Keryl Raist's Blog, page 32
May 20, 2013
Shards To A Whole: An NCIS Fanfiction
McGee centric character study/romance. Want to start at the beginning? Click here.
Chapter 95: Dirty Girl Scout
“What are they talking about?” Breena asks Abby as she dances close to her.
Abby grins, watching the exchange. “Sex. Tim and Jimmy are scaring Tony.”
Ziva laughs. “What are they telling him?”
“About having sex here.”
“You had sex here?” Ziva asks the two other girls, not exactly surprised by this, but it wasn't something she was expecting either.
Breena nods.
Abby says, “Yes, half an hour ago? Something like that.” A huge grin lighting her face.
“God, they’re so pretty,” Breena says, eyes on the boys, wrapping her arms around Abby.
And Abby nods, they really are. This was definitely going on her list of favorite Tim looks. Sure she loves the rock and roll version of kilt wear, but this version of it is awfully fine, too.
He’s sitting there, relaxed, happy smirk on his face, back against the booth, right arm draped along the back, left arm stretched forward, fingers on the rim of his glass. Long, smooth fingers, tipped with black nail polish, circling gently around the rim of a scotch neat.
You might need a jacket to get into this club, but he took it off a few minutes after getting here. An hour of dancing means the maroon dress shirt he had under it now has the sleeves rolled to mid forearm, showing off his wrist cuff. An hour of dancing also means that he’s undone the top button and his tie is loose.
What they were doing half an hour ago means that his hair’s a little more messed up than usual, something she always appreciates. Add in naked legs, strong calves on display, and yeah, she really likes that look.
Tony’s in the middle, and like always, he’s pretty. And honestly, he looks a whole lot like he usually does. Suit on, pressed, perfect, cool. Her eyes just sort of skim over him, and it’s not that she doesn’t love Tony, it’s more that classically handsome features and style just never really interested Abby. But Ziva, who’s eyes just skimmed over Tim in almost exactly the same way her eyes skimmed over Tony, is watching him, looking like she wants to eat him alive.
Abby knows that Tony’s pretty. Knows that he’s magazine cover attractive. And while she can appreciate that, it’s not the sort of thing she ever really looked twice at.
Jimmy, on the other hand, like Tim, has that sort of different edge that gets her attention. And Jimmy is certainly looking fine tonight, too. He’s also taken off the jacket, and his tie wandered off at some point as well, leaving him in brown slacks, a brown vest, and a white button down, with the top two buttons undone.
He’s leaning in toward the table, face warm and animated, talking to the guys about Ziva’s shoes, which is freaking Tony out a little. Like Tim, he’s holding his drink, but Jimmy’s the driver, so his is probably Diet Sprite. Unlike Tim, his glass is tall, and he’s got his hands touching, fingertips to fingertips, thumb to thumb, with the glass between his palms.
For the first time ever, Abby notices that Jimmy has really nice hands. And she also notices that a wedding ring on a guy is awfully sexy, and is suddenly really looking forward to seeing one, putting one, on Tim.
“Jimmy really likes your shoes,” she says to Ziva.
Ziva laughs. “It is good to know someone appreciates them.”
“Tony does too, just not as much as Jimmy does.”
“No one appreciates shoes as much as Jimmy does,” Breena adds, a wicked smile on her face.
Abby lifts an eyebrow. “So what is it with him and shoes?”
Breena smiles and pulls Abby and Ziva close, the three of them dancing together. “He likes the way they feel against him and the way they look when I wear them while we have sex.”
Ziva laughs while Abby says, “That’s it? We figured he liked to wear them.”
“How do you even know about him and shoes?” Breena asks, an amused and somewhat curious expression on her face. Abby’s not exactly Jimmy’s type, but she’s close enough, and if they had gotten together at some point, it wouldn’t have shocked her.
Abby reads Breena’s look. “Nothing like that. He was the main witness for one of our cases, but he blocked a lot of the memories, so I hypnotized him to get the details out of his head, and it turned out the main thing he was paying attention to was what sort of shoes Ziva and I were wearing. Tim was there and teased the hell out of him for a few days after that.”
That makes Breena laugh. “Tim was teasing Jimmy about sex? Pot, hello, it’s Kettle, you’re black.”
“Yeah. I know. But neither of them knew that about each other at that point. That’s part of what they’re talking about right now.”
“Really?” Breena asks.
“Yeah.”
“They look pretty cool with each other,” Breena says, eyeing both of them, watching as they double team teasing Tony.
“Yeah, they really do.” Abby nods.
And Breena and Abby just stare at each other and smile, both thinking the same general thing.
Ziva dances and listens, feeling a little left out, but not in a bad way. The four of them are getting closer and closer with each other, and being outside of that isn’t a bad thing, it’s just the way things are.
And it’s not something she minds being on the outside of. She loves Tim and Jimmy, but she can also see the way Breena and Abby watch them, and she knows they do not see the same thing she does when she looks.
And she sees something else, something that will never be true for her and Tony, let alone her and Tony and Tim and Abby or her and Tony and Breena and Jimmy, and that’s a sexual attraction that’s divorced from jealousy. Tony would have a fit if she looked at Tim the way Breena’s looking at him right now. And for that matter, she’d be miffed if Breena was looking at Tony the way she’s looking at Tim right now. But Breena and Abby are dancing together, undressing their guys with their eyes, flirting with each other and both of the guys, and enjoying it.
Judging from the way both of the guys are watching them dance, they don’t have a problem with it either.
Actually, judging from the way both of the guys are watching them dance, the only potential problem is that Abby and Breena might decide to stop dancing, which would probably make the guys pout.
Abby pulls both her and Breena closer, sliding against them as the beat shifts, keeping her eyes on Tim as she does it, and Ziva decides to ask, “Are the four of you sleeping together?”
Abby laughs, Breena blushes, and Ziva’s been reading people for way too long to miss the look that flits between the two of them.
“What’s making you think of that? Breena asks.
“Both of you are flirting with both of your guys, but not Tony.”
Abby grins. “Are we allowed to flirt with Tony?” and though there is a smile on her face, it’s a serious question.
Ziva rocks against Abby, Breena at her back, and thinks about the ring newly on her finger, and knows that whatever she says right now, they’ll honor. She thinks about years of Tony off hooking up with any girl out there and the amount of change he had to go through to get to a place where he could be monogamous.
“No.”
Breena hugs Ziva. “Then we won’t. And no, we aren’t all sleeping together.” Though she notices another look that goes between Abby and Breena, and can see the two of them are thinking about it. “But, okay, last time we went clubbing, Abby and I danced together really close, got the boys wound up and… well, you can see the way they’re watching us. Let’s just say that night was a whole lot of fun.”
Abby nods. “So much fun!”
“That’s where you vanished to? We left to dance alone for a little while, came back to the table, found a pile of money, and you were gone.”
“We headed home,” Breena says.
“You got all the way home?” Abby asks with a half-disbelieving grin.
