."
"That's not entirely true."
Gibbs expression let Tim know to keep talking.
"Wednesday we've got an appointment for the Nuchal Fold testing. I don't know why Jimmy and Breena didn't have it done, probably because they're 'low risk,' but it tests for trisomies…" Gibbs doesn't seem to know what that means. "What Jonathon had, and Down's Syndrome, and a few other things. And if it's negative you sigh with relief and go on. But if it's positive, they do more testing, and then more, and then eventually you're only left with one choice: stop your baby's heart or not.
"Jimmy said that Sammy's heart not beating was a relief, that they didn't have to make the choice. And now, after eighteen hours of labor, and Breena'll bleeding for weeks, now I wonder if he would have rather known and been done earlier, when Sammy was still small enough for a D&C."
Gibbs shook his head, he doesn't know the answer to that, and doesn't want to imagine it clearly enough to try and figure the answer out. "What about you?"
"I don't know. I'm not sure I want to know. If we don't find out, then I can keep pretending everything is fine."
"Odds are that everything is fine. You find that out, and you don't have to pretend."
"Yeah, I know. But if things aren't… We'll do the twenty week scan no matter what, find out if she's really a she, so we're talking about two more months of not knowing."
"You're talking about pushing finding out far enough back so that no matter what the answer is, the decision is out of your hands."
"Yeah. In Virginia it's twenty-two weeks. If something is so badly wrong that you can just see it on an ultrasound, we'd still have time. But if it's questionable, and they wanted to do more testing, the clock would run out on us."
Tim spent a minute staring at the wall in front of him.
"I feel like such a coward for not wanting to know. Making the hard decisions, that's what being the parent is all about, right?"
"Yeah, Tim."
"You've got to do it, and you can't let the rest of the world do it for you."
"Yep."
Tim exhaled long and slow, and Gibbs sat next to him, keeping a hand on his shoulder, and let him think.Next
Chapter 145: A Funeral and A Prayer
Of all the funerals they've been to together, this is the one that hurts the worst.
For Kate there was the fact that Ari was dead. Gibbs had killed him. And if vengeance is hollow in the light of grief, it's better than nothing.
For Jenny, at least she went out on her own terms. Instead of wasting away, or letting the bad guys win, she took control and ended things the way she wanted them. Tim's not sure if that really helped or not, he wasn't close enough to Jen to really need the comfort, hollow though it probably was. But in the long run, he doesn't think that helped, much.
All of that was true for Mike, and he had a good, long life to go with it. Though as Tim gets older, Mike's sixty-three years seems less and less like a long life. But it still didn't make standing there with Abby, crying over him, any better.
This is like Jackie Vance's funeral, times a million because Jimmy and Breena are family and Jon, or at least the hope and idea of Jon, was beloved. There's nothing to say, no platitudes that help.
This is the lightning strike, the out of control car that barrels through your living room wall. There's no context that comforts. Nothing you can do to protect yourself from it.
This is the paralyzing horror of random chance, the roll of the die coming up wrong.
And at this funeral, Tim didn't even try to not cry.
They got home and just crashed on the sofa. He pulled his tie loose and popped the top button on his collar as she kicked off her heels.
"I hate this suit."
"Huh?" Abby looked at him with puffy, red eyes, and an air of bone-deep, weary sorrow about her.
He shook his head. "I only wear it to funerals. Haven't worn it since Mike's. Right now I just want to set fire to the damn thing."
She looked at their fireplace, fifteen feet away on the opposite wall. "That would require getting up."
"True."
"Do you want to get up?"
"No." Fifteen feet might as well be the other side of the earth right now.
They just sat there. Tim picked up the remote, turned the TV on, remembered they'd gotten rid of cable in favor of all streaming content a month ago, and turned the TV off. It's not that he wants to watch anything, he just wants some blank, meaningless noise in the background, wants the empty, hypnotic feel of just flipping through the channels.
"You hungry?" Abby asked. There had been food at Jimmy and Breena's after the funeral, but neither of them had felt like eating. Tim wasn't sure if a funeral followed by a… wake he guesses—wakes in his world are loud, usually drunk affairs, with stories and songs, and this was anything but that—at Jimmy and Breena's made sense, but her parents thought it would help, and well, he figures that if anyone gets the details of the whole mourning thing, it's the Slaters.
"Nope. I'll get you something if you want it."
"Not now."
They just sit there, his arm around her, her head on his shoulder, her legs over his.
The last time they hurt this bad… he shook his head… they've never hurt this bad, not together.
Kate was probably close for her. And that certainly hurt him. Hurt in a lot of different ways on a lot of different levels, but when it came down to it, he didn't love Kate. He liked her. He really liked her. But they'd only really worked together for a year, and he was Probie to her, even if she didn't call him that the way Tony did.
Mike was closer. His death held a similar combination of sorrow and fear. But the intensity is different. This is a thousand times sharper because it happened to Jimmy and Breena, and is so close to their own life.
He kisses the top of her head, hand stroking idly over her knee.
She took her hand in his and dragged it up her leg, his palm on her mound.
"Abby?" They haven't made love since the night before they found out about Jon. He knows he hasn't felt anything even remotely like sexual desire since then, and he was fairly sure she had felt the same way.
She cups his face in her hands. "I just want to not hurt for a little bit."
"Oh." Yeah, it'll work for that. His thumb starts a slow, gentle back and forth, and she relaxes into him.
Eventually she's reaching for his fly, shifting from sitting across his lap to straddling him. He's not even particularly hard. Enough to get it in, and that's all that matters. This isn't about pleasure, it's not even sex as sex, it's barely comfort, just surcease.
It's what you hope to find when you reach for a bottle. But Abby can't do that right now, and he won't.
And in the end they were crying again. And that doesn't help, either. Doesn't make anything better.
There's just clinging to each other, hoping time will be merciful and peace will eventually come.
"Does it help?" Tim asked as he sat on the second-from-the-bottom step in Gibbs' basement. It's well after one AM, and Tim figured that after lying in bed, staring at the ceiling for three hours he wasn't going to fall asleep anytime soon, so he headed to Gibbs' place.
Gibbs poked his head out of the Shannon.
"Does what help?"
Tim shrugged. "Never mind."
"You sure?" You look like you need to talk was on Gibbs' face, but he's also not going to press Tim for words.
"The pastor kept talking about the promise of eternal life. That one day we'll all meet again. You believe that, right?"
Gibbs nodded as he got out of the boat.
"I don't. Jimmy doesn't. Does it help?"
"Sometimes. Not right now. Not this close to it. This close and nothing helps. Later's not much comfort when you need something now. But later, when the pain dulls down some, yeah, it helps. Makes it easier to get through the hard times."
"Abby's been praying."
"Not a bad plan."
"Not sure I like the idea of a God who gets off on dangling the idea in front of you that if you beg hard enough, He might do what you want, but really He's going to do whatever the hell He was going to do anyway."
Gibbs shook his head, sighing, and sat next to Tim, wrapping an arm around him. "Your dad's a real son of a bitch, isn't he?"
Tim snorted at that. "No, he's an asshole. Calling him a son of a bitch is an insult to my grandmother. And yes, he is a complete asshole who gets off on that, too."
Gibbs pets the back of Tim's head a little, shaking his own.
"You pray because it makes you feel better, Tim. God's gonna do what He's gonna do whether you pray or not. You don't do it because if you ask hard enough the hand of God comes down and cups a little protective shield over you and yours. That's not how it works, not for anyone I've ever met. You do it because it helps you see better, clearer, and sometimes it gives you the perspective you need to find some peace. You do it because sometimes you need a place to scream 'This sucks' and 'I hate it' and 'It's not fair' and 'Why me' and 'I'm scared' and all the rest of the stuff the rest of the world calls whining. And you pray, because if you're any sort of decent man, and I know you are, sometimes you heart is so full of love and thanks that there's nothing else that makes any sense to do."
Tim nods, he knows that feeling.
"You pray, Tim, because the world is hard enough, and being alone just makes it that much harder. You pray because you need it. And, look, maybe it doesn't help, maybe nothing changes and nothing gets better, but it feels better, and sometimes you need that to keep you going."
"Sometimes I wish I believed. Wish I could make myself do it."
Gibbs didn't say anything for a long time, but finally he said, "I know they're waiting for me."
"Jethro?"
"My girls, Mike, too. They talk to me, sometimes."
Tim just stared at Gibbs, eyes wide.
"You think I'm insane."
Tim's shocked enough by that he tells the truth. "It sounds insane."
Gibbs smirks a little at that. "Which is why I don't tell people about it."
"Like, voice in your head?"
"No. I see them, too. Been almost dead enough times that sometimes they visit."
"Oh." Tim nodded a little, his eyebrows high, but that sort of makes sense to him, too.
Gibbs squeezed him a little tighter. "It works out, Tim. And in cases like Sammy… Jonathon… I don't know how. Maybe when they're together again he'll be the man he would have been. Maybe not. I don't know. But it works out. I do know that. One of these days, you'll meet my girls, and I'll be damn proud to introduce you."
"God, Jethro." Tim took a long shaking breath, and looked away, trying to stop his tears.
"Hey. Hey," Gibbs said soothingly, rubbing his back. "It's okay to cry when you're having this bad of a day."
"It didn't happen to me."
"Of course it happened to you. Your best friends, your nephew. You're allowed to grieve for that. It happened to all of us."
"No Jethro," Tim wipes his eyes. "It didn't happen to me, to us. She's forty, and there's like a one in seventy chance there's something seriously wrong with our baby… and… it's stupid, and it feels horrible, really, really horrible, but it's almost a relief. A sort of, lightning struck Jimmy so it won't hit us sort of thing. And that's shit, because it doesn't work that way, but there's still a sense of relief."
Gibbs kept rubbing Tim's back. "That's okay, too, Tim. Anyone who's been in combat has felt that. The bullet didn't hit you. He'll never say it, but Tony felt it when Kate died. He felt terrible about it because he's a good man, but it was there and it was real."
"Did you?"
"No. But… especially then, I wasn't as attached enough to my life to feel it."
"Oh."
"I felt it when the bomb went off. Me and mine came through. Those other poor bastards didn't, but we had a few minutes of charmed life. Made it a whole lot easier to go to Dearing's house."
"Oh."
"Yeah. He didn't punch my ticket the first time, so it wasn't going to happen. You take whatever comfort you can find where you can find it, especially for the things where there's nothing you can do. And this especially is something where there's nothing you can do."
"That's not entirely true."
Gibbs expression let Tim know to keep talking.
"Wednesday we've got an appointment for the Nuchal Fold testing. I don't know why Jimmy and Breena didn't have it done, probably because they're 'low risk,' but it tests for trisomies…" Gibbs doesn't seem to know what that means. "What Jonathon had, and Down's Syndrome, and a few other things. And if it's negative you sigh with relief and go on. But if it's positive, they do more testing, and then more, and then eventually you're only left with one choice: stop your baby's heart or not.
"Jimmy said that Sammy's heart not beating was a relief, that they didn't have to make the choice. And now, after eighteen hours of labor, and Breena'll bleeding for weeks, now I wonder if he would have rather known and been done earlier, when Sammy was still small enough for a D&C."
Gibbs shook his head, he doesn't know the answer to that, and doesn't want to imagine it clearly enough to try and figure the answer out. "What about you?"
"I don't know. I'm not sure I want to know. If we don't find out, then I can keep pretending everything is fine."
"Odds are that everything is fine. You find that out, and you don't have to pretend."
"Yeah, I know. But if things aren't… We'll do the twenty week scan no matter what, find out if she's really a she, so we're talking about two more months of not knowing."
"You're talking about pushing finding out far enough back so that no matter what the answer is, the decision is out of your hands."
"Yeah. In Virginia it's twenty-two weeks. If something is so badly wrong that you can just see it on an ultrasound, we'd still have time. But if it's questionable, and they wanted to do more testing, the clock would run out on us."
Tim spent a minute staring at the wall in front of him.
"I feel like such a coward for not wanting to know. Making the hard decisions, that's what being the parent is all about, right?"
"Yeah, Tim."
"You've got to do it, and you can't let the rest of the world do it for you."
"Yep."
Tim exhaled long and slow, and Gibbs sat next to him, keeping a hand on his shoulder, and let him think.Next
Shards To A Whole: An NCIS Fanfiction
McGee-centric character study/romance. Want to start at the beginning? Click here.
Chapter 144.
They got the call from Gibbs a little after nine. "I know you don't want to hear this, but one of the two of you has to show up. I've got a ton of evidence and no one to run it."
"But…" Tim's really not feeling like doing anything beyond watching Molly, and right now his duty to Jimmy and Breena and Molly trumps everything else.
"I know, Tim, but Molly doesn't need both of you watching her, and Palmer and Breena don't know or care if you're both there or not. Vance has someone coming up from Norfolk tomorrow, but we need someone to run the lab today. I don't care which of you does it. I don't care if you show up and it's slow, or Abby comes and gets it done, but it has to happen because I cannot tell Wallen's widow that we are doing nothing to catch her husband's killer. She's grieving too, and it's our job to help."
Abby was listening to the call, so she said, "I'll come in. The faster this gets done, the faster we can both be back here."
"That works."
Molly was getting fussy. She's got no idea what's wrong, but something is. Her schedule is off, she didn't get to nurse in the morning, she's not playing with the ladies at daycare, which seems to happen on a pretty regular basis, but when that happens she's with her mom and dad, and they aren't here, either.
Tim feels like he's a wits end. He's already only about two seconds away from bursting into tears, because whenever he's not actively thinking about anything else, he can see the look on Jimmy and Breena's faces as they left this morning and each time he sees it, it rips him apart. A crabby baby on top of that isn't helping his control.
And of course the fact that he's close to bursting into tears just makes Molly crabbier.
It's like the most perfect vicious circle he's ever seen.
So he bundles both of them up, pops her into her stroller, and realizes that trying to take her for a walk when there's four inches of snow on all the sidewalks is futile.
She's fussing even more, now. Apparently she was in favor of a walk and considered him getting her ready for a walk, stepping outside, and then turning back around immediately to be cruel teasing. So he takes her out of the stroller, pops her into her car seat, and heads toward Jimmy's car.
"Come on. Let's go for a drive. Maybe, if I'm lucky, you'll fall asleep, and I'll get some lunch for us."
She seemed to approve of that. So off they went.
Ducky came by at dinnertime, food in hand, looking haggard.
"News?" Tim asked.
Ducky opened the bag and laid out Chipotle for both of them, putting a bit of carnitas, rice, and guacamole in front of Molly. She grinned and tucked into it. Apparently rice and guacamole is her idea of very tasty and also a lot of fun to play with.
"Breena was at seven centimeters when I left. They think everything will be done by morning. She'll stay there for at least a day to make sure the infection doesn't get too bad and that she doesn't have any adverse reactions to the antibiotics—"
Ducky sees Tim's look. What infection? is pretty clear on his face.
"Apparently the last time she could remember feeling him move was two days ago. So, they are assuming that's when he died. In cases like this, they automatically administer large doses of antibiotics because—"Tim's nodding, he doesn't want to hear the end of that sentence. He's seen enough dead bodies to know what happens to one if it spends two days in a warm, wet, bacteria-rich environment.
He looks at his burrito and wraps it back up.
"When was the last time you ate something, Timothy?"
"Lunch. When was the last time you slept, Ducky?"
"The night before last."
"You want to crash here?"
"No. Ed has been on his best behavior, or is just too sad to talk, either way, I want to make sure Jimmy has someone to shield him."
Tim nods at that. "I understand. You safe to drive?"
"Yes. Part of training for both medical school and the military involved going long periods of time without sleep. As long as I eat, rest when I can, and maintain a steady intake of tea, I'll be fine for two days."
"Okay. So, you're going back after dinner."
"Yes, I wanted to check in on you, spend some time with Molly, and then I'll be able to report back to Jimmy and Breena that she's fine."
"She is. Little crabby and unhappy because everything is upside down right now. But we're doing okay."
"Good."
Tim's phone buzzed. He glanced at it, and said to Ducky, "That's Abby, she's done with the evidence."
"Then she'll be here soon."
"Forty minutes."
The official time of birth and death for Jonathon Christopher Palmer was 4:06 AM January 8, 2015.
Jimmy and Ducky came home a bit after dinner. Jimmy didn't say anything, just took Molly and held her close, crying the whole time.
When she started sobbing in response to him, Tim gently took her away, got her calmed down and put to bed.
Once that was done, he headed out of Molly's room. The door to Jimmy and Breena's was open a few inches, and he could hear soft crying and Abby's voice murmuring something. He figured it being open was an invitation to go in, but wanted to check in with Ducky first, so he headed downstairs.
Ducky was sitting on the sofa, a plate with some dinner on it on his lap, eating with a sort of mechanical precision that looked significantly more like a man fueling a machine than one savoring a meal.
"It's over?"
"Yes. Breena's sleeping. Between the pain medication and her exhaustion they don't expect her to wake up until the morning. Her sisters are with her right now. They sent Jimmy and the rest of us home to get some rest, too."
"You think he'll sleep?"
"I put a mild sedative in the coffee I gave him before we left. Between that and how tired he is, it should knock him out."
"When can she come home?"
"Tomorrow, maybe the next day. It was as 'easy'," his voice goes sharp with scorn on that word, "as such things can be, which is to say beyond utter horror, but she'll heal. Given enough time, they both will."
"Did they get to hold him?"
Ducky's eyes tear up, and he nods. He wipes them, sniffs, and says, "We all did. He was ten inches long and weighed fifteen ounces. He had perfect little fingernails."
Tim's crying and nodding. "What happens now?"
"Breena's parents took him for cremation. There'll be a service on Saturday."
"Okay. Are you staying tonight? I can move our stuff out of the guestroom if you want it."
"I am staying. And I am fine on the sofa. I'm a going to finish this, get a long, hot shower, and then go to sleep. In the morning, I'll take Jimmy back to the hospital. Abby, too if you're okay with Molly on your own."
"We'll be fine."
Tim headed upstairs, eased the door open to Jimmy's room, and found both of them on the bed, Abby holding Jimmy. He wasn't crying anymore. Tim wasn't entirely sure if he was still awake, so he crept up quietly.
Jimmy looked up at him, so much for being asleep. "You want me to stay?"
Jimmy nodded, so Tim sat next to him, and wrapped his arms around both of them.
And that's how Jimmy spent his first night home, sleeping fitfully, held by his two best friends.
Breena came home a little after dinner the next day, and Tim and Abby stayed with them until the service after the funeral was cleaned up and everyone else had left.
Next
Chapter 144.
They got the call from Gibbs a little after nine. "I know you don't want to hear this, but one of the two of you has to show up. I've got a ton of evidence and no one to run it."
"But…" Tim's really not feeling like doing anything beyond watching Molly, and right now his duty to Jimmy and Breena and Molly trumps everything else.
"I know, Tim, but Molly doesn't need both of you watching her, and Palmer and Breena don't know or care if you're both there or not. Vance has someone coming up from Norfolk tomorrow, but we need someone to run the lab today. I don't care which of you does it. I don't care if you show up and it's slow, or Abby comes and gets it done, but it has to happen because I cannot tell Wallen's widow that we are doing nothing to catch her husband's killer. She's grieving too, and it's our job to help."
Abby was listening to the call, so she said, "I'll come in. The faster this gets done, the faster we can both be back here."
"That works."
Molly was getting fussy. She's got no idea what's wrong, but something is. Her schedule is off, she didn't get to nurse in the morning, she's not playing with the ladies at daycare, which seems to happen on a pretty regular basis, but when that happens she's with her mom and dad, and they aren't here, either.
Tim feels like he's a wits end. He's already only about two seconds away from bursting into tears, because whenever he's not actively thinking about anything else, he can see the look on Jimmy and Breena's faces as they left this morning and each time he sees it, it rips him apart. A crabby baby on top of that isn't helping his control.
And of course the fact that he's close to bursting into tears just makes Molly crabbier.
It's like the most perfect vicious circle he's ever seen.
So he bundles both of them up, pops her into her stroller, and realizes that trying to take her for a walk when there's four inches of snow on all the sidewalks is futile.
She's fussing even more, now. Apparently she was in favor of a walk and considered him getting her ready for a walk, stepping outside, and then turning back around immediately to be cruel teasing. So he takes her out of the stroller, pops her into her car seat, and heads toward Jimmy's car.
"Come on. Let's go for a drive. Maybe, if I'm lucky, you'll fall asleep, and I'll get some lunch for us."
She seemed to approve of that. So off they went.
Ducky came by at dinnertime, food in hand, looking haggard.
"News?" Tim asked.
Ducky opened the bag and laid out Chipotle for both of them, putting a bit of carnitas, rice, and guacamole in front of Molly. She grinned and tucked into it. Apparently rice and guacamole is her idea of very tasty and also a lot of fun to play with.
"Breena was at seven centimeters when I left. They think everything will be done by morning. She'll stay there for at least a day to make sure the infection doesn't get too bad and that she doesn't have any adverse reactions to the antibiotics—"
Ducky sees Tim's look. What infection? is pretty clear on his face.
"Apparently the last time she could remember feeling him move was two days ago. So, they are assuming that's when he died. In cases like this, they automatically administer large doses of antibiotics because—"Tim's nodding, he doesn't want to hear the end of that sentence. He's seen enough dead bodies to know what happens to one if it spends two days in a warm, wet, bacteria-rich environment.
He looks at his burrito and wraps it back up.
"When was the last time you ate something, Timothy?"
"Lunch. When was the last time you slept, Ducky?"
"The night before last."
"You want to crash here?"
"No. Ed has been on his best behavior, or is just too sad to talk, either way, I want to make sure Jimmy has someone to shield him."
Tim nods at that. "I understand. You safe to drive?"
"Yes. Part of training for both medical school and the military involved going long periods of time without sleep. As long as I eat, rest when I can, and maintain a steady intake of tea, I'll be fine for two days."
"Okay. So, you're going back after dinner."
"Yes, I wanted to check in on you, spend some time with Molly, and then I'll be able to report back to Jimmy and Breena that she's fine."
"She is. Little crabby and unhappy because everything is upside down right now. But we're doing okay."
"Good."
Tim's phone buzzed. He glanced at it, and said to Ducky, "That's Abby, she's done with the evidence."
"Then she'll be here soon."
"Forty minutes."
The official time of birth and death for Jonathon Christopher Palmer was 4:06 AM January 8, 2015.
Jimmy and Ducky came home a bit after dinner. Jimmy didn't say anything, just took Molly and held her close, crying the whole time.
When she started sobbing in response to him, Tim gently took her away, got her calmed down and put to bed.
Once that was done, he headed out of Molly's room. The door to Jimmy and Breena's was open a few inches, and he could hear soft crying and Abby's voice murmuring something. He figured it being open was an invitation to go in, but wanted to check in with Ducky first, so he headed downstairs.
Ducky was sitting on the sofa, a plate with some dinner on it on his lap, eating with a sort of mechanical precision that looked significantly more like a man fueling a machine than one savoring a meal.
"It's over?"
"Yes. Breena's sleeping. Between the pain medication and her exhaustion they don't expect her to wake up until the morning. Her sisters are with her right now. They sent Jimmy and the rest of us home to get some rest, too."
"You think he'll sleep?"
"I put a mild sedative in the coffee I gave him before we left. Between that and how tired he is, it should knock him out."
"When can she come home?"
"Tomorrow, maybe the next day. It was as 'easy'," his voice goes sharp with scorn on that word, "as such things can be, which is to say beyond utter horror, but she'll heal. Given enough time, they both will."
"Did they get to hold him?"
Ducky's eyes tear up, and he nods. He wipes them, sniffs, and says, "We all did. He was ten inches long and weighed fifteen ounces. He had perfect little fingernails."
Tim's crying and nodding. "What happens now?"
"Breena's parents took him for cremation. There'll be a service on Saturday."
"Okay. Are you staying tonight? I can move our stuff out of the guestroom if you want it."
"I am staying. And I am fine on the sofa. I'm a going to finish this, get a long, hot shower, and then go to sleep. In the morning, I'll take Jimmy back to the hospital. Abby, too if you're okay with Molly on your own."
"We'll be fine."
Tim headed upstairs, eased the door open to Jimmy's room, and found both of them on the bed, Abby holding Jimmy. He wasn't crying anymore. Tim wasn't entirely sure if he was still awake, so he crept up quietly.
Jimmy looked up at him, so much for being asleep. "You want me to stay?"
Jimmy nodded, so Tim sat next to him, and wrapped his arms around both of them.
And that's how Jimmy spent his first night home, sleeping fitfully, held by his two best friends.
Breena came home a little after dinner the next day, and Tim and Abby stayed with them until the service after the funeral was cleaned up and everyone else had left.
Next
July 16, 2013
Shards To A Whole: 143
McGee-centric character study/romance. Want to start at the beginning? Click here.
Chapter 143
An hour later, they're both numb with cold, covered in snow that's melted and frozen into their hair, but Jimmy's finally cried out. For now, at least.
"I should go back in," Jimmy said, voice rough and raw.
"Okay. When do you have to be there?"
"Seven."
"Abby and I'll take Molly for as long as you need."
Jimmy nods.
"Do you think it's okay for Abby to come?"
"Yeah. I think Breena could use some Abby hugs. I know I do."
"Okay. I'm going to stay out a bit longer, give Abby a call. I'll crash here, make sure you're up and out in time. Just, rest, as much as you can."
Jimmy laughed bitterly at that, picked up his glasses, and headed into the house.
He hit Abby's contact on his phone and a few rings later said, "Hey. Did I wake you?"
"No." She sounds really tired, though. "Not going to sleep tonight." Good point. He's not feeling like he's going to get any sleep, either.
"Jimmy wants you to come over."
"I'll be there in half an hour."
There are a lot of things he wants to say to her right now, a lot of feelings, but it's cold, and he should head in soon, and the sooner he's done talking the sooner she's on the road, so he says, "I love you, Abby."
"I love you, too." He can hear that she got what he was trying to say. Then she asks, "Do you have any more details?"
He swallows, forces his voice to stay steady. "Yeah. They think it was trisomy 13, which is apparently a condition where pretty much everything that possibly could go wrong, does. They've got to go back to the hospital in the morning to induce labor."
"Oh God."
"Yeah."
"You're still here," Ed said quietly. He was slumped on the sofa, open beer in his hand, but Tim could see the bottle was still full.
"Where else would I be?"
Ed shrugged. "Thought you left. Where's your Goth?"
"Home. She's ten weeks pregnant and we weren't sure if Breena would want…" Ed nodded understanding that. "Jimmy says it's okay, so she'll be here soon. Spend some time holding Breena, she's really good at hugs. Help me with Molly in the morning. Are you guys going to drive them to the hospital?"
"Yeah."
"You take the guest room; we can camp out on the sofa."
"Okay."
When Abby came in the door, she'd clearly been crying. Clearly been crying pretty much the whole time since he last saw her.
She also had two large bags in one hand.
"What's that?"
"Pads, nursing pads. Her body doesn't know…" Abby didn't finish that sentence and switches to, "She'll give birth, and then her body'll do what it's supposed to do after that. Her milk will let down, and she'll bleed, probably for a couple weeks, maybe as long as a month or six weeks, and I was thinking that they might not want to have to go out and get them."
"Oh." Tim closes his eyes and slumps a little further into the sofa, his heart breaking even more for Breena. It just kept getting worse. A constant reminder every minute of every day for weeks.
"Yeah. I'll head up."
"I think they'd like that."
He jerked when he felt the sofa cushion shift. Abby snuggling in next to him. He hadn't thought he was asleep, but judging from the fact that she had gotten down the steps, across the living room, and onto the sofa without him noticing, he probably had been.
"Sorry. Didn't want to wake you, but I just needed you to hold onto me."
"Yeah. I know." He rubbed his eyes, shifted onto his side, making more room for her, and wrapped around her. "They asleep?"
"Ish. More like they hit the point where they're so exhausted they just dropped."
He nodded, familiar with that feeling. "What time is it?"
"Little after three."
"I told Jimmy I'd make sure they were up and ready in time."
"Shouldn't be a problem, Molly wakes up before they need to leave."
"Good. I googled trisomy 13." Which is part of how he deals with bad things happening. Learn everything he can about them, and once Ed headed upstairs he was just sitting there in their living room, unable to sleep, uninterested in TV, and staring at the wall was useless. So he got on his phone and read everything he could find on it. Then, because the part of his brain that had been doing a pretty good job of keeping him from worrying about this in regards to Kelly had been completely shut down, he researched pretty much any other genetic abnormality he could find, starting with Down's Syndrome and only stopping when the battery died on his phone.