“Yeah, but I also got off twice on the ride, which was kind of interesting since I was driving. You?”
“Hotel three blocks down, both of us were too buzzed, too distracted, to drive.”
“And you are hoping to do something like that again?” Ziva asks.
“Not exactly, since we’re your ride home, but watching them squirm is a lot of fun,” Breena says, eyes on Jimmy, but occasionally glancing at Tim, both of the boys watching the three of them dance together.
“And unlike Ziva’s club, there are a lot of decent hidden nooks in this one,” Abby adds, stroking Breena’s neck.
“Well, yeah, after we caught you and Tim last time, we made sure to pick a place with lots of room. Didn’t want to have to wait or cramp your style.”
“Thank you.”
Ziva feels like this shouldn’t be much of a surprise, there was that whole thing with Jimmy and Lee, and well, sure Tim looks pretty mild, but anyone paying attention knows he’s got something of an exhibitionist streak, still… “This is something you regularly do, sex out in public?”
“Is my lab public?” Abby asks.
“Yes.”
“Then yes.”
Ziva makes a mental note to always make a lot of noise when heading to the lab. Sure Tim had told her about that one time, but she hadn’t realized one time was actually a habit.
“Since Molly, it’s a treat for us. You and Tony don’t?”
“No. I’m not good at… quiet… and it would be off putting to have an audience.”
Breena nods and Abby does too, leaning in to whisper into her ear, her hand stroking down Ziva’s arm, “Don’t want anyone calling the cops?”
“Something along those lines.” No, not really, but she doesn’t want to explain why having people watch is a problem.
Breena leans closer to them. “Tony just about spit his drink across the table when you did that. Looks like he’s enjoying the show, too. You want us to break this up and back off?”
Ziva smiles, looking at Tony, seeing a whole lot of hot, naked lust in his eyes, and then wrapped her free arm around Breena’s neck, adding a little grind to the way she was dancing with Abby, and watched his eyes bulge. And well, maybe this was sort of fun if it got him to look at her like that.
“We dance until the end of this song, then let us get our men.”
Abby rests one hand on Ziva’s hip and the other on Breena’s keeping them both pressed up close to her. “Good plan.”
The song ends and Abby stalks toward the table where the boys are. Tim’s eyes meet hers as she’s a few feet away, and a smile lights his face. She leans down to him, brushing her lips over his in a warm kiss, while wrapping her hand in his tie, gently pulling him up.
“Dance time?” he asks.
“Oh yeah.” Though she pauses for a moment to take a sip of her drink. She’d gotten it entirely for the name, a Dirty Girl Scout was just too good to pass up, luckily for her it’s tasty, too. Basically it’s a grasshopper, minty, chocolaty, and very smooth.
She sets the glass down, grabs the napkins under it, tucking them into his pocket. He feels her do it and grins widely. Since Zyphyer, he has brought tissues every time they’ve been clubbing, but they also already used the ones he brought.
Yes, that look in her eye was indeed signaling good things about to happen.
The music is loud and hard, throbbing away in a strong, sexy beat. They find an easy pace, pelvis to pelvis, legs entwined, dipping and grinding as the music dictated.
“Like the show?” Abby asks.
He kisses her, lips on hers, sliding down her jaw to her ear. “When don’t I?”
She grinds against him, getting what she’s asking across. But it’s been less than an hour since the last time, and he’s had a few drinks, so not much is happening for him on that end. Tim kisses her again, circling behind her, trailing his hands down her sides as he presses in close behind her, placing wet kisses on her throat and shoulder, fingers resting gently on her hips.
“My tongue’s always up for another round,” he says, flicking it lightly along her earlobe.
She turns in his arms, kisses him back, long and deep. “That’s an idea. But what if I want to take my time, get you good and hard for a nice,” she bites his lip, pulling it a little, “slow” she punctuates that by dragging her tongue across his lip, “fuck?”
His eyes sparkle at her, warm with sex and good humor, as he brushes his fingers through her hair. “Then keep doing what you’re doing, I’ll get there sooner or later.”
“Good.”
He kisses her again, sucking gently on her tongue.
“What were you drinking? It’s really tasty.”
“A Dirty Girl Scout.”
He raises one eyebrow, looking very amused at that idea. “A Dirty Girl Scout?”
“Yeah. Yummy, huh?”
“On so many levels. Were you ever a Girl Scout?”
She sees the gleam in his eye and knows where this is going to go.
“Oh yeah.” No not really, but this could be a lot of fun. “Until I was seventeen. Helped out with the summer camps until I was twenty.”
His eyes slide over her body as his fingers trail from her shoulders to her hips. “So you’d know something about Dirty Girl Scouts?”
“Maybe. Is that the sort of thing you’d like to hear about?”
“Oh yeah.” He kisses her neck, and she turns so her back is to his chest, following the music, letting it dictate their moves. He strokes his hands down her arms, twining his fingers with hers, and then feathering over her hands. “I’m wondering,” he says, lips on her ear, “what you looked like when you were seventeen. Mostly like you now? Little shorter maybe? Fewer tattoos?”
“Same height I am now. I weighed a little less. My hair was long, mid-back long, and blonde with purple and blue streaks, and the only tattoos I had were the ones I got with Paulette. So the P, the smiley on my finger, and the angels.” He kisses each angel on her shoulders.
“And did you have a uniform?”
“Little green skirt, white button up shirt with green stripes, little green tie, sash with badges, something like that, you mean?”
Tim’s imaging that. Seventeen-year-old Abby in a Girl Scout uniform, and part of him is sure that like sex in the graveyard this is another thing that’ll be added to the why he’s going straight to Hell when he dies list, but he likes the idea too much to stop thinking about it. After all, it’s not like he’s having sex with a real seventeen-year-old. Not like he’s got any interest in any real seventeen-year-old. But this image, teen Abby, innocent looking outfit, maybe hiked just a bit too high and unbuttoned just a bit too much, yeah, that’s hitting most of his buttons just right.
One thing he’s always found interesting is that his brain and his body aren’t always on the same page. For example, right now his brain is awfully turned on. That idea, along with real Abby pressed up tight, dancing against him, the way she feels and smells, and the sound of her voice filling in extra details (White knee socks! Black mary janes!) about her seventeen-year-old self, all of that means his brain is in a very turned on sex-right-now-yes!, sort of place. His dick on the other hand, does not seem to have gotten this message, yet, and it’s just lying there. According to it, he could be doing his taxes or something else completely unsexy.
Oh well, it’s not in charge, and as he said, his tongue is always up for another round. And he’ll happily enjoy talking each other off if that’s what’s on the menu for right now. After all, the club isn’t closing anytime soon, and his dick’ll get the message sooner or later.
Abby’s talking. “And of course, no boys are allowed anywhere near a Girl Scout camp, so a big part of being a scout was smuggling them in, and a big part of being a counselor was tossing them out.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, gotta find places to hide them, to find a few quiet moments together. And of course, if you’re in charge, you’ve got to be even better at finding those places. And the summer I was twenty, I was a counselor, and we were only a few miles down from a group of Wilderness Scouts. They were on the far side of the lake.”
And Tim gets where this is going, and he smiles. This is something they haven’t played with, tag team storytelling. He also appreciates her fast forwarding a few years, because if she’s seventeen, he’s thirteen, and well, thirteen-year-old Tim McGee would have been willing to give his left arm to get laid, but he also wasn’t anything anyone needs to be thinking about like that. Sixteen-year-old Tim was awfully lanky and gangly, but not nearly as… well… young.
“And if there’s one thing Wilderness Scouts like, it’s Girl Scouts.”
“Yeah. So, I was doing my nightly rounds, making sure none of the girls had wandered off in search of her very own Wilderness Scout.”
“Walking around the lake, looking for dallying scouts?”
“Yeah, seeing if I can find anyone taking advantage of the moonlight.”
“And you did. But not like that. I would have been sitting at the side of the lake, watching the sky, taking notes on where the stars were, working on my Astronomy badge.”
“’Waiting for someone?’ I’d ask.”
He can see it in his mind, she’d be standing over him, looking down. “’Ummm…’” Because sixteen-year-old Tim McGee was not what anyone would have ever called smooth.
“’You’re on the wrong side of the lake.’”
“’Sorry.’ I’d be scrambling around, trying to grab all of my stuff and probably dropping half of it as I did it.”
“I’d laugh a little, and help you pack up. ‘Astronomy?’”
“’Uh yeah… Trees are in the way on our side. Needed a better view.’”
“’Oh. Well.’ And you’re looking straight at me, nervous and adorable, hair loose, some of it in your eyes, and I’d reach over and brush it away. ‘You can stay, if you want.’”
“’Thanks.’ I’d sit back down, not looking at you, blushing from head to toe, rambling on about Pleiades and what I was charting.”
“I’d sit down next to you, listen for a bit, watching the stars. ‘What’s your name?’”
“’Oh, yeah, Tim. Hi. How about you?’”
“’Abby.’”
“I’d hold out my hand to shake yours, half polite, half just wanting to touch you.” He pulls her a step closer, kissing her shoulder as they dance. “Wishing I could do something like that, but sure I’m way too much of a geek for you to ever think about me like that.”
“But I like geeks, especially cute, young ones on the beach in the moonlight. I’d take your hand, trailing my thumb over your palm, not letting go, and then lick my lips. ‘Hello, Tim.’”
He grins at her, desire and amusement lighting his face, watching her lips, and says, “’Hello, Abby.’”
“I don’t think you’d be grinning at me like that.”
“Well, no. Real-life-sixteen-year-old Tim would have been studying the sand, blushed so hard he glowed in the dark, started stammering about stars, and probably run away. But I don’t have to be real-life-sixteen-year-old Tim, that’s the fun of fantasy, right?”
“Right.”
“And this version of Tim is staring at you like you’re the most delicious thing he’s ever seen and he wants to eat you, slowly, savoring every mouthful.”
Abby laughs. “I like that idea.”
“Good. Because I’d lean in toward you, close my eyes, and kiss you, just a gentle brush of lips on lips.” And he demonstrated, letting his lips meet hers for a second, before pulling away. “And then I’d look at you, see if you were angry at me—“
“But I’m not. I’m smiling, still holding your hand, giving it a little squeeze.”
“I’d scoot a little closer to you, lean in, and kiss you again.” And once again he did. A bit longer, more confident this time.
And this time her lips moved against his, stroking gently.
“Seriously, are you two trying to out fuck the Palmers?” Tony asks with a laugh, his voice cutting into their game as he and Ziva danced close to them.
Abby blows Tony a raspberry and looks around, noticing that Jimmy and Breena are also dancing close and necking.
“I don’t think it’s a competition,” Tim answers. “We’re just playing.”
“Uh huh,” says Tony.
“Who’s winning?” Abby asks Ziva.
Ziva grins at them, her eyes scanning between the two couples. “I think Jimmy and Breena are a few points ahead.” Jimmy’s got one hand on the small of Breena’s back, the other on her cheek as they dance forehead to forehead, looking into each other’s eyes.
Abby kisses Tim, soft and gentle, and then pulls back and turns to Ziva and Tony, flicking her hands toward the far side of the club. “Then shoo. Let us catch up!”
Ziva winks at them, and edges Tony further away.
Abby kisses him again, and once again it’s soft and gentle, and a little tentative. His hands slip down her back, one of them twining with her fingers, the other edging down to the bottom of her skirt and just lightly brushing her leg.
“So, you, me, the lake, night time, kissing,” she says.
“Oh yeah. You’re holding my hand, and my heart’s beating a million times a minute.”
She places her hand on his chest, feeling his heartbeat. “And you’re so cute when your flustered.”
“And I am, because no one has ever just looked at me and liked me like that.”
“Idiots.”
He smiles and kisses her again, letting his fingers ghost along the side of her face and neck. “I’d pet you, like that. Shocked at how soft your skin is, how good it feels, how good just four fingers against your skin can make me feel.”
She closed her hand around his, pressing his fingers to her throat. “Feel that, how fast my heart is, how much my body loves yours touching mine?”
“God, yeah.”
She drew his fingers to the dip of her collar bone. “You’d undo my top button.”
“You have your shirt buttoned all the way up?”
“I do in this fantasy.”
“All right!” His fingers traced two inches further down, very softly, just the barest graze of fingertips on flesh, then paused, hovering.
“’You can get the next button, too.’”
He nods, his fingers sliding another two inches down, to the top of her dress. “Where are your hands?”
She squeezes the one holding his. “The other is on your back, inching under your shirt, petting your skin.” She doesn’t exactly mimic that. Her hand stays on the outside of his shirt, but it does stroke over his low back, just above where it’s tucked into his kilt.
He’s loving this slow, gentle touch, and thinking this might be a good game for a time when they are home and alone and have plenty of room and can get completely naked. Though, if they were home, and alone, and could get completely naked, they probably wouldn’t play with the idea of this. He’d just peel that dress off of her, and she’d have him naked in a minute, and this slow tentative dance wouldn’t happen.
But it is happening, and she’s kissing him soft and gentle, and he says, but doesn’t do, because they are in the middle of a dance floor and this isn’t Zyphyer, “I’d flick open the third button, and slip my hand into your blouse, skimming over your breast. So soft, and so light, and my hand would be shaking.” And that idea, that image, her sitting on the sand next to him, holding his hand, petting his back while he lightly strokes her breast starts to wake his body up, lets it notice that his brain is thinking sex in a big way.
They’re dancing close enough that she notices the slight stirring and grinds against him, encouraging it.
He smiles, kissing her soft and open, letting his lips make love to her, as his body rapidly starts to catch up to his brain.