"And?"
"And it's like Down's Syndrome, sort of. Three of the thirteenth chromosome instead of three of the twenty-first. Most of the time it's a random mutation, a one in ten thousand chance. But there is a gene you can carry that passes it on, as well. No way to tell without testing for it. It's bad. Apparently there's a really bad version that's basically always fatal, and then there's a not quite as bad version that's just usually fatal."
"Great."
"Yeah."
"What's it actually do?"
"Brain damage, heart damage, kidney damage, eye damage, palate damage, polydactyl hands and feet, I think there was other stuff, but I'm not coming up with it right now." He lay there, his chin on her shoulder, breathing in her scent, his hand cupped over her belly, like somehow just his hands could be a shield against horrific fate.
She squeezed his hand. There was really nothing to say. "Let's try to rest."
He kissed her shoulder, holding onto her tightly, wishing, like a little boy, that it could be yesterday again.
Chapter 143
An hour later, they're both numb with cold, covered in snow that's melted and frozen into their hair, but Jimmy's finally cried out. For now, at least.
"I should go back in," Jimmy said, voice rough and raw.
"Okay. When do you have to be there?"
"Seven."
"Abby and I'll take Molly for as long as you need."
Jimmy nods.
"Do you think it's okay for Abby to come?"
"Yeah. I think Breena could use some Abby hugs. I know I do."
"Okay. I'm going to stay out a bit longer, give Abby a call. I'll crash here, make sure you're up and out in time. Just, rest, as much as you can."
Jimmy laughed bitterly at that, picked up his glasses, and headed into the house.
He hit Abby's contact on his phone and a few rings later said, "Hey. Did I wake you?"
"No." She sounds really tired, though. "Not going to sleep tonight." Good point. He's not feeling like he's going to get any sleep, either.
"Jimmy wants you to come over."
"I'll be there in half an hour."
There are a lot of things he wants to say to her right now, a lot of feelings, but it's cold, and he should head in soon, and the sooner he's done talking the sooner she's on the road, so he says, "I love you, Abby."
"I love you, too." He can hear that she got what he was trying to say. Then she asks, "Do you have any more details?"
He swallows, forces his voice to stay steady. "Yeah. They think it was trisomy 13, which is apparently a condition where pretty much everything that possibly could go wrong, does. They've got to go back to the hospital in the morning to induce labor."
"Oh God."
"Yeah."
"You're still here," Ed said quietly. He was slumped on the sofa, open beer in his hand, but Tim could see the bottle was still full.
"Where else would I be?"
Ed shrugged. "Thought you left. Where's your Goth?"
"Home. She's ten weeks pregnant and we weren't sure if Breena would want…" Ed nodded understanding that. "Jimmy says it's okay, so she'll be here soon. Spend some time holding Breena, she's really good at hugs. Help me with Molly in the morning. Are you guys going to drive them to the hospital?"
"Yeah."
"You take the guest room; we can camp out on the sofa."
"Okay."
When Abby came in the door, she'd clearly been crying. Clearly been crying pretty much the whole time since he last saw her.
She also had two large bags in one hand.
"What's that?"
"Pads, nursing pads. Her body doesn't know…" Abby didn't finish that sentence and switches to, "She'll give birth, and then her body'll do what it's supposed to do after that. Her milk will let down, and she'll bleed, probably for a couple weeks, maybe as long as a month or six weeks, and I was thinking that they might not want to have to go out and get them."
"Oh." Tim closes his eyes and slumps a little further into the sofa, his heart breaking even more for Breena. It just kept getting worse. A constant reminder every minute of every day for weeks.
"Yeah. I'll head up."
"I think they'd like that."
He jerked when he felt the sofa cushion shift. Abby snuggling in next to him. He hadn't thought he was asleep, but judging from the fact that she had gotten down the steps, across the living room, and onto the sofa without him noticing, he probably had been.
"Sorry. Didn't want to wake you, but I just needed you to hold onto me."
"Yeah. I know." He rubbed his eyes, shifted onto his side, making more room for her, and wrapped around her. "They asleep?"
"Ish. More like they hit the point where they're so exhausted they just dropped."
He nodded, familiar with that feeling. "What time is it?"
"Little after three."
"I told Jimmy I'd make sure they were up and ready in time."
"Shouldn't be a problem, Molly wakes up before they need to leave."
"Good. I googled trisomy 13." Which is part of how he deals with bad things happening. Learn everything he can about them, and once Ed headed upstairs he was just sitting there in their living room, unable to sleep, uninterested in TV, and staring at the wall was useless. So he got on his phone and read everything he could find on it. Then, because the part of his brain that had been doing a pretty good job of keeping him from worrying about this in regards to Kelly had been completely shut down, he researched pretty much any other genetic abnormality he could find, starting with Down's Syndrome and only stopping when the battery died on his phone.
"And?"
"And it's like Down's Syndrome, sort of. Three of the thirteenth chromosome instead of three of the twenty-first. Most of the time it's a random mutation, a one in ten thousand chance. But there is a gene you can carry that passes it on, as well. No way to tell without testing for it. It's bad. Apparently there's a really bad version that's basically always fatal, and then there's a not quite as bad version that's just usually fatal."
"Great."
"Yeah."
"What's it actually do?"
"Brain damage, heart damage, kidney damage, eye damage, palate damage, polydactyl hands and feet, I think there was other stuff, but I'm not coming up with it right now." He lay there, his chin on her shoulder, breathing in her scent, his hand cupped over her belly, like somehow just his hands could be a shield against horrific fate.
She squeezed his hand. There was really nothing to say. "Let's try to rest."
He kissed her shoulder, holding onto her tightly, wishing, like a little boy, that it could be yesterday again.
Shards To A Whole: 142
McGee-centric character study/romance. Want to start at the beginning? Click here.
Chapter 142
"Molly Palmer"At a week shy of eleven months old, Molly Palmer is an adorable little ball of curly brown hair, a big, drooly eight toothed grin, and, with the exception of when she's teething, a possessor of a generally sunny disposition.
They spend enough time with the Palmers that she knows Uncle Tim, and lights right up when she sees him. Sure this isn't the usual routine, but time with one of her favorite people, a guy who dotes on her and is insanely good at blowing raspberries on her tummy, is always a good thing.
Tim has no idea of how much she can read/understand of the vibe of the place around her. And explaining why he was picking her up as he showed his ID and was checked off on the list of approved people to pick Molly up, sent the generally perky mood of her caregivers into a tailspin.
Still, he doesn't want her getting worried or agitated, so he slaps a painfully fake smile on his face, says, "Hey, Molly-girl," and sweeps her up into a hug and tickles.
"You and I are going to hang out tonight. Get some quality time together. Go easy on me, I haven't done this on my own since you were a month old, and we both mostly slept that time. Your Aunt Abby took pictures of it."
He just kept talking at her, letting her coo and babble back at him. She's not walking or talking, yet, but she's certainly interested in being part of the conversation, and she'll readily scoot toward whatever might be going on as fast as her little self can go.
Tim got her in her car seat, and then they headed back to Jimmy and Breena's.
He didn't really know what to do once he got there. It was barely 4:30, so probably not dinnertime for Molly, yet.
Tim went to the kitchen and found a sippy-cup. He poured some juice in it for Molly, and handed it to her. She seemed to approve, slurping it down.
"Probably a good idea." He got himself a glass of water. Then a thought hit. They'd been getting ready to paint the room that was going to be Sammy's.
"Let's go upstairs." Molly didn't have any comments on that, so up they went. One door down from Jimmy and Breena's room was Sammy's and yes, the door was open. Breena had painted some large swatches of the potential main colors along with different trim colors on the wall. The box with the new crib was leaning against the wall, Molly's old bassinette was in the middle of the room, next to the boxes with the baby clothing labeled nb, 0-3, 3-6, and 6-9. "Let's just close this door. They'll open it again when they're ready for it."
Being a cop, let alone a cop who deals mainly with murders and kidnappings means Tim routinely sees people on the worst days of their lives.
But the fact that you do it often, that it's your job, just makes you numb to it when it's a stranger's pain. When your two best friends walk into their home looking like they've been tortured, you can't shut down the way your own heart breaks for them.
Breena's crying. The kind of deep, distressed crying that's gone through sobbing to exhausted and beyond. He's fairly sure the only reason she's on her feet is because Jimmy's holding her up. And the only thing keeping Jimmy up right now is the fact that he can't, won't let Breena fall.
The last time he saw someone that wounded who mattered that much to him was when they were bringing Ziva back from Somalia. Once they were back on the plane, free and safe, he finally relaxed enough to really see how she was. And what she was was broken. Huddled in her seat, curled in on herself. Gibbs sat next to her, his hand on her shoulder, looking like he wanted to hold her, and sure that she couldn't take it.Breena looks like Ziva did that day. Just utterly broken.
He was feeding Molly when they came in, mostly a job of fetching the cheerios she was tossing off her tray. He jumped up and was next to them in maybe three steps and then stopped, not sure if Breena wants to be touched or not.
Jimmy catches the hesitation and nods, and he wraps both of them into his arms. "I'm so sorry."
He holds both of them, crying with them, half aware of the sound of Ducky talking to Molly in the background. Eventually he pulled back a little to ask, "What do you need?"
"Just… keep watching her," Jimmy gets out.
"No problem. We're wrapping up dinner."
Jimmy nods, and they head upstairs to be alone with each other.
He sits next to Ducky at the kitchen table. "Do you know…?"
"No. I didn't press for details, and neither of them wanted to talk on the ride home." Ducky holds onto Molly, snuggling her, keeping her close to him, wrapped in his arms. Then, with a very deep sigh and an even deeper look of weariness on his face, he hands her back to Tim and says, "I have to go back. The autopsy isn't finished."
"Okay."
"Tony and Ziva are going to make sure Breena's car gets here. But they're not going to come in."
That made a certain amount of sense. Right now Jimmy and Breena are too raw for other people.
"Abby, Tony, and Ziva made the calls. They tell me Breena's parents will be coming over."
"I'll handle it."
"Good." Ducky kisses Molly one last time, lips lingering on her forehead in a way that makes Molly look puzzled, squeezes Tim's shoulder, and then puts his coat and hat back on before heading back to work.
As he's wrapping up Molly's leftovers, it occurs to Tim that it's been at least six hours since Jimmy ate last. And while he's sure neither of them wants to eat, Jimmy has to.
He roots around in the fridge, sure nothing he's going to come up with will taste good tonight, but he hopes to find something that'll stay down. At least, he knows he hasn't eaten because he's upset enough he feels like he wants to throw up, so he doesn't imaging Breena or Jimmy are doing any better.
Tim puts together a collection of cold cuts, cheeses, some veggies and fruits. Jimmy and Breena don't have anything he'd call comfort food, but comfort foods in his world are carbs, preferably sweet, baked ones, and Jimmy doesn't/shouldn't eat that.
Tim walks into their room, and finds Jimmy and Breena sitting on their bed, Jimmy holding her, both of them crying quietly.
He put the plate of food next to them, and wraps his arm around Breena. Jimmy pushes the food aside.
"Look, I know you don't want to eat. But you have to." Jimmy takes a half-hearted bite of a cucumber slice.
Tim nods. "Abby's called everyone and started to spread the word." He's rubbing Breena's back, looking her in the face. "She called your parents, and they're on their way. If you want to be alone, I'll keep them downstairs, but they want to see you."
Breena looks at Jimmy, and Tim can see her imagining Jimmy and her dad, and the wave of exhaustion at the idea of dealing with that slumps her shoulders even further. "Just Mom for now."
"Okay. I'll keep Ed busy. Molly's fed, and we'll do bath time soon, and then bed time."
"She nurses before going to sleep," Breena says.
"Okay. You want me to bring her up?"
"Not yet. She…" Breena's voice broke, but Tim thinks he gets the idea. Molly'll start crying if she's being held by someone else who's crying, and Breena can't take any more than is already on her plate.
"Okay, let me get back down to her. She's in the playpen but…" he doesn't need to say that keeping an eye on a ten month old who's getting this crawling thing down is a very good plan.
About half an hour later Ed and Jeannie were standing in the foyer at Jimmy and Breena's, also looking like the walking wounded.
"Where are they?" Jeannie asked.
"Upstairs, in their bedroom."
Jeannie nodded and started up, Ed a step behind her.
"Ed." He put his hand on Ed's wrist, and Ed stopped, turned toward him.
"What?"
"You aren't going up there."
"She's my daughter, and she's just lost her baby."
"I know. But he was Jimmy's baby, too, and if you go up there, you'll say something that hurts him worse than he's already hurting. And Breena can't take you two squabbling. So you don't get to go up there. He'll come down eventually, and you can go up then. So for right now, you and I are on putting Molly to bed duty. I've been telling her that Grandpa is coming over, and he'll read her stories, and as best as she seems to understand, she's looking forward to it, so plaster a smile on your face and grab Goodnight Moon."
Ed closed his eyes, took a deep breath, steadied himself, and slowly opened them. "He… Did they find out…"
Tim shook his head. "I don't know. Breena thought he was a boy, so I'm just in the habit of calling Sammy he."
"Okay."
Tim realized that Ed was hurting, and that in his own efforts to be protective of Jimmy, he's been a jerk to Ed.
"I'm sorry, Ed. I'm being a jerk. But they're both really fragile right now…"
Ed nodded, forced a fairly sad grin onto his face, and headed into the living room, scooping Molly up, hugging her very close for a long time, and then tickling her.
About an hour later, when tubby and stories were done, and Molly had nursed, cuddled with both her parents, and been put to bed, Jimmy came downstairs. He let Ed know he could go see Breena and then just stood there in the middle of his living room.
He looked around, blankly, "Where's Abby?"
"Our place."
His shoulders slumped further. "Oh."
"She wanted to come, but we weren't sure how Breena'd feel…"
That clicked for Jimmy, and he seemed to think that might be a valid point. He's standing in the middle of the living room, looking so wounded, and Tim suddenly gets why Jimmy would want Abby right now.
Tim stood up. "Come on."
"Where are we going?"
"Outside." He grabbed both of their jackets and held Jimmy's open. Jimmy put it on. Tim had the feeling Jimmy would do pretty much anything he was told to right this moment.