She slips her hand from his low back to his hip. “I’d start to tug on your shirt. Letting you know I want you to take it off.”
“’Only if you take yours off, too.’”
And she grins. “I would. I’d pull back a little, kneeling, make sure you could see me, and undo the last of the buttons.”
“I’d reach out, hands still shaking a little, and push it off your shoulders, and then sit there and just stare at your beautiful skin under the moon.”
“’Tim.’”
“’Yeah?’”
“’You’re still wearing your shirt.’”
“’Oh. Yeah.’ I’d yank it off, regretting the few seconds it was over my head and I couldn’t see you.”
“’You can touch, you know.’”
“I’d lick my lips, and scoot closer to you, pressing chest to chest and kissing you, hard and fast and deep.” He presses into her, rubbing his erection against her. “And your skin on mine would have me so hard. I’d be breathing fast and feeling so good all over.”
“I’d push you back, so you’re lying on the sand, and then straddle you, rubbing against you before lying against your chest and kissing you.”
“And this is why fantasy Tim is better than real life Tim, because real life Tim would have lost it right there.”
“Really?”
“Half-naked girl rubbing up against me, oh yeah. Of course, real life sixteen-year-old Tim could get it up again in about four minutes, so it wouldn’t have been that big of a problem, besides the whole wet and sticky thing.”
“Yeah, but I’ve got plans for fantasy Tim, and they don’t involve being wet and sticky, yet.”
“Yet?”
She grins and kisses him, then pulls back, letting her hand ghost gently across the front of his kilt, giving him a quick squeeze before resettling on his neck. “Yet. Fantasy Tim isn’t going back to the Wilderness Scout Camp a virgin.”
“Fantasy Tim is completely on board with that plan and wholeheartedly agrees with your goals,” Tim laughs as he says that, and she giggles, too. His hands settle on her low back, and her other hand joins the one at his neck.
He can feel it, soft, cool sand at his back, her weight on his body, naked back under his hands, her hands on his neck, as they kiss.
He shifts one hand from her back to her leg, once again just below the hem of her dress, warm skin on skin, and she rubs her leg against his, drawing it up and a slow, firm slide.
“I would have been wearing shorts, and the kilt’s pretty close to that. Love feeling your skin on mine.”
“Yeah, this is good.” Her leg slips back down his, and for a few beats they just dance, kissing a little, feeling the press of each other’s body and the throb of desire and loud music.
“I’d roll us over, and lean back a little, weight on my right elbow. Never seen real live breasts before and I want to look and touch and kiss.”
“You would.”
He runs his hands over her arms, and then begins to stroke the tip of her index finger with his left hand, letting her feel how he’d be touching her. “Oh yeah. Love your breasts. So soft and perfect. I’d be nuzzling, licking the one, petting the other. Seeing what sort of touch makes you squirm, what makes you gasp or moan.”
She presses her face into his neck, licking his earlobe. “That. That light, gentle lick. The way you’re just rolling your tongue around my nipple, all wet, soft, and tickly. That gets me moaning. And I’d want to make you sound like that. Want to hear you. So my hand would slip down to your dick, and give you a squeeze.”
He kisses the top of her ear, and quietly moans for her. “Just like that, baby.”
She looks at him and grins. “’Love hearing you like that.’”
“’Love the fact you make me sound like this. Want to make you cry out, make you scream my name.’ I’d kiss my way down your chest, down your stomach, get to the top of your skirt and start to tug it off.”
“I’d lift my hips, give you some help getting me naked.”
“’You’re so pretty.’”
“”Pretty?’”
He stops dancing, wrapping his fingers in her hair, and pulls her head back a little, kissing her throat, and then looks deeply into her eyes while saying, “Absolutely fucking gorgeous. Moonlight made flesh. Flesh made desire. Desire driving me crazy, making me want to bury my tongue and fingers and cock in you all at once, make you come a thousand times, calling my name, arching against my body, wet and hot and slick and tight, and sex and love and fuck and all of it made flesh and real and my body on and in yours, and yours on mine, and both of us slipping against each other, rocking toward ecstasy, riding higher and higher on the pleasure of skin on skin.”
“Fuck,” she breathes it, holding his gaze with hers, reveling in the feel of those words and the heat in his eyes. “No more fantasy, Tim. Let’s get off the dance floor.”
“God, yes!”
Back room, private room, ladies room, nook behind a door, storage alcove, back alley, he’s got no idea where they are and could care even less. There’s no one right nearby and that’s all that matters.
“Sit down,” Abby says.
And he does, legs in front of him, back against the wall, noticing the floor is a little cold, but she settles onto his lap, face to face, hiking up the kilt enough to get access to him, and slips onto him.
He bites his lip as his head falls back against the wall. “Fuck, baby!”
She groans softly, snuggling into him, spreading out her skirt a little. They could be, if you didn’t look at their faces or missed the slight rocking motion, just taking a break, snuggly and close.
He wraps his right arm around her, a gesture that did look tender and protective, while his left scoots under her skirt, finding her clit.
His lips press against her shoulder, and she turns a little to kiss his temple.
“Slow?” he asks.
“Yeah.”
So his thumb begins a soft, languid dance, barely moving over her skin.
“So good.” She gives him a quick and firm squeeze, and he groans. “I was wondering, can you get me off hard enough, slow enough, to get you off without anything else?”
His eyebrows rise. He’s always loved riding her orgasm to his own, and he’s certainly gotten her off long and hard before, but without any friction, especially on a second round… “Don’t know, but I’m up for trying.”
She squeezes him again. “I thought you’d be.”
“You keep doing that and it’ll be a lot easier.” Sure friction works better than pressure, but pressure is good, too. And the pressure of her clenching around him, as his thumb rubbed in slow, firm circles, faster to get her closer, stopping dead when anyone walked by them to spin it out, letting the music dictate his pace, yeah, that was awfully sweet.
Apparently the correct answer is no. Just pressure, sweet, hot, pulsing pressure isn’t enough. Not on a second round, not after two scotches. Maybe if they had done this first, but they didn’t, so it’s not enough to get him off.
It is enough to get him so frustrated he wants to cry. It’s enough to keep him rock hard, begging for any friction, at all, because by that point even the suggestion of friction would do it for him, let alone any real friction.
And it’s enough that once she calmed all the way back down again, she made sure to have a good firm hold on the base of his dick as she pulled off because he would have gotten off otherwise.
And it is more than enough to make sure that once she had him standing, all she had to do was slip her mouth down his dick once, and his head was thrown back, and he was shaking, trying not to yell at how good that climax felt.
And maybe he does have an exhibitionist streak, and maybe in ten years waiting to get home will make sense, but right now, he’s with the sexiest woman on earth and he loves her more than life itself and he’s high as a kite on all the happy chemicals flooding through his body and this feels so damn good that he can’t imagine not doing it.
They stand there, leaning against the wall and each other, relaxing, kissing gently, and this is just all sorts of fine.