"Why?"
"Because it's private." Tim took Jimmy by the hand, and led him to the picnic table at the back of their property. Once they got there, he cleared a patch of snow from the table, took Jimmy's glasses off, carefully set them down, and wrapped his arms around him, half shielding him from the cold air, half trying to be Abby for him. He felt Jimmy standing there stiffly. "I know you'd rather do this with Abby, but she's not here, and you still need it. We're far enough out Ed's not going to walk in and call us fags, you won't wake Molly if you're loud, and I'm not Breena, so you don't have to comfort me. I've got you, Jimmy."
And Jimmy crumpled into him, shaking and sobbing while Tim held him and rubbed his back. Eventually gasping sobs slowed down, and eventually Jimmy pulled back and sat down on the top of the picnic table. Tim sat next to him, keeping his arm around his shoulder, hoping his touch is comforting.
"They think it was trisomy 13, but they won't know until they do the tests. Something like ninety percent of the babies with it die in utero, and almost eighty percent of the ones who are born die within a year of birth, mostly within a month, and at this point, none of them have made it past six years." His voice was raw and hollow. Shell-shocked, that was the term that comes to Tim's mind.
"We've got to go back tomorrow so they can induce labor."
Those words felt like a punch to the gut and made Tim want to vomit at this new, extra layer of flaying pain on top of a bonfire of agony. Labor meant hours of pain, hours of waiting, meant this isn't just over and done with.
"They gave us a choice. We could do a D&E, which is fast, but…" Tim knows enough about this that he's got an idea of how a D&E works, so he's fairly sure what 'but' means. "Or induce, which is slow… but he'll be whole, and we'll get to hold him…" That set off another round of ragged crying, which slowed after a few minutes.
"Sammy was a boy." Tim squeezed Jimmy's shoulders a little tighter. "They didn't want me to see the scans, but I did the whole, I'm-a-doctor thing. Now I wish I hadn't, 'cause I can't unsee them. No eyes, cleft palate, no kidneys, a hole in his heart, less than a third the size brain he should have had. And she had to sit there, alone, seeing him on the ultrasound, because they were doing the 4d-look-here's-your-baby thing before they shut it down, and I wasn't there."
Tim doesn't say anything, because there's nothing to say. Just hearing about it makes his knees feel week and his stomach clench. He doesn't even want to try to imagine living it. He just sits there next to Jimmy, holding onto him.
"You know what's terrible?"
Tim shook his head, all of this is terrible, but obviously there's somewhere Jimmy wants to go with this.
"I'm relieved his heart wasn't beating. Because if it had been, then we would have had to decide to terminate or not."
"I don't think that's terrible. Having to make that choice is the only thing I can think of that would make this worse."
Jimmy stared at the sky. It's overcast, looks and feels like it'll start snowing any minute. He's working up to saying something, and Tim's fairly sure what it is, fairly sure that Jimmy needs to say the words, to make it real.
"My son's dead." Jimmy started sobbing again, and Tim held him, rubbing his back, crying with him, as the snow began to fall.Next
Chapter 142
"Molly Palmer"At a week shy of eleven months old, Molly Palmer is an adorable little ball of curly brown hair, a big, drooly eight toothed grin, and, with the exception of when she's teething, a possessor of a generally sunny disposition.They spend enough time with the Palmers that she knows Uncle Tim, and lights right up when she sees him. Sure this isn't the usual routine, but time with one of her favorite people, a guy who dotes on her and is insanely good at blowing raspberries on her tummy, is always a good thing.
Tim has no idea of how much she can read/understand of the vibe of the place around her. And explaining why he was picking her up as he showed his ID and was checked off on the list of approved people to pick Molly up, sent the generally perky mood of her caregivers into a tailspin.
Still, he doesn't want her getting worried or agitated, so he slaps a painfully fake smile on his face, says, "Hey, Molly-girl," and sweeps her up into a hug and tickles.
"You and I are going to hang out tonight. Get some quality time together. Go easy on me, I haven't done this on my own since you were a month old, and we both mostly slept that time. Your Aunt Abby took pictures of it."
He just kept talking at her, letting her coo and babble back at him. She's not walking or talking, yet, but she's certainly interested in being part of the conversation, and she'll readily scoot toward whatever might be going on as fast as her little self can go.
Tim got her in her car seat, and then they headed back to Jimmy and Breena's.
He didn't really know what to do once he got there. It was barely 4:30, so probably not dinnertime for Molly, yet.
Tim went to the kitchen and found a sippy-cup. He poured some juice in it for Molly, and handed it to her. She seemed to approve, slurping it down.
"Probably a good idea." He got himself a glass of water. Then a thought hit. They'd been getting ready to paint the room that was going to be Sammy's.
"Let's go upstairs." Molly didn't have any comments on that, so up they went. One door down from Jimmy and Breena's room was Sammy's and yes, the door was open. Breena had painted some large swatches of the potential main colors along with different trim colors on the wall. The box with the new crib was leaning against the wall, Molly's old bassinette was in the middle of the room, next to the boxes with the baby clothing labeled nb, 0-3, 3-6, and 6-9. "Let's just close this door. They'll open it again when they're ready for it."
Being a cop, let alone a cop who deals mainly with murders and kidnappings means Tim routinely sees people on the worst days of their lives.
But the fact that you do it often, that it's your job, just makes you numb to it when it's a stranger's pain. When your two best friends walk into their home looking like they've been tortured, you can't shut down the way your own heart breaks for them.
Breena's crying. The kind of deep, distressed crying that's gone through sobbing to exhausted and beyond. He's fairly sure the only reason she's on her feet is because Jimmy's holding her up. And the only thing keeping Jimmy up right now is the fact that he can't, won't let Breena fall.
The last time he saw someone that wounded who mattered that much to him was when they were bringing Ziva back from Somalia. Once they were back on the plane, free and safe, he finally relaxed enough to really see how she was. And what she was was broken. Huddled in her seat, curled in on herself. Gibbs sat next to her, his hand on her shoulder, looking like he wanted to hold her, and sure that she couldn't take it.Breena looks like Ziva did that day. Just utterly broken.
He was feeding Molly when they came in, mostly a job of fetching the cheerios she was tossing off her tray. He jumped up and was next to them in maybe three steps and then stopped, not sure if Breena wants to be touched or not.
Jimmy catches the hesitation and nods, and he wraps both of them into his arms. "I'm so sorry."
He holds both of them, crying with them, half aware of the sound of Ducky talking to Molly in the background. Eventually he pulled back a little to ask, "What do you need?"
"Just… keep watching her," Jimmy gets out.
"No problem. We're wrapping up dinner."
Jimmy nods, and they head upstairs to be alone with each other.
He sits next to Ducky at the kitchen table. "Do you know…?"
"No. I didn't press for details, and neither of them wanted to talk on the ride home." Ducky holds onto Molly, snuggling her, keeping her close to him, wrapped in his arms. Then, with a very deep sigh and an even deeper look of weariness on his face, he hands her back to Tim and says, "I have to go back. The autopsy isn't finished."
"Okay."
"Tony and Ziva are going to make sure Breena's car gets here. But they're not going to come in."
That made a certain amount of sense. Right now Jimmy and Breena are too raw for other people.
"Abby, Tony, and Ziva made the calls. They tell me Breena's parents will be coming over."
"I'll handle it."
"Good." Ducky kisses Molly one last time, lips lingering on her forehead in a way that makes Molly look puzzled, squeezes Tim's shoulder, and then puts his coat and hat back on before heading back to work.
As he's wrapping up Molly's leftovers, it occurs to Tim that it's been at least six hours since Jimmy ate last. And while he's sure neither of them wants to eat, Jimmy has to.
He roots around in the fridge, sure nothing he's going to come up with will taste good tonight, but he hopes to find something that'll stay down. At least, he knows he hasn't eaten because he's upset enough he feels like he wants to throw up, so he doesn't imaging Breena or Jimmy are doing any better.
Tim puts together a collection of cold cuts, cheeses, some veggies and fruits. Jimmy and Breena don't have anything he'd call comfort food, but comfort foods in his world are carbs, preferably sweet, baked ones, and Jimmy doesn't/shouldn't eat that.
Tim walks into their room, and finds Jimmy and Breena sitting on their bed, Jimmy holding her, both of them crying quietly.
He put the plate of food next to them, and wraps his arm around Breena. Jimmy pushes the food aside.
"Look, I know you don't want to eat. But you have to." Jimmy takes a half-hearted bite of a cucumber slice.
Tim nods. "Abby's called everyone and started to spread the word." He's rubbing Breena's back, looking her in the face. "She called your parents, and they're on their way. If you want to be alone, I'll keep them downstairs, but they want to see you."
Breena looks at Jimmy, and Tim can see her imagining Jimmy and her dad, and the wave of exhaustion at the idea of dealing with that slumps her shoulders even further. "Just Mom for now."
"Okay. I'll keep Ed busy. Molly's fed, and we'll do bath time soon, and then bed time."
"She nurses before going to sleep," Breena says.
"Okay. You want me to bring her up?"
"Not yet. She…" Breena's voice broke, but Tim thinks he gets the idea. Molly'll start crying if she's being held by someone else who's crying, and Breena can't take any more than is already on her plate.
"Okay, let me get back down to her. She's in the playpen but…" he doesn't need to say that keeping an eye on a ten month old who's getting this crawling thing down is a very good plan.
About half an hour later Ed and Jeannie were standing in the foyer at Jimmy and Breena's, also looking like the walking wounded.
"Where are they?" Jeannie asked.
"Upstairs, in their bedroom."
Jeannie nodded and started up, Ed a step behind her.
"Ed." He put his hand on Ed's wrist, and Ed stopped, turned toward him.
"What?"
"You aren't going up there."
"She's my daughter, and she's just lost her baby."
"I know. But he was Jimmy's baby, too, and if you go up there, you'll say something that hurts him worse than he's already hurting. And Breena can't take you two squabbling. So you don't get to go up there. He'll come down eventually, and you can go up then. So for right now, you and I are on putting Molly to bed duty. I've been telling her that Grandpa is coming over, and he'll read her stories, and as best as she seems to understand, she's looking forward to it, so plaster a smile on your face and grab Goodnight Moon."
Ed closed his eyes, took a deep breath, steadied himself, and slowly opened them. "He… Did they find out…"
Tim shook his head. "I don't know. Breena thought he was a boy, so I'm just in the habit of calling Sammy he."
"Okay."
Tim realized that Ed was hurting, and that in his own efforts to be protective of Jimmy, he's been a jerk to Ed.
"I'm sorry, Ed. I'm being a jerk. But they're both really fragile right now…"
Ed nodded, forced a fairly sad grin onto his face, and headed into the living room, scooping Molly up, hugging her very close for a long time, and then tickling her.
About an hour later, when tubby and stories were done, and Molly had nursed, cuddled with both her parents, and been put to bed, Jimmy came downstairs. He let Ed know he could go see Breena and then just stood there in the middle of his living room.
He looked around, blankly, "Where's Abby?"
"Our place."
His shoulders slumped further. "Oh."
"She wanted to come, but we weren't sure how Breena'd feel…"
That clicked for Jimmy, and he seemed to think that might be a valid point. He's standing in the middle of the living room, looking so wounded, and Tim suddenly gets why Jimmy would want Abby right now.
Tim stood up. "Come on."
"Where are we going?"
"Outside." He grabbed both of their jackets and held Jimmy's open. Jimmy put it on. Tim had the feeling Jimmy would do pretty much anything he was told to right this moment.
"Why?"
"Because it's private." Tim took Jimmy by the hand, and led him to the picnic table at the back of their property. Once they got there, he cleared a patch of snow from the table, took Jimmy's glasses off, carefully set them down, and wrapped his arms around him, half shielding him from the cold air, half trying to be Abby for him. He felt Jimmy standing there stiffly. "I know you'd rather do this with Abby, but she's not here, and you still need it. We're far enough out Ed's not going to walk in and call us fags, you won't wake Molly if you're loud, and I'm not Breena, so you don't have to comfort me. I've got you, Jimmy."
And Jimmy crumpled into him, shaking and sobbing while Tim held him and rubbed his back. Eventually gasping sobs slowed down, and eventually Jimmy pulled back and sat down on the top of the picnic table. Tim sat next to him, keeping his arm around his shoulder, hoping his touch is comforting.
"They think it was trisomy 13, but they won't know until they do the tests. Something like ninety percent of the babies with it die in utero, and almost eighty percent of the ones who are born die within a year of birth, mostly within a month, and at this point, none of them have made it past six years." His voice was raw and hollow. Shell-shocked, that was the term that comes to Tim's mind.
"We've got to go back tomorrow so they can induce labor."
Those words felt like a punch to the gut and made Tim want to vomit at this new, extra layer of flaying pain on top of a bonfire of agony. Labor meant hours of pain, hours of waiting, meant this isn't just over and done with.
"They gave us a choice. We could do a D&E, which is fast, but…" Tim knows enough about this that he's got an idea of how a D&E works, so he's fairly sure what 'but' means. "Or induce, which is slow… but he'll be whole, and we'll get to hold him…" That set off another round of ragged crying, which slowed after a few minutes.
"Sammy was a boy." Tim squeezed Jimmy's shoulders a little tighter. "They didn't want me to see the scans, but I did the whole, I'm-a-doctor thing. Now I wish I hadn't, 'cause I can't unsee them. No eyes, cleft palate, no kidneys, a hole in his heart, less than a third the size brain he should have had. And she had to sit there, alone, seeing him on the ultrasound, because they were doing the 4d-look-here's-your-baby thing before they shut it down, and I wasn't there."
Tim doesn't say anything, because there's nothing to say. Just hearing about it makes his knees feel week and his stomach clench. He doesn't even want to try to imagine living it. He just sits there next to Jimmy, holding onto him.
"You know what's terrible?"
Tim shook his head, all of this is terrible, but obviously there's somewhere Jimmy wants to go with this.
"I'm relieved his heart wasn't beating. Because if it had been, then we would have had to decide to terminate or not."
"I don't think that's terrible. Having to make that choice is the only thing I can think of that would make this worse."
Jimmy stared at the sky. It's overcast, looks and feels like it'll start snowing any minute. He's working up to saying something, and Tim's fairly sure what it is, fairly sure that Jimmy needs to say the words, to make it real.