On the ride home, he catches Palmer’s eye, and knows that Jimmy gets this, and he suddenly feels really sorry for Tony that he was hooking up with nameless strangers for all those years and missed out on it.
Chapter 95: Dirty Girl Scout
“What are they talking about?” Breena asks Abby as she dances close to her.
Abby grins, watching the exchange. “Sex. Tim and Jimmy are scaring Tony.”
Ziva laughs. “What are they telling him?”
“About having sex here.”
“You had sex here?” Ziva asks the two other girls, not exactly surprised by this, but it wasn't something she was expecting either.
Breena nods.
Abby says, “Yes, half an hour ago? Something like that.” A huge grin lighting her face.
“God, they’re so pretty,” Breena says, eyes on the boys, wrapping her arms around Abby.
And Abby nods, they really are. This was definitely going on her list of favorite Tim looks. Sure she loves the rock and roll version of kilt wear, but this version of it is awfully fine, too.
He’s sitting there, relaxed, happy smirk on his face, back against the booth, right arm draped along the back, left arm stretched forward, fingers on the rim of his glass. Long, smooth fingers, tipped with black nail polish, circling gently around the rim of a scotch neat.
You might need a jacket to get into this club, but he took it off a few minutes after getting here. An hour of dancing means the maroon dress shirt he had under it now has the sleeves rolled to mid forearm, showing off his wrist cuff. An hour of dancing also means that he’s undone the top button and his tie is loose.
What they were doing half an hour ago means that his hair’s a little more messed up than usual, something she always appreciates. Add in naked legs, strong calves on display, and yeah, she really likes that look.Tony’s in the middle, and like always, he’s pretty. And honestly, he looks a whole lot like he usually does. Suit on, pressed, perfect, cool. Her eyes just sort of skim over him, and it’s not that she doesn’t love Tony, it’s more that classically handsome features and style just never really interested Abby. But Ziva, who’s eyes just skimmed over Tim in almost exactly the same way her eyes skimmed over Tony, is watching him, looking like she wants to eat him alive.
Abby knows that Tony’s pretty. Knows that he’s magazine cover attractive. And while she can appreciate that, it’s not the sort of thing she ever really looked twice at.
Jimmy, on the other hand, like Tim, has that sort of different edge that gets her attention. And Jimmy is certainly looking fine tonight, too. He’s also taken off the jacket, and his tie wandered off at some point as well, leaving him in brown slacks, a brown vest, and a white button down, with the top two buttons undone.He’s leaning in toward the table, face warm and animated, talking to the guys about Ziva’s shoes, which is freaking Tony out a little. Like Tim, he’s holding his drink, but Jimmy’s the driver, so his is probably Diet Sprite. Unlike Tim, his glass is tall, and he’s got his hands touching, fingertips to fingertips, thumb to thumb, with the glass between his palms.
For the first time ever, Abby notices that Jimmy has really nice hands. And she also notices that a wedding ring on a guy is awfully sexy, and is suddenly really looking forward to seeing one, putting one, on Tim.
“Jimmy really likes your shoes,” she says to Ziva.
Ziva laughs. “It is good to know someone appreciates them.”
“Tony does too, just not as much as Jimmy does.”
“No one appreciates shoes as much as Jimmy does,” Breena adds, a wicked smile on her face.
Abby lifts an eyebrow. “So what is it with him and shoes?”
Breena smiles and pulls Abby and Ziva close, the three of them dancing together. “He likes the way they feel against him and the way they look when I wear them while we have sex.”
Ziva laughs while Abby says, “That’s it? We figured he liked to wear them.”
“How do you even know about him and shoes?” Breena asks, an amused and somewhat curious expression on her face. Abby’s not exactly Jimmy’s type, but she’s close enough, and if they had gotten together at some point, it wouldn’t have shocked her.
Abby reads Breena’s look. “Nothing like that. He was the main witness for one of our cases, but he blocked a lot of the memories, so I hypnotized him to get the details out of his head, and it turned out the main thing he was paying attention to was what sort of shoes Ziva and I were wearing. Tim was there and teased the hell out of him for a few days after that.”
That makes Breena laugh. “Tim was teasing Jimmy about sex? Pot, hello, it’s Kettle, you’re black.”
“Yeah. I know. But neither of them knew that about each other at that point. That’s part of what they’re talking about right now.”
“Really?” Breena asks.
“Yeah.”
“They look pretty cool with each other,” Breena says, eyeing both of them, watching as they double team teasing Tony.
“Yeah, they really do.” Abby nods.
And Breena and Abby just stare at each other and smile, both thinking the same general thing.
Ziva dances and listens, feeling a little left out, but not in a bad way. The four of them are getting closer and closer with each other, and being outside of that isn’t a bad thing, it’s just the way things are.
And it’s not something she minds being on the outside of. She loves Tim and Jimmy, but she can also see the way Breena and Abby watch them, and she knows they do not see the same thing she does when she looks.
And she sees something else, something that will never be true for her and Tony, let alone her and Tony and Tim and Abby or her and Tony and Breena and Jimmy, and that’s a sexual attraction that’s divorced from jealousy. Tony would have a fit if she looked at Tim the way Breena’s looking at him right now. And for that matter, she’d be miffed if Breena was looking at Tony the way she’s looking at Tim right now. But Breena and Abby are dancing together, undressing their guys with their eyes, flirting with each other and both of the guys, and enjoying it.
Judging from the way both of the guys are watching them dance, they don’t have a problem with it either.
Actually, judging from the way both of the guys are watching them dance, the only potential problem is that Abby and Breena might decide to stop dancing, which would probably make the guys pout.
Abby pulls both her and Breena closer, sliding against them as the beat shifts, keeping her eyes on Tim as she does it, and Ziva decides to ask, “Are the four of you sleeping together?”
Abby laughs, Breena blushes, and Ziva’s been reading people for way too long to miss the look that flits between the two of them.
“What’s making you think of that? Breena asks.
“Both of you are flirting with both of your guys, but not Tony.”
Abby grins. “Are we allowed to flirt with Tony?” and though there is a smile on her face, it’s a serious question.
Ziva rocks against Abby, Breena at her back, and thinks about the ring newly on her finger, and knows that whatever she says right now, they’ll honor. She thinks about years of Tony off hooking up with any girl out there and the amount of change he had to go through to get to a place where he could be monogamous.
“No.”
Breena hugs Ziva. “Then we won’t. And no, we aren’t all sleeping together.” Though she notices another look that goes between Abby and Breena, and can see the two of them are thinking about it. “But, okay, last time we went clubbing, Abby and I danced together really close, got the boys wound up and… well, you can see the way they’re watching us. Let’s just say that night was a whole lot of fun.”
Abby nods. “So much fun!”
“That’s where you vanished to? We left to dance alone for a little while, came back to the table, found a pile of money, and you were gone.”
“We headed home,” Breena says.
“You got all the way home?” Abby asks with a half-disbelieving grin.
“Yeah, but I also got off twice on the ride, which was kind of interesting since I was driving. You?”
“Hotel three blocks down, both of us were too buzzed, too distracted, to drive.”
“And you are hoping to do something like that again?” Ziva asks.
“Not exactly, since we’re your ride home, but watching them squirm is a lot of fun,” Breena says, eyes on Jimmy, but occasionally glancing at Tim, both of the boys watching the three of them dance together.
“And unlike Ziva’s club, there are a lot of decent hidden nooks in this one,” Abby adds, stroking Breena’s neck.
“Well, yeah, after we caught you and Tim last time, we made sure to pick a place with lots of room. Didn’t want to have to wait or cramp your style.”
“Thank you.”
Ziva feels like this shouldn’t be much of a surprise, there was that whole thing with Jimmy and Lee, and well, sure Tim looks pretty mild, but anyone paying attention knows he’s got something of an exhibitionist streak, still… “This is something you regularly do, sex out in public?”
“Is my lab public?” Abby asks.
“Yes.”
“Then yes.”
Ziva makes a mental note to always make a lot of noise when heading to the lab. Sure Tim had told her about that one time, but she hadn’t realized one time was actually a habit.
“Since Molly, it’s a treat for us. You and Tony don’t?”
“No. I’m not good at… quiet… and it would be off putting to have an audience.”
Breena nods and Abby does too, leaning in to whisper into her ear, her hand stroking down Ziva’s arm, “Don’t want anyone calling the cops?”
“Something along those lines.” No, not really, but she doesn’t want to explain why having people watch is a problem.
Breena leans closer to them. “Tony just about spit his drink across the table when you did that. Looks like he’s enjoying the show, too. You want us to break this up and back off?”
Ziva smiles, looking at Tony, seeing a whole lot of hot, naked lust in his eyes, and then wrapped her free arm around Breena’s neck, adding a little grind to the way she was dancing with Abby, and watched his eyes bulge. And well, maybe this was sort of fun if it got him to look at her like that.
“We dance until the end of this song, then let us get our men.”
Abby rests one hand on Ziva’s hip and the other on Breena’s keeping them both pressed up close to her. “Good plan.”
The song ends and Abby stalks toward the table where the boys are. Tim’s eyes meet hers as she’s a few feet away, and a smile lights his face. She leans down to him, brushing her lips over his in a warm kiss, while wrapping her hand in his tie, gently pulling him up.
“Dance time?” he asks.
“Oh yeah.” Though she pauses for a moment to take a sip of her drink. She’d gotten it entirely for the name, a Dirty Girl Scout was just too good to pass up, luckily for her it’s tasty, too. Basically it’s a grasshopper, minty, chocolaty, and very smooth.She sets the glass down, grabs the napkins under it, tucking them into his pocket. He feels her do it and grins widely. Since Zyphyer, he has brought tissues every time they’ve been clubbing, but they also already used the ones he brought.
Yes, that look in her eye was indeed signaling good things about to happen.
The music is loud and hard, throbbing away in a strong, sexy beat. They find an easy pace, pelvis to pelvis, legs entwined, dipping and grinding as the music dictated.
“Like the show?” Abby asks.
He kisses her, lips on hers, sliding down her jaw to her ear. “When don’t I?”
She grinds against him, getting what she’s asking across. But it’s been less than an hour since the last time, and he’s had a few drinks, so not much is happening for him on that end. Tim kisses her again, circling behind her, trailing his hands down her sides as he presses in close behind her, placing wet kisses on her throat and shoulder, fingers resting gently on her hips.
“My tongue’s always up for another round,” he says, flicking it lightly along her earlobe.
She turns in his arms, kisses him back, long and deep. “That’s an idea. But what if I want to take my time, get you good and hard for a nice,” she bites his lip, pulling it a little, “slow” she punctuates that by dragging her tongue across his lip, “fuck?”
His eyes sparkle at her, warm with sex and good humor, as he brushes his fingers through her hair. “Then keep doing what you’re doing, I’ll get there sooner or later.”
“Good.”
He kisses her again, sucking gently on her tongue.
“What were you drinking? It’s really tasty.”
“A Dirty Girl Scout.”
He raises one eyebrow, looking very amused at that idea. “A Dirty Girl Scout?”
“Yeah. Yummy, huh?”
“On so many levels. Were you ever a Girl Scout?”
She sees the gleam in his eye and knows where this is going to go.
“Oh yeah.” No not really, but this could be a lot of fun. “Until I was seventeen. Helped out with the summer camps until I was twenty.”
His eyes slide over her body as his fingers trail from her shoulders to her hips. “So you’d know something about Dirty Girl Scouts?”
“Maybe. Is that the sort of thing you’d like to hear about?”
“Oh yeah.” He kisses her neck, and she turns so her back is to his chest, following the music, letting it dictate their moves. He strokes his hands down her arms, twining his fingers with hers, and then feathering over her hands. “I’m wondering,” he says, lips on her ear, “what you looked like when you were seventeen. Mostly like you now? Little shorter maybe? Fewer tattoos?”
“Same height I am now. I weighed a little less. My hair was long, mid-back long, and blonde with purple and blue streaks, and the only tattoos I had were the ones I got with Paulette. So the P, the smiley on my finger, and the angels.” He kisses each angel on her shoulders.
“And did you have a uniform?”
“Little green skirt, white button up shirt with green stripes, little green tie, sash with badges, something like that, you mean?”
Tim’s imaging that. Seventeen-year-old Abby in a Girl Scout uniform, and part of him is sure that like sex in the graveyard this is another thing that’ll be added to the why he’s going straight to Hell when he dies list, but he likes the idea too much to stop thinking about it. After all, it’s not like he’s having sex with a real seventeen-year-old. Not like he’s got any interest in any real seventeen-year-old. But this image, teen Abby, innocent looking outfit, maybe hiked just a bit too high and unbuttoned just a bit too much, yeah, that’s hitting most of his buttons just right.
One thing he’s always found interesting is that his brain and his body aren’t always on the same page. For example, right now his brain is awfully turned on. That idea, along with real Abby pressed up tight, dancing against him, the way she feels and smells, and the sound of her voice filling in extra details (White knee socks! Black mary janes!) about her seventeen-year-old self, all of that means his brain is in a very turned on sex-right-now-yes!, sort of place. His dick on the other hand, does not seem to have gotten this message, yet, and it’s just lying there. According to it, he could be doing his taxes or something else completely unsexy.
Oh well, it’s not in charge, and as he said, his tongue is always up for another round. And he’ll happily enjoy talking each other off if that’s what’s on the menu for right now. After all, the club isn’t closing anytime soon, and his dick’ll get the message sooner or later.