"My son's dead." Jimmy started sobbing again, and Tim held him, rubbing his back, crying with him, as the snow began to fall.Next
Shards To A Whole: 141
McGee-centric character study/romance. Want to start at the beginning? Click here.
Chapter 141
A/N: I don't normally do this, but there's some really rough stuff in the next four chapters. If you want light and fluffy, well, not any of that anytime soon.
"It's Breena!" They'd all been waiting for this call. Up until two hours ago, when they caught this case, Jimmy had been planning on going with her for the 21st week ultrasound, but Simpson Wallen was found dead, and Jimmy's on, so instead of finding out with Breena if Sammy is a girl or a boy, he's here, helping Ducky bag up a dead Marine.
They watched his face fall as he absorbed what was being said to him. And that sent a thrill of fear through all of them. Jimmy should be grinning. He should have a huge, beaming grin, the sort that lights up his eyes and makes everyone near him happy.
But he didn't. His voice was shaking as he says, "Yeah… uh huh… Is Breena all right? … Yes… As soon as I can get there." Palmer was white as a sheet as he hung up his phone. "Dr. Mallard, I have to leave."
"What's wrong, Jimmy?" Ducky's fear clear in his voice.
"There's… Sammy… I have to go."
Ducky gave Jimmy a hug, and then nodded at him.
Tim caught Gibbs' eye, and Gibb's nodded. He handed the camera over, and followed two steps behind Jimmy.
"Let me drive. Last thing Breena needs is you getting in an accident on the way. Where is she?"
"Mercy General."
"Okay." He punched it into the GPS on his cell, tossed the car into reverse, pulling away from the crime scene, fast. "We'll be there in an hour. Molly at daycare?"
"Yeah."
"I'll drop you off, call them, and watch her. Don't worry about getting home at any given time."
"Good."
Tim took Jimmy's hand in his and gave it a squeeze. Jimmy held onto him, hard.
"Did they tell you…"
Jimmy nodded, tears streaming down his face. "There was no heartbeat."
They don't say anything on the ride over. Jimmy cries quietly, and Tim holds his hand. It's a very long hour and the only thing allowing Tim to hold it together is that he's got to pay attention to the road and get Jimmy where he needs to be.
"Give me your cell and keys," he says once he stops the car in front of the hospital.
Jimmy just looks at him blankly as he unbuckled.
"You shouldn't have to tell everyone. We'll make the calls for you. And I need your keys to unlock your car and grab Molly's car seat."
Jimmy handed over the items and headed in to the hospital, too out of it to close the door behind him.
The Navy Yard was only a few minutes out of the way between Mercy and Molly's daycare, so Tim headed there first. He'd sent their team a text:Abby's ten minutes. Then he sent one more to Gibbs. Go see Abby, now. And then called her to give her the heads up first.
"Hey. What's up? Did you guys find out, yet? I haven't heard anything."
He hasn't tried to say anything since Jimmy left, and he's not sure how well his voice will hold.
Finally he gets a hold of himself and says, "Is Gibbs down there?"
"Just walked in. What's going on? You're scaring me. He's looking like grim death and just wrapped me in a hug."
"I just dropped Jimmy at the hospital. They did the ultrasound, and Sammy's heart wasn't beating." For a long second he heard nothing, and then the sobbing started.
A second after that Gibbs said, "I've got her."
"I just pulled into the parking lot. I'll be there in five minutes."
When he got into the lab, everyone else, including Vance, was there. Abby was crying, and Gibbs was holding onto her.
He walked over to them, and just held Abby, wanting to get down on his knees and thank God or anything else that they're crying for Jimmy and Breena and not themselves. He feels bad about that, but it's still the first thing that hits him as he sees Abby. Gibbs patted him on the back, so he swallowed, took a deep breath, and pulled back a little, but kept holding onto Abby.
Tim's never wanted to say anything less than he wants to say this, but the words have to be said, "They did the ultrasound, and the Sammy's heart wasn't beating." They were all expecting something like this. Coming down and finding Gibbs holding a sobbing Abby had to be confirmation that nothing he was going to say was good, but the words still hit like a blow.
Tony winced. Ziva physically flinched away from it. Ducky hunched in on himself, Tim could see him physically forcing himself not to cry. Gibbs was behind him, so he didn't see his face, but he can feel the hand on his back rubbing gently. And Vance just nodded slowly, swallowing hard.
He turned to Vance. "Jimmy's not going to be in for a few days, at least." He looked around at the rest of them. "I'm not, either. I told him I'd get Molly and watch her."
Abby broke away from them, heading toward her coat. "I'll come with you."
Ducky stopped her, gently. "Abigail." His voice cracked on her name, so he took another deep breath, and steadied himself before saying, "I know you want to help, but right now… Right now you might be the last person Breena wants to see."
"Oh." That sunk in, and… yeah… They don't know if that's true or not. He wants Abby to go with him, wants to keep her in his sight as much as he possibly can, but he'd also rather chew off his own arm than do anything that might make this any worse at all for Jimmy or Breena when they get home.
Tim took Jimmy's cell out of his pocket and handed it to her. "I told him we'd make the calls for them. That they shouldn't have to spread the word themselves."
Abby nodded, took a deep breath, and forced her voice to grow calm. "I can do that."
"Okay. I've got to get Molly." He wrapped around Abby again, head on her shoulder, her head on his. He held her for another minute before pulling back and saying, "If one of you were to meet them at the hospital and drive them home, that'd probably be a good thing."
"I'll be waiting for them," Ducky said.
As he was leaving, he heard Tony say to Abby, "Let's split the list, no one should have to say this too many times."
Next
Chapter 141
A/N: I don't normally do this, but there's some really rough stuff in the next four chapters. If you want light and fluffy, well, not any of that anytime soon.
"It's Breena!" They'd all been waiting for this call. Up until two hours ago, when they caught this case, Jimmy had been planning on going with her for the 21st week ultrasound, but Simpson Wallen was found dead, and Jimmy's on, so instead of finding out with Breena if Sammy is a girl or a boy, he's here, helping Ducky bag up a dead Marine.
They watched his face fall as he absorbed what was being said to him. And that sent a thrill of fear through all of them. Jimmy should be grinning. He should have a huge, beaming grin, the sort that lights up his eyes and makes everyone near him happy.
But he didn't. His voice was shaking as he says, "Yeah… uh huh… Is Breena all right? … Yes… As soon as I can get there." Palmer was white as a sheet as he hung up his phone. "Dr. Mallard, I have to leave."
"What's wrong, Jimmy?" Ducky's fear clear in his voice.
"There's… Sammy… I have to go."
Ducky gave Jimmy a hug, and then nodded at him.
Tim caught Gibbs' eye, and Gibb's nodded. He handed the camera over, and followed two steps behind Jimmy.
"Let me drive. Last thing Breena needs is you getting in an accident on the way. Where is she?"
"Mercy General."
"Okay." He punched it into the GPS on his cell, tossed the car into reverse, pulling away from the crime scene, fast. "We'll be there in an hour. Molly at daycare?"
"Yeah."
"I'll drop you off, call them, and watch her. Don't worry about getting home at any given time."
"Good."
Tim took Jimmy's hand in his and gave it a squeeze. Jimmy held onto him, hard.
"Did they tell you…"
Jimmy nodded, tears streaming down his face. "There was no heartbeat."
They don't say anything on the ride over. Jimmy cries quietly, and Tim holds his hand. It's a very long hour and the only thing allowing Tim to hold it together is that he's got to pay attention to the road and get Jimmy where he needs to be.
"Give me your cell and keys," he says once he stops the car in front of the hospital.
Jimmy just looks at him blankly as he unbuckled.
"You shouldn't have to tell everyone. We'll make the calls for you. And I need your keys to unlock your car and grab Molly's car seat."
Jimmy handed over the items and headed in to the hospital, too out of it to close the door behind him.
The Navy Yard was only a few minutes out of the way between Mercy and Molly's daycare, so Tim headed there first. He'd sent their team a text:Abby's ten minutes. Then he sent one more to Gibbs. Go see Abby, now. And then called her to give her the heads up first.
"Hey. What's up? Did you guys find out, yet? I haven't heard anything."
He hasn't tried to say anything since Jimmy left, and he's not sure how well his voice will hold.
Finally he gets a hold of himself and says, "Is Gibbs down there?"
"Just walked in. What's going on? You're scaring me. He's looking like grim death and just wrapped me in a hug."
"I just dropped Jimmy at the hospital. They did the ultrasound, and Sammy's heart wasn't beating." For a long second he heard nothing, and then the sobbing started.
A second after that Gibbs said, "I've got her."
"I just pulled into the parking lot. I'll be there in five minutes."
When he got into the lab, everyone else, including Vance, was there. Abby was crying, and Gibbs was holding onto her.
He walked over to them, and just held Abby, wanting to get down on his knees and thank God or anything else that they're crying for Jimmy and Breena and not themselves. He feels bad about that, but it's still the first thing that hits him as he sees Abby. Gibbs patted him on the back, so he swallowed, took a deep breath, and pulled back a little, but kept holding onto Abby.
Tim's never wanted to say anything less than he wants to say this, but the words have to be said, "They did the ultrasound, and the Sammy's heart wasn't beating." They were all expecting something like this. Coming down and finding Gibbs holding a sobbing Abby had to be confirmation that nothing he was going to say was good, but the words still hit like a blow.
Tony winced. Ziva physically flinched away from it. Ducky hunched in on himself, Tim could see him physically forcing himself not to cry. Gibbs was behind him, so he didn't see his face, but he can feel the hand on his back rubbing gently. And Vance just nodded slowly, swallowing hard.
He turned to Vance. "Jimmy's not going to be in for a few days, at least." He looked around at the rest of them. "I'm not, either. I told him I'd get Molly and watch her."
Abby broke away from them, heading toward her coat. "I'll come with you."
Ducky stopped her, gently. "Abigail." His voice cracked on her name, so he took another deep breath, and steadied himself before saying, "I know you want to help, but right now… Right now you might be the last person Breena wants to see."
"Oh." That sunk in, and… yeah… They don't know if that's true or not. He wants Abby to go with him, wants to keep her in his sight as much as he possibly can, but he'd also rather chew off his own arm than do anything that might make this any worse at all for Jimmy or Breena when they get home.
Tim took Jimmy's cell out of his pocket and handed it to her. "I told him we'd make the calls for them. That they shouldn't have to spread the word themselves."
Abby nodded, took a deep breath, and forced her voice to grow calm. "I can do that."
"Okay. I've got to get Molly." He wrapped around Abby again, head on her shoulder, her head on his. He held her for another minute before pulling back and saying, "If one of you were to meet them at the hospital and drive them home, that'd probably be a good thing."
"I'll be waiting for them," Ducky said.
As he was leaving, he heard Tony say to Abby, "Let's split the list, no one should have to say this too many times."
Next
July 15, 2013
Shards To A Whole: 140: Ziva's Problem
McGee-centric character study/romance. Want to start at the beginning? Click here.
Ziva David had a problem.
Not a huge one or anything, but still, it was something that had to be resolved, and soon.
In only slightly more than four months, on April 5th, 2015, she was getting married.
And she still didn't have a matron of honor.
Tony had picked Tim as his best man, well, before they got engaged. She's not even sure Tony formally asked Tim, or if it was just understood that that was how it was going to go. But she hasn't picked between Abby and Breena. They've never pressured her to decide, never even asked, but it's still there, in the back of Ziva's mind, at least.
Abby and Breena have both been helping with the wedding. They both swung into planning mode at a moment's notice. No matter what she wants an opinion on, they're willing to help with. They were both there when she picked out her gown. (Picking out their dresses has been put on hold until much closer to time, what with both of them being pregnant.) They've been helpful every step of the way.
She loves both of them dearly.
She's extremely grateful to have both of them in her life.
But they aren't Tali.
That had been the first dream. The little girl's fantasy wedding. That one day she'd hand her bouquet to her sister, who would stand tall and proud next to her at her wedding.
But that dream was beyond dead. Tali will not be there to stand up next to her. Her father cannot give her away. Her mother will not walk beside him to do it. Ari won't give her husband-to-be a stern talking to, let alone help lift her aloft during the dancing. Her chuppah won't be in an olive grove. Her wedding feast won't be outside, air scented with olive blossoms and lemons. Her wedding won't be in Hebrew.
Literally nothing of that dream, save for the white dress and the gold wedding band, had survived.
And they aren't Jen. Granted the version of Ziva that met Jenny Shepard on a mission in Europe wasn't thinking wedding bells, let alone much of anything beyond getting the job done. But Jenny had made a way into Ziva's heart.
Jenny was fierce, driven, sharp and dangerous, and broken but functional. Jenny got Ziva, got her in a way that no other woman ever had.
And it was really nice to have a female friend.
So, no, she hadn't thought of Jen as the woman who would stand beside her at her wedding, because she wasn't thinking she'd ever get married then. Didn't much think about the idea that she'd ever live past thirty then. But when she conjured an image of a woman who had her back, who would go to the wall to keep her safe, that woman had red hair, a slight build, and an easy, warm smile.
And since Jen's been dead, there's been yet another hole in her world.
She knows Abby felt that, too. That for her there was a Kate-shaped hole at their wedding. And it isn't any disrespect to Jimmy, it doesn't mean she didn't love him, but he wasn't her first choice.
He was the choice that was left.
And of the choices she has left… She's known Abby longer, but is probably slightly more fond of Breena. But Breena will be eight months pregnant at their wedding, and if Sammy decides to show up early…
Ziva picked up her phone. "Hello, Abby…"Next
Ziva David had a problem.
Not a huge one or anything, but still, it was something that had to be resolved, and soon.
In only slightly more than four months, on April 5th, 2015, she was getting married.
And she still didn't have a matron of honor.
Tony had picked Tim as his best man, well, before they got engaged. She's not even sure Tony formally asked Tim, or if it was just understood that that was how it was going to go. But she hasn't picked between Abby and Breena. They've never pressured her to decide, never even asked, but it's still there, in the back of Ziva's mind, at least.
Abby and Breena have both been helping with the wedding. They both swung into planning mode at a moment's notice. No matter what she wants an opinion on, they're willing to help with. They were both there when she picked out her gown. (Picking out their dresses has been put on hold until much closer to time, what with both of them being pregnant.) They've been helpful every step of the way.
She loves both of them dearly.
She's extremely grateful to have both of them in her life.
But they aren't Tali.That had been the first dream. The little girl's fantasy wedding. That one day she'd hand her bouquet to her sister, who would stand tall and proud next to her at her wedding.
But that dream was beyond dead. Tali will not be there to stand up next to her. Her father cannot give her away. Her mother will not walk beside him to do it. Ari won't give her husband-to-be a stern talking to, let alone help lift her aloft during the dancing. Her chuppah won't be in an olive grove. Her wedding feast won't be outside, air scented with olive blossoms and lemons. Her wedding won't be in Hebrew.
Literally nothing of that dream, save for the white dress and the gold wedding band, had survived.
And they aren't Jen. Granted the version of Ziva that met Jenny Shepard on a mission in Europe wasn't thinking wedding bells, let alone much of anything beyond getting the job done. But Jenny had made a way into Ziva's heart.
Jenny was fierce, driven, sharp and dangerous, and broken but functional. Jenny got Ziva, got her in a way that no other woman ever had.
And it was really nice to have a female friend.
So, no, she hadn't thought of Jen as the woman who would stand beside her at her wedding, because she wasn't thinking she'd ever get married then. Didn't much think about the idea that she'd ever live past thirty then. But when she conjured an image of a woman who had her back, who would go to the wall to keep her safe, that woman had red hair, a slight build, and an easy, warm smile.
And since Jen's been dead, there's been yet another hole in her world.
She knows Abby felt that, too. That for her there was a Kate-shaped hole at their wedding. And it isn't any disrespect to Jimmy, it doesn't mean she didn't love him, but he wasn't her first choice.
He was the choice that was left.
And of the choices she has left… She's known Abby longer, but is probably slightly more fond of Breena. But Breena will be eight months pregnant at their wedding, and if Sammy decides to show up early…
Ziva picked up her phone. "Hello, Abby…"Next
Shards To A Whole: Chapter 139: December 31, 2014
McGee-centric character study/romance. Want to start at the beginning? Click here.
At 11:59:59, as 2014 was shifting into 2015:
The bullpen was silent. For once. It’s rarely silent. Technically there’s someone at NCIS every single hour of every single day of the year (emergency weather cancelations excepted.)
And then it wasn’t. Ralph Simmons has been the night janitor at NCIS for twenty years, and of all the teams at NCIS the four that fill the bullpen are the ones he knows best. Not only have they been there the longest (as a single team unit) they also work later than most of the rest of the NCIS employees. He knows them best because they’re the ones he sees most often.
As he emptied Gibb’s trash he noticed a few new pictures on the back of his wall. (Holidays almost always mean new pictures, and he always enjoys seeing them.) There are the now familiar ones from McGee and Abby’s wedding. (He can’t believe they all got dressed up like that.) And two new ones. One’s a blurry black and white shrimp-looking thing (but Ralph isn’t having a hard time figuring it out, scuttlebutt’s had it for months that Abby’s pregnant and a few days ago the official email went out.) the other is an older man who looks a lot like Gibbs, similar build, same blue eyes, but probably twenty-five or thirty years older, sitting on what looks like a comfortable arm chair with Palmer’s daughter in his lap.
He heads to Ziva’s desk. In the trash there are four wedding invitation mock ups. Ones that didn’t pass muster apparently. He looks at them and shakes his head. Yeah, not right for them. Sure they both have that classic elegant thing going, but that doesn’t mean anything with lacy little curly cues is a good plan.
She’s also added a new shot to her computer, Tony lighting the first candle on the Menorah, just below the one of the two of them dancing at McGee’s wedding.DiNozzo’s desk looks just about the same as it always does. Though he does notice there’s a men’s formal wear catalog open. Apparently someone is looking for suits for his wedding. He looks at it closer and sees McGee/Palmer? written next to one of the suit styles.
McGee’s back wall also has the same black and white shrimp up. Just below the skull photo. (Ralph wonders why he’s got that. It’s been there for years, but it’s never made any sense to him. Granted McGee’s married to Abby, so maybe he just likes skulls.) And next to his wedding picture. (McGee kissing Abby after the vows.)
He empties out McGee’s trash and heads to the next cubicle.
At 11:59:59 Leon Vance was counting down with his children. He and Jackie had decided they were old enough to stay up for New Year’s five years ago.
It still hurt, not having her next to him while they did this, not kissing her a second from now, but it was getting easier to remember how happy this made them, and how much fun it was.
He hugs his kids and hopes this new year will be better, easier than the last.
At 11:59:59 Jimmy and Breena Palmer were asleep. At six weeks shy of her first birthday Molly Palmer (who is also, thankfully, asleep) does not grasp the concept of sleeping in. She’ll be up at five thirty no matter what, so they went to bed at their normal time. In the morning, they’ll joke about how once upon a time they greeted the New Year’s Dawn by staying up all night, not by waking up early, and how, on that once upon a time, they were naked and sipping champagne, not swathed in flannel and feeding Cheerios and bananas to an almost one year old.
And Jimmy will kiss his wife, remind her that Molly’s morning nap is only three hours away, and he’s certainly in favor of both of them getting naked then.
She’ll kiss him back, jerk a little from a round of especially energetic kicking from Sammy, and both of them will be thinking that life is pretty sweet, even if there is a certain lack of late-night-naked-champagne-sipping time.
At 11:59:59 Tim was saying, well gasping really, “Oh, God, Abby, just! Fuck! ABBY!”
At 12:04, she was cuddled into him, saying, “I told you I’d show you fireworks.”
He was breathing deep and slow, lazy, satisfied smile on his face. “You did.”
“And look, no driving, no cold, no trying to find parking.”
“I will never suggest we go out into the cold to see New Year’s fireworks again.”
At 11:59:59 Gibbs was sketching out plans for the inside of the Shannon. The hull was built, and though he’d had a general idea of what he was going to do with it when he started it, he has some new ideas now. Like, if, for example, he’s hoping to take grandkids sailing at some point, maybe having a few extra berths squeezed into it would be a good plan.
LinkAt 11:59:59 Tony and Ziva were yelling “One!” as showers of glittery confetti, streamers, and balloons cascaded down around them. And before the first of the balloons hit the floor, Tony had his arms wrapped around her, and lips on hers, warm, soft, and playful.
He pulled back a few seconds later. “You know what I was thinking?”
She rubbed up against him. “Going home soon sounds like a good plan?”
He gave her another kiss, a very long, very hot look, and then flicked his tongue against her bottom lip. “Yes. I was thinking something else, too.”
“What.”
“This is the last New Year’s I’ll spend with a girlfriend. This time next year, I’ll ring in the New Year with my wife.”
A wide, pleased smile spread across her face.
At 11:59:59 Dr. Donald Mallard was having a late supper with Penny Langston PhD.
Link
They were having a somewhat serious conversation about his and possibly their future.
There are certain things that Ducky is quiet aware of, one of them being that he will be eighty in the spring, has already had one heart attack, and that when push comes to shove, Jimmy is doing more and more of the work around Autopsy.
He’s been debating having a conversation with Leon about this, and is bouncing the idea off Penny first. He’s not ready to retire, not yet. But he can see the point where he won’t be up to lugging bodies around, and where his vision won’t be good enough to catch the details the way he used to. And it’s not nearly as far off as he wishes it was.
When that day comes, he’d like to partially retire. He’d stay on as a forensic psychologist. Continue to help the team by profiling, adding what he can, but hand over running Autopsy to Jimmy. He’ll need a new space (“That cubicle next to Tim’s?” Penny asked. He nodded; that would work.) so Jimmy wouldn’t feel like he was hovering, and so he wouldn’t feel like Autopsy was still his.
She nodded at him, thinking that sounded like a solid plan, and asked him, “And if you were partially retired, what would you do with all of your new free time?”
He smiled at her. “I would like to spend it with the people who are precious to me. I know it’s certainly late in the game to be thinking about this, but I’d like to work on being a better family man. I have a feeling that in the not wildly distant future there will be a rather large crop of young people who have never heard any of my stories, and I’d like to share them. And that their parents wouldn’t mind me taking said young people out for walks in the park or the like to tell them those stories.”
In fact, he’s been enjoying spending time with Molly Palmer more than he thought he possibly could. He’d never felt any special desire to engage with infants before, but if he doesn’t get to see her regularly, he gets grumpy. One of his favorite Sunday afternoon (when they aren’t working) pastimes is taking her out for walks. From what he can tell, she seems to approve, as well. And while she doesn’t have all that much more to add to the conversation than the bodies in Autopsy do, she is a much more enthusiastic listener. And he has a very deep suspicion that he will also deeply enjoy spending time with Sammy and McSciuto. (To the point where he’s been googling three seat strollers so he can take all three out at once.)
“And I was thinking, that if I weren’t working all the time,” he took her hand in his, “that I’d be able to make dates with you on a significantly more regular basis, and actually attend them, and I was wondering if you’d welcome that.”
Penny smiled at him, squeezing his hand in hers.
“And if that worked out well?” she asked with an amused glint in her eye, enjoying the formality of how he’s addressing this. Yes, Penny is an old-school second-wave feminist, she burned her bra with the best of them and fought her way through a man’s world that didn’t know what to do with a brilliant scientist who happened to be female, but she also appreciates Ducky’s old-world gentility, knowing that it’s based in a deep respect for who she is and who she hopes to be.
“I’ve been enjoying having you here this last week, quite a bit, and maybe, if things continued to go well, eventually, you’d see fit to share a home with me?”
“Are you asking to court me, Dr. Mallard?” she asked with a playful tone. This is serious, but it’s also fun, and she intends to enjoy it.
He smiled at her. “In a manner of speaking. I’d imagine that at this point in our lives, a marriage would only complicate things for both of us. But a dear companion to share the winter of one’s life with is something I think I would like very much.”
A very warm smile spread over Penny’s face. “I think I would, too.”
At 11:59:59 Tobias Fornell was on the back porch of Wendy Eccles’ apartment, which had a great view of the fireworks exploding over the Potomac, on his knees, holding an open ring box in front of him, as Wendy grinned at him, saying, “Yes!”
Next
At 11:59:59, as 2014 was shifting into 2015:
The bullpen was silent. For once. It’s rarely silent. Technically there’s someone at NCIS every single hour of every single day of the year (emergency weather cancelations excepted.)
And then it wasn’t. Ralph Simmons has been the night janitor at NCIS for twenty years, and of all the teams at NCIS the four that fill the bullpen are the ones he knows best. Not only have they been there the longest (as a single team unit) they also work later than most of the rest of the NCIS employees. He knows them best because they’re the ones he sees most often.
As he emptied Gibb’s trash he noticed a few new pictures on the back of his wall. (Holidays almost always mean new pictures, and he always enjoys seeing them.) There are the now familiar ones from McGee and Abby’s wedding. (He can’t believe they all got dressed up like that.) And two new ones. One’s a blurry black and white shrimp-looking thing (but Ralph isn’t having a hard time figuring it out, scuttlebutt’s had it for months that Abby’s pregnant and a few days ago the official email went out.) the other is an older man who looks a lot like Gibbs, similar build, same blue eyes, but probably twenty-five or thirty years older, sitting on what looks like a comfortable arm chair with Palmer’s daughter in his lap.
He heads to Ziva’s desk. In the trash there are four wedding invitation mock ups. Ones that didn’t pass muster apparently. He looks at them and shakes his head. Yeah, not right for them. Sure they both have that classic elegant thing going, but that doesn’t mean anything with lacy little curly cues is a good plan.
She’s also added a new shot to her computer, Tony lighting the first candle on the Menorah, just below the one of the two of them dancing at McGee’s wedding.DiNozzo’s desk looks just about the same as it always does. Though he does notice there’s a men’s formal wear catalog open. Apparently someone is looking for suits for his wedding. He looks at it closer and sees McGee/Palmer? written next to one of the suit styles.
McGee’s back wall also has the same black and white shrimp up. Just below the skull photo. (Ralph wonders why he’s got that. It’s been there for years, but it’s never made any sense to him. Granted McGee’s married to Abby, so maybe he just likes skulls.) And next to his wedding picture. (McGee kissing Abby after the vows.)
He empties out McGee’s trash and heads to the next cubicle.
At 11:59:59 Leon Vance was counting down with his children. He and Jackie had decided they were old enough to stay up for New Year’s five years ago.
It still hurt, not having her next to him while they did this, not kissing her a second from now, but it was getting easier to remember how happy this made them, and how much fun it was.
He hugs his kids and hopes this new year will be better, easier than the last.
At 11:59:59 Jimmy and Breena Palmer were asleep. At six weeks shy of her first birthday Molly Palmer (who is also, thankfully, asleep) does not grasp the concept of sleeping in. She’ll be up at five thirty no matter what, so they went to bed at their normal time. In the morning, they’ll joke about how once upon a time they greeted the New Year’s Dawn by staying up all night, not by waking up early, and how, on that once upon a time, they were naked and sipping champagne, not swathed in flannel and feeding Cheerios and bananas to an almost one year old.
And Jimmy will kiss his wife, remind her that Molly’s morning nap is only three hours away, and he’s certainly in favor of both of them getting naked then.
She’ll kiss him back, jerk a little from a round of especially energetic kicking from Sammy, and both of them will be thinking that life is pretty sweet, even if there is a certain lack of late-night-naked-champagne-sipping time.
At 11:59:59 Tim was saying, well gasping really, “Oh, God, Abby, just! Fuck! ABBY!”
At 12:04, she was cuddled into him, saying, “I told you I’d show you fireworks.”
He was breathing deep and slow, lazy, satisfied smile on his face. “You did.”
“And look, no driving, no cold, no trying to find parking.”
“I will never suggest we go out into the cold to see New Year’s fireworks again.”
At 11:59:59 Gibbs was sketching out plans for the inside of the Shannon. The hull was built, and though he’d had a general idea of what he was going to do with it when he started it, he has some new ideas now. Like, if, for example, he’s hoping to take grandkids sailing at some point, maybe having a few extra berths squeezed into it would be a good plan.
LinkAt 11:59:59 Tony and Ziva were yelling “One!” as showers of glittery confetti, streamers, and balloons cascaded down around them. And before the first of the balloons hit the floor, Tony had his arms wrapped around her, and lips on hers, warm, soft, and playful.He pulled back a few seconds later. “You know what I was thinking?”
She rubbed up against him. “Going home soon sounds like a good plan?”