Abby’s talking. “And of course, no boys are allowed anywhere near a Girl Scout camp, so a big part of being a scout was smuggling them in, and a big part of being a counselor was tossing them out.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, gotta find places to hide them, to find a few quiet moments together. And of course, if you’re in charge, you’ve got to be even better at finding those places. And the summer I was twenty, I was a counselor, and we were only a few miles down from a group of Wilderness Scouts. They were on the far side of the lake.”
And Tim gets where this is going, and he smiles. This is something they haven’t played with, tag team storytelling. He also appreciates her fast forwarding a few years, because if she’s seventeen, he’s thirteen, and well, thirteen-year-old Tim McGee would have been willing to give his left arm to get laid, but he also wasn’t anything anyone needs to be thinking about like that. Sixteen-year-old Tim was awfully lanky and gangly, but not nearly as… well… young.
“And if there’s one thing Wilderness Scouts like, it’s Girl Scouts.”
“Yeah. So, I was doing my nightly rounds, making sure none of the girls had wandered off in search of her very own Wilderness Scout.”
“Walking around the lake, looking for dallying scouts?”
“Yeah, seeing if I can find anyone taking advantage of the moonlight.”
“And you did. But not like that. I would have been sitting at the side of the lake, watching the sky, taking notes on where the stars were, working on my Astronomy badge.”
“’Waiting for someone?’ I’d ask.”
He can see it in his mind, she’d be standing over him, looking down. “’Ummm…’” Because sixteen-year-old Tim McGee was not what anyone would have ever called smooth.
“’You’re on the wrong side of the lake.’”
“’Sorry.’ I’d be scrambling around, trying to grab all of my stuff and probably dropping half of it as I did it.”
“I’d laugh a little, and help you pack up. ‘Astronomy?’”
“’Uh yeah… Trees are in the way on our side. Needed a better view.’”
“’Oh. Well.’ And you’re looking straight at me, nervous and adorable, hair loose, some of it in your eyes, and I’d reach over and brush it away. ‘You can stay, if you want.’”
“’Thanks.’ I’d sit back down, not looking at you, blushing from head to toe, rambling on about Pleiades and what I was charting.”
“I’d sit down next to you, listen for a bit, watching the stars. ‘What’s your name?’”
“’Oh, yeah, Tim. Hi. How about you?’”
“’Abby.’”
“I’d hold out my hand to shake yours, half polite, half just wanting to touch you.” He pulls her a step closer, kissing her shoulder as they dance. “Wishing I could do something like that, but sure I’m way too much of a geek for you to ever think about me like that.”
“But I like geeks, especially cute, young ones on the beach in the moonlight. I’d take your hand, trailing my thumb over your palm, not letting go, and then lick my lips. ‘Hello, Tim.’”
He grins at her, desire and amusement lighting his face, watching her lips, and says, “’Hello, Abby.’”
“I don’t think you’d be grinning at me like that.”
“Well, no. Real-life-sixteen-year-old Tim would have been studying the sand, blushed so hard he glowed in the dark, started stammering about stars, and probably run away. But I don’t have to be real-life-sixteen-year-old Tim, that’s the fun of fantasy, right?”
“Right.”
“And this version of Tim is staring at you like you’re the most delicious thing he’s ever seen and he wants to eat you, slowly, savoring every mouthful.”
Abby laughs. “I like that idea.”
“Good. Because I’d lean in toward you, close my eyes, and kiss you, just a gentle brush of lips on lips.” And he demonstrated, letting his lips meet hers for a second, before pulling away. “And then I’d look at you, see if you were angry at me—“
“But I’m not. I’m smiling, still holding your hand, giving it a little squeeze.”
“I’d scoot a little closer to you, lean in, and kiss you again.” And once again he did. A bit longer, more confident this time.
And this time her lips moved against his, stroking gently.
“Seriously, are you two trying to out fuck the Palmers?” Tony asks with a laugh, his voice cutting into their game as he and Ziva danced close to them.
Abby blows Tony a raspberry and looks around, noticing that Jimmy and Breena are also dancing close and necking.
“I don’t think it’s a competition,” Tim answers. “We’re just playing.”
“Uh huh,” says Tony.
“Who’s winning?” Abby asks Ziva.
Ziva grins at them, her eyes scanning between the two couples. “I think Jimmy and Breena are a few points ahead.” Jimmy’s got one hand on the small of Breena’s back, the other on her cheek as they dance forehead to forehead, looking into each other’s eyes.
Abby kisses Tim, soft and gentle, and then pulls back and turns to Ziva and Tony, flicking her hands toward the far side of the club. “Then shoo. Let us catch up!”
Ziva winks at them, and edges Tony further away.
Abby kisses him again, and once again it’s soft and gentle, and a little tentative. His hands slip down her back, one of them twining with her fingers, the other edging down to the bottom of her skirt and just lightly brushing her leg.
“So, you, me, the lake, night time, kissing,” she says.
“Oh yeah. You’re holding my hand, and my heart’s beating a million times a minute.”
She places her hand on his chest, feeling his heartbeat. “And you’re so cute when your flustered.”
“And I am, because no one has ever just looked at me and liked me like that.”
“Idiots.”
He smiles and kisses her again, letting his fingers ghost along the side of her face and neck. “I’d pet you, like that. Shocked at how soft your skin is, how good it feels, how good just four fingers against your skin can make me feel.”
She closed her hand around his, pressing his fingers to her throat. “Feel that, how fast my heart is, how much my body loves yours touching mine?”
“God, yeah.”
She drew his fingers to the dip of her collar bone. “You’d undo my top button.”
“You have your shirt buttoned all the way up?”
“I do in this fantasy.”
“All right!” His fingers traced two inches further down, very softly, just the barest graze of fingertips on flesh, then paused, hovering.
“’You can get the next button, too.’”
He nods, his fingers sliding another two inches down, to the top of her dress. “Where are your hands?”
She squeezes the one holding his. “The other is on your back, inching under your shirt, petting your skin.” She doesn’t exactly mimic that. Her hand stays on the outside of his shirt, but it does stroke over his low back, just above where it’s tucked into his kilt.
He’s loving this slow, gentle touch, and thinking this might be a good game for a time when they are home and alone and have plenty of room and can get completely naked. Though, if they were home, and alone, and could get completely naked, they probably wouldn’t play with the idea of this. He’d just peel that dress off of her, and she’d have him naked in a minute, and this slow tentative dance wouldn’t happen.
But it is happening, and she’s kissing him soft and gentle, and he says, but doesn’t do, because they are in the middle of a dance floor and this isn’t Zyphyer, “I’d flick open the third button, and slip my hand into your blouse, skimming over your breast. So soft, and so light, and my hand would be shaking.” And that idea, that image, her sitting on the sand next to him, holding his hand, petting his back while he lightly strokes her breast starts to wake his body up, lets it notice that his brain is thinking sex in a big way.
They’re dancing close enough that she notices the slight stirring and grinds against him, encouraging it.
He smiles, kissing her soft and open, letting his lips make love to her, as his body rapidly starts to catch up to his brain.
She slips her hand from his low back to his hip. “I’d start to tug on your shirt. Letting you know I want you to take it off.”
“’Only if you take yours off, too.’”
And she grins. “I would. I’d pull back a little, kneeling, make sure you could see me, and undo the last of the buttons.”
“I’d reach out, hands still shaking a little, and push it off your shoulders, and then sit there and just stare at your beautiful skin under the moon.”
“’Tim.’”
“’Yeah?’”
“’You’re still wearing your shirt.’”
“’Oh. Yeah.’ I’d yank it off, regretting the few seconds it was over my head and I couldn’t see you.”
“’You can touch, you know.’”
“I’d lick my lips, and scoot closer to you, pressing chest to chest and kissing you, hard and fast and deep.” He presses into her, rubbing his erection against her. “And your skin on mine would have me so hard. I’d be breathing fast and feeling so good all over.”
“I’d push you back, so you’re lying on the sand, and then straddle you, rubbing against you before lying against your chest and kissing you.”
“And this is why fantasy Tim is better than real life Tim, because real life Tim would have lost it right there.”
“Really?”
“Half-naked girl rubbing up against me, oh yeah. Of course, real life sixteen-year-old Tim could get it up again in about four minutes, so it wouldn’t have been that big of a problem, besides the whole wet and sticky thing.”
“Yeah, but I’ve got plans for fantasy Tim, and they don’t involve being wet and sticky, yet.”
“Yet?”
She grins and kisses him, then pulls back, letting her hand ghost gently across the front of his kilt, giving him a quick squeeze before resettling on his neck. “Yet. Fantasy Tim isn’t going back to the Wilderness Scout Camp a virgin.”
“Fantasy Tim is completely on board with that plan and wholeheartedly agrees with your goals,” Tim laughs as he says that, and she giggles, too. His hands settle on her low back, and her other hand joins the one at his neck.
He can feel it, soft, cool sand at his back, her weight on his body, naked back under his hands, her hands on his neck, as they kiss.
He shifts one hand from her back to her leg, once again just below the hem of her dress, warm skin on skin, and she rubs her leg against his, drawing it up and a slow, firm slide.
“I would have been wearing shorts, and the kilt’s pretty close to that. Love feeling your skin on mine.”
“Yeah, this is good.” Her leg slips back down his, and for a few beats they just dance, kissing a little, feeling the press of each other’s body and the throb of desire and loud music.
“I’d roll us over, and lean back a little, weight on my right elbow. Never seen real live breasts before and I want to look and touch and kiss.”
“You would.”
He runs his hands over her arms, and then begins to stroke the tip of her index finger with his left hand, letting her feel how he’d be touching her. “Oh yeah. Love your breasts. So soft and perfect. I’d be nuzzling, licking the one, petting the other. Seeing what sort of touch makes you squirm, what makes you gasp or moan.”
She presses her face into his neck, licking his earlobe. “That. That light, gentle lick. The way you’re just rolling your tongue around my nipple, all wet, soft, and tickly. That gets me moaning. And I’d want to make you sound like that. Want to hear you. So my hand would slip down to your dick, and give you a squeeze.”
He kisses the top of her ear, and quietly moans for her. “Just like that, baby.”
She looks at him and grins. “’Love hearing you like that.’”
“’Love the fact you make me sound like this. Want to make you cry out, make you scream my name.’ I’d kiss my way down your chest, down your stomach, get to the top of your skirt and start to tug it off.”
“I’d lift my hips, give you some help getting me naked.”
“’You’re so pretty.’”
“”Pretty?’”
He stops dancing, wrapping his fingers in her hair, and pulls her head back a little, kissing her throat, and then looks deeply into her eyes while saying, “Absolutely fucking gorgeous. Moonlight made flesh. Flesh made desire. Desire driving me crazy, making me want to bury my tongue and fingers and cock in you all at once, make you come a thousand times, calling my name, arching against my body, wet and hot and slick and tight, and sex and love and fuck and all of it made flesh and real and my body on and in yours, and yours on mine, and both of us slipping against each other, rocking toward ecstasy, riding higher and higher on the pleasure of skin on skin.”
“Fuck,” she breathes it, holding his gaze with hers, reveling in the feel of those words and the heat in his eyes. “No more fantasy, Tim. Let’s get off the dance floor.”
“God, yes!”
Back room, private room, ladies room, nook behind a door, storage alcove, back alley, he’s got no idea where they are and could care even less. There’s no one right nearby and that’s all that matters.
“Sit down,” Abby says.
And he does, legs in front of him, back against the wall, noticing the floor is a little cold, but she settles onto his lap, face to face, hiking up the kilt enough to get access to him, and slips onto him.
He bites his lip as his head falls back against the wall. “Fuck, baby!”
She groans softly, snuggling into him, spreading out her skirt a little. They could be, if you didn’t look at their faces or missed the slight rocking motion, just taking a break, snuggly and close.
He wraps his right arm around her, a gesture that did look tender and protective, while his left scoots under her skirt, finding her clit.
His lips press against her shoulder, and she turns a little to kiss his temple.
“Slow?” he asks.
“Yeah.”
So his thumb begins a soft, languid dance, barely moving over her skin.
“So good.” She gives him a quick and firm squeeze, and he groans. “I was wondering, can you get me off hard enough, slow enough, to get you off without anything else?”
His eyebrows rise. He’s always loved riding her orgasm to his own, and he’s certainly gotten her off long and hard before, but without any friction, especially on a second round… “Don’t know, but I’m up for trying.”
She squeezes him again. “I thought you’d be.”
“You keep doing that and it’ll be a lot easier.” Sure friction works better than pressure, but pressure is good, too. And the pressure of her clenching around him, as his thumb rubbed in slow, firm circles, faster to get her closer, stopping dead when anyone walked by them to spin it out, letting the music dictate his pace, yeah, that was awfully sweet.
Apparently the correct answer is no. Just pressure, sweet, hot, pulsing pressure isn’t enough. Not on a second round, not after two scotches. Maybe if they had done this first, but they didn’t, so it’s not enough to get him off.
It is enough to get him so frustrated he wants to cry. It’s enough to keep him rock hard, begging for any friction, at all, because by that point even the suggestion of friction would do it for him, let alone any real friction.
And it’s enough that once she calmed all the way back down again, she made sure to have a good firm hold on the base of his dick as she pulled off because he would have gotten off otherwise.
And it is more than enough to make sure that once she had him standing, all she had to do was slip her mouth down his dick once, and his head was thrown back, and he was shaking, trying not to yell at how good that climax felt.
And maybe he does have an exhibitionist streak, and maybe in ten years waiting to get home will make sense, but right now, he’s with the sexiest woman on earth and he loves her more than life itself and he’s high as a kite on all the happy chemicals flooding through his body and this feels so damn good that he can’t imagine not doing it.
They stand there, leaning against the wall and each other, relaxing, kissing gently, and this is just all sorts of fine.
On the ride home, he catches