He gave her another kiss, a very long, very hot look, and then flicked his tongue against her bottom lip. “Yes. I was thinking something else, too.”
“What.”
“This is the last New Year’s I’ll spend with a girlfriend. This time next year, I’ll ring in the New Year with my wife.”
A wide, pleased smile spread across her face.
At 11:59:59 Dr. Donald Mallard was having a late supper with Penny Langston PhD.
LinkThey were having a somewhat serious conversation about his and possibly their future.
There are certain things that Ducky is quiet aware of, one of them being that he will be eighty in the spring, has already had one heart attack, and that when push comes to shove, Jimmy is doing more and more of the work around Autopsy.
He’s been debating having a conversation with Leon about this, and is bouncing the idea off Penny first. He’s not ready to retire, not yet. But he can see the point where he won’t be up to lugging bodies around, and where his vision won’t be good enough to catch the details the way he used to. And it’s not nearly as far off as he wishes it was.
When that day comes, he’d like to partially retire. He’d stay on as a forensic psychologist. Continue to help the team by profiling, adding what he can, but hand over running Autopsy to Jimmy. He’ll need a new space (“That cubicle next to Tim’s?” Penny asked. He nodded; that would work.) so Jimmy wouldn’t feel like he was hovering, and so he wouldn’t feel like Autopsy was still his.
She nodded at him, thinking that sounded like a solid plan, and asked him, “And if you were partially retired, what would you do with all of your new free time?”
He smiled at her. “I would like to spend it with the people who are precious to me. I know it’s certainly late in the game to be thinking about this, but I’d like to work on being a better family man. I have a feeling that in the not wildly distant future there will be a rather large crop of young people who have never heard any of my stories, and I’d like to share them. And that their parents wouldn’t mind me taking said young people out for walks in the park or the like to tell them those stories.”
In fact, he’s been enjoying spending time with Molly Palmer more than he thought he possibly could. He’d never felt any special desire to engage with infants before, but if he doesn’t get to see her regularly, he gets grumpy. One of his favorite Sunday afternoon (when they aren’t working) pastimes is taking her out for walks. From what he can tell, she seems to approve, as well. And while she doesn’t have all that much more to add to the conversation than the bodies in Autopsy do, she is a much more enthusiastic listener. And he has a very deep suspicion that he will also deeply enjoy spending time with Sammy and McSciuto. (To the point where he’s been googling three seat strollers so he can take all three out at once.)
“And I was thinking, that if I weren’t working all the time,” he took her hand in his, “that I’d be able to make dates with you on a significantly more regular basis, and actually attend them, and I was wondering if you’d welcome that.”
Penny smiled at him, squeezing his hand in hers.
“And if that worked out well?” she asked with an amused glint in her eye, enjoying the formality of how he’s addressing this. Yes, Penny is an old-school second-wave feminist, she burned her bra with the best of them and fought her way through a man’s world that didn’t know what to do with a brilliant scientist who happened to be female, but she also appreciates Ducky’s old-world gentility, knowing that it’s based in a deep respect for who she is and who she hopes to be.
“I’ve been enjoying having you here this last week, quite a bit, and maybe, if things continued to go well, eventually, you’d see fit to share a home with me?”
“Are you asking to court me, Dr. Mallard?” she asked with a playful tone. This is serious, but it’s also fun, and she intends to enjoy it.
He smiled at her. “In a manner of speaking. I’d imagine that at this point in our lives, a marriage would only complicate things for both of us. But a dear companion to share the winter of one’s life with is something I think I would like very much.”
A very warm smile spread over Penny’s face. “I think I would, too.”
At 11:59:59 Tobias Fornell was on the back porch of Wendy Eccles’ apartment, which had a great view of the fireworks exploding over the Potomac, on his knees, holding an open ring box in front of him, as Wendy grinned at him, saying, “Yes!”
Next
Shards To A Whole: 138 Going Home
McGee-centric character study/romance. Want to start at the beginning? Click here.
Chatper 138: Going Home
"Hey, you ready to head home?" Tim asked as he headed into Abby's lab.
"Yeah. Just got to shut everything down."
"Okay. Want me to help?"
"Sure."
He headed over to her desk computer and began the shut-down routine. "What are you thinking of for dinner?"
"I really want pizza. Like two hours ago a pizza switch turned on in my head and now I just want it!"
"We'll get pizza. Eat out or order some, head home, and eat in our jammies in front of the television?"
"Jammies sounds good." Yeah, she can still wear her usual skirts and pants, but those days are numbered, and those numbers have hit single digits, low single digits, just waiting for the boxes to show up at their door, single digits.
First thing that happens when she gets home now is stripping off, and hopping into something with an elastic waistband, and it's even better if it's Tim's.
He got his phone out. "Usual?"
"Yeah."
He punched their usual order in, checked the clock, and told them to deliver it in an hour. "Okay, only an hour more to wait for pizza."
"Good. I've got all my stuff done."
He turned off her monitor. "Got this one." Then he took her coat off of the hook it lived on, and held it open for her.
Five minutes later they were in her car. He was driving. She was messing with the iPad, looking for a good song. Once she found one she said, "So Jimmy ran into us during our lunch date."
"Yeah, he told me that. And smacked me upside the head for being an idiot."
"Uh huh. And did you tell him to crash my lunch date?"
"Nope."
He's looking pretty innocent, because he honestly didn't ask. But there might be some smirk in his face anyway, because she follows up with, "Okay, did you ask him to crash my lunch date?"
"Didn't do that, either. I said absolutely nothing on the subject to Jimmy. In fact, I didn't see or speak to Jimmy about anything between you making that date and him showing up at my desk and saying, 'Get some coffee with me.'"
"So, what, he was just there?"
"No. Gibbs sent him."
"Why would Gibbs do that?"
"He's got my back. And I did tell him about the lunch date." His hot Fornell/Gibbs/Diane gossip more or less caused both of them to forget to talk about the rest of what happened when he was there.
Abby laughed at that, shaking her head a little. "And did Jimmy report back that everything was fine."
"Yes. He tells me that Sanders is gay."
That takes Abby aback. "Greg? No. Greg's not gay." Abby thought about that for a minute. "He's probably bi, or at least experimented in that direction. Not gay."
"Abby, that's not comforting."
"Sorry. Gay. He's really gay. Gayest guy you've ever seen. He's moving in with his partner, Nick Stokes, in the next few weeks and was telling me all about it. They have a June wedding planned."
"That's overkill."
She grinned at him. "What do you want to watch while we eat pizza in our jammies?"
"Supernatural. Season five finale is the next episode and I've been looking forward to it all day."
"Sounds good."Next
Chatper 138: Going Home
"Hey, you ready to head home?" Tim asked as he headed into Abby's lab."Yeah. Just got to shut everything down."
"Okay. Want me to help?"
"Sure."
He headed over to her desk computer and began the shut-down routine. "What are you thinking of for dinner?"
"I really want pizza. Like two hours ago a pizza switch turned on in my head and now I just want it!"
"We'll get pizza. Eat out or order some, head home, and eat in our jammies in front of the television?"
"Jammies sounds good." Yeah, she can still wear her usual skirts and pants, but those days are numbered, and those numbers have hit single digits, low single digits, just waiting for the boxes to show up at their door, single digits.
First thing that happens when she gets home now is stripping off, and hopping into something with an elastic waistband, and it's even better if it's Tim's.
He got his phone out. "Usual?"
"Yeah."
He punched their usual order in, checked the clock, and told them to deliver it in an hour. "Okay, only an hour more to wait for pizza."
"Good. I've got all my stuff done."
He turned off her monitor. "Got this one." Then he took her coat off of the hook it lived on, and held it open for her.
Five minutes later they were in her car. He was driving. She was messing with the iPad, looking for a good song. Once she found one she said, "So Jimmy ran into us during our lunch date."
"Yeah, he told me that. And smacked me upside the head for being an idiot."
"Uh huh. And did you tell him to crash my lunch date?"
"Nope."
He's looking pretty innocent, because he honestly didn't ask. But there might be some smirk in his face anyway, because she follows up with, "Okay, did you ask him to crash my lunch date?"
"Didn't do that, either. I said absolutely nothing on the subject to Jimmy. In fact, I didn't see or speak to Jimmy about anything between you making that date and him showing up at my desk and saying, 'Get some coffee with me.'"
"So, what, he was just there?"
"No. Gibbs sent him."
"Why would Gibbs do that?"
"He's got my back. And I did tell him about the lunch date." His hot Fornell/Gibbs/Diane gossip more or less caused both of them to forget to talk about the rest of what happened when he was there.
Abby laughed at that, shaking her head a little. "And did Jimmy report back that everything was fine."
"Yes. He tells me that Sanders is gay."
That takes Abby aback. "Greg? No. Greg's not gay." Abby thought about that for a minute. "He's probably bi, or at least experimented in that direction. Not gay."
"Abby, that's not comforting."
"Sorry. Gay. He's really gay. Gayest guy you've ever seen. He's moving in with his partner, Nick Stokes, in the next few weeks and was telling me all about it. They have a June wedding planned."
"That's overkill."
She grinned at him. "What do you want to watch while we eat pizza in our jammies?"
"Supernatural. Season five finale is the next episode and I've been looking forward to it all day."
"Sounds good."Next
July 14, 2013
Shads To A Whole: An NCIS Fanfiction
McGee-centric character study/romance. Want to start at the beginning? Click here.
Chapter 137: Get Some Coffee With Me
Palmer showed up at Tim's desk a little after lunch the next day. "Get some coffee with me?"
"Sure."
"I crashed Abby's lunch date."
Tim was giving Palmer a very confused look. He hadn't even told Palmer that was up. And suddenly he got what Gibbs meant by "We've got your six."
"Did Gibbs send you?"
"Yeah. He figured it'd look more natural if I did it than if Tony did."
"Good thinking."
"Okay first of all," and here he gently smacked Tim upside the back of the head. "Sanders is a puppy. And not like a pit bull puppy, which might, eventually with enough time turn out to be an issue, but like, what are they, those tiny, little dogs girls buy to cuddle with?"
"Chihuahuas?"
"No, the ones with the hair they put in bows, that, you know, grow to be maybe eight inches tall." Palmer was gesturing with his hands to get the size of whatever that kind of dog is across.
"Sounds an awful lot like a Chihuahua."
"Chihuahuas have short hair and big ears. The thing I'm thinking of is really fluffy and looks like a dust mop. Some kind of terrier. Anyway, what the hell is wrong with you, man?"
"He was watching Abby, undressing her with his eyes, and just—"
Jimmy just nodded, looking really smug, and put his hand on Tim's shoulder consolingly. "Okay, you're full on pregnant daddy insane. I get that. But seriously, nothing even remotely out of line happened."
"Good. I think they slept together back when they first met."
"You think?"
Link"I asked; she said no."
Jimmy rolled his eyes and smacked him upside the back of the head again, this time hard enough to sting. He held up two fingers, back of his hand to Tim, and Tim wonders idly if Jimmy knows he's using the British gesture to flip him off. "Two things you never, ever ask, because if you ask you are making her lie to you. One," And his index finger curled down. Tim's feeling awfully sure that at some point Jimmy picked up some rude gestures from Ducky. "Have you had sex with him? Two," and he curled his middle finger down, so possibly this might be another of those moments where Jimmy's lack of mental filter is showing, "was he better/longer? Never, ever ask. How long ago was it?"
"Thirteen-fourteen years ago."
"Then it's fairly safe to say that's not his kid in her belly, and nothing else really matters."
Tim sighed. "Okay, you're right, I'm insane. Great. Now what?"
"Work on coping."
"I'm trying. She went to lunch with him; I did not freak out."
"Good."
"How are you handling it?" Tim asked Jimmy. Senior had been flirting pretty hard with Breena during the Christmas party, but besides Jimmy's eyes narrowing a little and a slight clench to his jaw, nothing happened.
"It's like sex."
Tim stared at Palmer, eyebrows furrowed. "I'm not following you."
"After the first time I wanted to beat the hell out of a guy for being too polite to Breena, and she just stared at me like I was a complete jerk, I figured it out. It's like sex."
The furrow between Tim's eyebrows got deeper. "Still not following."
"Look. You're fooling around, who's gonna get off first?"
"She is."
"Right. Why?"
"Uh..." He was staring at Palmer like this is conversation is twenty million shades of wrong.
"Just go with it, okay?"
"Fine, she gets off first because things pretty much end when I get off."
"Go deeper, Tim. Why is that an issue?"
"Because I want her to have a good time, too."
"Closer." Jimmy was looking expectantly at him.
"I don't want her to think I'm the asshole who gets off and then falls asleep immediately after."
"Exactly." Jimmy beamed at him.
Tim shook his head wondering what on earth could possibly make Jimmy think this made any sort of sense whatsoever. "I still have no idea why you've brought this up."
Jimmy was flashing him the you can't possibly be this dumb look, and begins to explain in a very patient sounding voice, "Right, so you're screwing and you want to get off, but she's not done yet, so you don't. You control it. You put what she wants first, so she doesn't think you're a jerk."
Tim nodded; that was right. And he was finally seeing where Jimmy was going with this.
"But sometimes, she wants you to get off first. Sometimes she's doing it for you. And sometimes, she's not there at all, and you can do it however you like. And sometimes she does something and you just lose it, but it's okay because you don't do that a lot."
"True."
"Okay, Timmy, same sort of thing with this. Most of the time you're doing it for her. She's around, so you take your cues from her. She's not annoyed by the guy, so you've got to control it and just let it flow by, let her see you aren't a jerk. Every now and again, he does something that just pisses you off, so you go a little bonkers, but she forgives you because you don't do it too often. If she is annoyed at the guy, you get to be the jerk you want to be, and at least verbally beat the hell out of him. And sometimes, she's not there, so you can do whatever you want." Jimmy smiled at that last one.
"Why are you getting defensive if she isn't there?"
"I'm sorry, that was you, right-I mean, it looked a whole lot like you-telling me about how you almost hit me when I was joking about sleeping with Abby?"
Tim nodded. "Got you. And her being annoyed by the guy, that's the equivalent of when she's doing you for your sake?"
"I think so. Anyway, anger and orgasms are a lot alike. Use whatever technique you use not to get off to keep control of your temper. It'll work."
"I hadn't thought of that."
"Yeah, well," Jimmy had a pretty smug see I'm not insane expression on his face as he said this, "I didn't figure it out at first, either, but then it just sort of clicked."
"Huh." Tim thought about that for a moment. "Doesn't she wonder why you're suddenly not really there?"
"Yeah, but when she asked, I told her, and she seemed to think it was better than me getting pissed off at every guy near her."
Tim nodded at that, then looked at Palmer for a minute and decided what the hell, this was already a weird conversation. "So what do you do?"
Jimmy grinned. "Pick a letter and recite every bone in the body alphabetically from there. Backwards if I really need the distraction."
Tim nodded again. That requires attention and is not even remotely sexy.
"You?"
"Replay whichever level of whatever game I was most recently playing."
Palmer nodded. Then stopped, thinking about that more carefully. "You might want to come up with something other than that to control your temper."
"Good point, beating the hell out of something electronically might not be a good choice."
Tony joined them. "What are you two talking about hiding over here?"
Tim was on the verge of saying, "You really don't want to know" when Palmer, with a big, happy smile beat him to it and said, "Orgasm delay techniques. What do you do?"
Tony stared at them in stupefaction and finally said, "What are you, girls? I leave you alone for five minutes and you talk about this?"
"Sure." Jimmy nodded. "Not that we're girls, but that we're talking about this." Palmer thought about it for a moment. "Tony, girls don't need orgasm delay techniques. It's not anything they do."
Tony took a deep breath and stared at Jimmy like he's some sort of alien. Then he shook his head, sighed, and said, "Movie quotes. If I need the big guns..." and here he paused, looked around, lowered his voice, and said, "Gibbs in a Speedo."
Both Jimmy and Tim looked stunned. Finally Tim said, slowly nodding, "Yeah, that'd do it."
Jimmy stared at Tony, disbelief all over his face. "The idea is to not get off, no go completely soft and end up curled into a ball whimpering."
"Look, if I'm..." and once again he looked around, paused, looked around again, and once again Gibbs was nowhere nearby, "thinking about that, Ziva's got me so hard I could drive nails with it and I'm so close the tingles have all but started."
"Okay, so extreme emergency situations," Palmer said, the look of disbelief not entirely gone, but it eased up.
"Yeah, for when she needs like one minute more and I'm almost insane."
"That makes sense," Tim added.
"So, do I want to know why you two were talking about this?"
Jimmy shrugged, and Tim rolled his eyes, orgasm delay techniques he came up with in a second, but why they might be talking about it was something Jimmy's willing to see if Tim actually wants to share with Tony.
"Jimmy suggested using the same technique to control my temper so I don't beat the hell out of the next guy who eyeballs Abby."
"Oh, right, Gibbs mentioned that. So, it's bad?"
"Tim was getting ready to beat the hell out of a guy, who from everything I can tell is gay, because he was," and Jimmy did the quote hand gesture to go with the next two words, "'checking out' Abby."
Tim turned on Jimmy, voice hot, and pointing as he spoke. "Look, he's not gay, and you were not there! He was undressing her with his eyes, and looking at her lips, imagining the best blow job ever, and I had to stand there and watch him do it."
"Uh huh." Palmer nodded, then looked at Tony Tim's insane clearly on his face. "So gay! On the overreaction scale of one to ten, Tim blew a fifteen."
"Fifteen is when I actually shoot the guy." Tim shook his head. "My wife, pregnant with my kid, I'm allowed to get overprotective."
Jimmy smiled at him. "Told you it was insane."
"Yeah, it is."
Then they both turned to Tony, and smirked.
Tony backed up a little. "Oh no. Do not sit there and smirk at me. I'm not joining your insane, over-protective daddy club anytime soon!"
"Uh huh." Bullshit Jimmy's expression clearly said this time.
"Two years," Tim added.
"We're not even married, yet."
"Please, that's four months off," Jimmy said.
"Didn't stop Abby and I. And your dad is right, people might go blind by looking directly at Ziva made up for her wedding and a few months pregnant."
Jimmy's voice got serious. "Think about it, you wait two years to have a kid, not start on one, but to have a kid, and you're going to be seventy-two when he graduates college. You want to be young enough to do dad stuff with your kid-"
"I needed to start ten years ago, so it's a moot point. There's not a huge difference between seventy-two and seventy-four, and since the youngest I could possibly be is seventy I'm not feeling any need to rush."
"Okay, how about this, you want to be alive to see your kids get married? Want to actually walk your daughter down the aisle, instead of hobble?"
"My dad's eighty and doing fine. Grandad made it to 88. Great-grandfather made it to 90. DiNozzos are hard to kill off."
"If you say so," Jimmy said. "Just keep it in mind."
"Thanks. Anyway, we need to get back to the bullpen. Gibbs and Ziva are due back with the suspect any minute and you know how he gets when he gets back and we don't have something to report the second he walks in."
Chapter 137: Get Some Coffee With Me
Palmer showed up at Tim's desk a little after lunch the next day. "Get some coffee with me?"
"Sure."
"I crashed Abby's lunch date."
Tim was giving Palmer a very confused look. He hadn't even told Palmer that was up. And suddenly he got what Gibbs meant by "We've got your six."
"Did Gibbs send you?"
"Yeah. He figured it'd look more natural if I did it than if Tony did."
"Good thinking."
"Okay first of all," and here he gently smacked Tim upside the back of the head. "Sanders is a puppy. And not like a pit bull puppy, which might, eventually with enough time turn out to be an issue, but like, what are they, those tiny, little dogs girls buy to cuddle with?"
"Chihuahuas?"
"No, the ones with the hair they put in bows, that, you know, grow to be maybe eight inches tall." Palmer was gesturing with his hands to get the size of whatever that kind of dog is across.
"Sounds an awful lot like a Chihuahua."
"Chihuahuas have short hair and big ears. The thing I'm thinking of is really fluffy and looks like a dust mop. Some kind of terrier. Anyway, what the hell is wrong with you, man?"
"He was watching Abby, undressing her with his eyes, and just—"
Jimmy just nodded, looking really smug, and put his hand on Tim's shoulder consolingly. "Okay, you're full on pregnant daddy insane. I get that. But seriously, nothing even remotely out of line happened."
"Good. I think they slept together back when they first met."
"You think?"
Link"I asked; she said no."Jimmy rolled his eyes and smacked him upside the back of the head again, this time hard enough to sting. He held up two fingers, back of his hand to Tim, and Tim wonders idly if Jimmy knows he's using the British gesture to flip him off. "Two things you never, ever ask, because if you ask you are making her lie to you. One," And his index finger curled down. Tim's feeling awfully sure that at some point Jimmy picked up some rude gestures from Ducky. "Have you had sex with him? Two," and he curled his middle finger down, so possibly this might be another of those moments where Jimmy's lack of mental filter is showing, "was he better/longer? Never, ever ask. How long ago was it?"
"Thirteen-fourteen years ago."
"Then it's fairly safe to say that's not his kid in her belly, and nothing else really matters."
Tim sighed. "Okay, you're right, I'm insane. Great. Now what?"
"Work on coping."
"I'm trying. She went to lunch with him; I did not freak out."
"Good."
"How are you handling it?" Tim asked Jimmy. Senior had been flirting pretty hard with Breena during the Christmas party, but besides Jimmy's eyes narrowing a little and a slight clench to his jaw, nothing happened.
"It's like sex."
Tim stared at Palmer, eyebrows furrowed. "I'm not following you."
"After the first time I wanted to beat the hell out of a guy for being too polite to Breena, and she just stared at me like I was a complete jerk, I figured it out. It's like sex."
The furrow between Tim's eyebrows got deeper. "Still not following."
"Look. You're fooling around, who's gonna get off first?"
"She is."
"Right. Why?"
"Uh..." He was staring at Palmer like this is conversation is twenty million shades of wrong.
"Just go with it, okay?"
"Fine, she gets off first because things pretty much end when I get off."
"Go deeper, Tim. Why is that an issue?"
"Because I want her to have a good time, too."
"Closer." Jimmy was looking expectantly at him.
"I don't want her to think I'm the asshole who gets off and then falls asleep immediately after."
"Exactly." Jimmy beamed at him.
Tim shook his head wondering what on earth could possibly make Jimmy think this made any sort of sense whatsoever. "I still have no idea why you've brought this up."
Jimmy was flashing him the you can't possibly be this dumb look, and begins to explain in a very patient sounding voice, "Right, so you're screwing and you want to get off, but she's not done yet, so you don't. You control it. You put what she wants first, so she doesn't think you're a jerk."
Tim nodded; that was right. And he was finally seeing where Jimmy was going with this.
"But sometimes, she wants you to get off first. Sometimes she's doing it for you. And sometimes, she's not there at all, and you can do it however you like. And sometimes she does something and you just lose it, but it's okay because you don't do that a lot."
"True."
"Okay, Timmy, same sort of thing with this. Most of the time you're doing it for her. She's around, so you take your cues from her. She's not annoyed by the guy, so you've got to control it and just let it flow by, let her see you aren't a jerk. Every now and again, he does something that just pisses you off, so you go a little bonkers, but she forgives you because you don't do it too often. If she is annoyed at the guy, you get to be the jerk you want to be, and at least verbally beat the hell out of him. And sometimes, she's not there, so you can do whatever you want." Jimmy smiled at that last one.
"Why are you getting defensive if she isn't there?"
"I'm sorry, that was you, right-I mean, it looked a whole lot like you-telling me about how you almost hit me when I was joking about sleeping with Abby?"
Tim nodded. "Got you. And her being annoyed by the guy, that's the equivalent of when she's doing you for your sake?"
"I think so. Anyway, anger and orgasms are a lot alike. Use whatever technique you use not to get off to keep control of your temper. It'll work."
"I hadn't thought of that."
"Yeah, well," Jimmy had a pretty smug see I'm not insane expression on his face as he said this, "I didn't figure it out at first, either, but then it just sort of clicked."
"Huh." Tim thought about that for a moment. "Doesn't she wonder why you're suddenly not really there?"
"Yeah, but when she asked, I told her, and she seemed to think it was better than me getting pissed off at every guy near her."
Tim nodded at that, then looked at Palmer for a minute and decided what the hell, this was already a weird conversation. "So what do you do?"
Jimmy grinned. "Pick a letter and recite every bone in the body alphabetically from there. Backwards if I really need the distraction."
Tim nodded again. That requires attention and is not even remotely sexy.
"You?"
"Replay whichever level of whatever game I was most recently playing."
Palmer nodded. Then stopped, thinking about that more carefully. "You might want to come up with something other than that to control your temper."
"Good point, beating the hell out of something electronically might not be a good choice."
Tony joined them. "What are you two talking about hiding over here?"
Tim was on the verge of saying, "You really don't want to know" when Palmer, with a big, happy smile beat him to it and said, "Orgasm delay techniques. What do you do?"
Tony stared at them in stupefaction and finally said, "What are you, girls? I leave you alone for five minutes and you talk about this?"
"Sure." Jimmy nodded. "Not that we're girls, but that we're talking about this." Palmer thought about it for a moment. "Tony, girls don't need orgasm delay techniques. It's not anything they do."
Tony took a deep breath and stared at Jimmy like he's some sort of alien. Then he shook his head, sighed, and said, "Movie quotes. If I need the big guns..." and here he paused, looked around, lowered his voice, and said, "Gibbs in a Speedo."
Both Jimmy and Tim looked stunned. Finally Tim said, slowly nodding, "Yeah, that'd do it."
Jimmy stared at Tony, disbelief all over his face. "The idea is to not get off, no go completely soft and end up curled into a ball whimpering."
"Look, if I'm..." and once again he looked around, paused, looked around again, and once again Gibbs was nowhere nearby, "thinking about that, Ziva's got me so hard I could drive nails with it and I'm so close the tingles have all but started."
"Okay, so extreme emergency situations," Palmer said, the look of disbelief not entirely gone, but it eased up.
"Yeah, for when she needs like one minute more and I'm almost insane."
"That makes sense," Tim added.
"So, do I want to know why you two were talking about this?"
Jimmy shrugged, and Tim rolled his eyes, orgasm delay techniques he came up with in a second, but why they might be talking about it was something Jimmy's willing to see if Tim actually wants to share with Tony.
"Jimmy suggested using the same technique to control my temper so I don't beat the hell out of the next guy who eyeballs Abby."
"Oh, right, Gibbs mentioned that. So, it's bad?"
"Tim was getting ready to beat the hell out of a guy, who from everything I can tell is gay, because he was," and Jimmy did the quote hand gesture to go with the next two words, "'checking out' Abby."
Tim turned on Jimmy, voice hot, and pointing as he spoke. "Look, he's not gay, and you were not there! He was undressing her with his eyes, and looking at her lips, imagining the best blow job ever, and I had to stand there and watch him do it."
"Uh huh." Palmer nodded, then looked at Tony Tim's insane clearly on his face. "So gay! On the overreaction scale of one to ten, Tim blew a fifteen."
"Fifteen is when I actually shoot the guy." Tim shook his head. "My wife, pregnant with my kid, I'm allowed to get overprotective."
Jimmy smiled at him. "Told you it was insane."
"Yeah, it is."
Then they both turned to Tony, and smirked.
Tony backed up a little. "Oh no. Do not sit there and smirk at me. I'm not joining your insane, over-protective daddy club anytime soon!"
"Uh huh." Bullshit Jimmy's expression clearly said this time.
"Two years," Tim added.
"We're not even married, yet."
"Please, that's four months off," Jimmy said.
"Didn't stop Abby and I. And your dad is right, people might go blind by looking directly at Ziva made up for her wedding and a few months pregnant."
Jimmy's voice got serious. "Think about it, you wait two years to have a kid, not start on one, but to have a kid, and you're going to be seventy-two when he graduates college. You want to be young enough to do dad stuff with your kid-"
"I needed to start ten years ago, so it's a moot point. There's not a huge difference between seventy-two and seventy-four, and since the youngest I could possibly be is seventy I'm not feeling any need to rush."
"Okay, how about this, you want to be alive to see your kids get married? Want to actually walk your daughter down the aisle, instead of hobble?"
"My dad's eighty and doing fine. Grandad made it to 88. Great-grandfather made it to 90. DiNozzos are hard to kill off."
"If you say so," Jimmy said. "Just keep it in mind."
"Thanks. Anyway, we need to get back to the bullpen. Gibbs and Ziva are due back with the suspect any minute and you know how he gets when he gets back and we don't have something to report the second he walks in."
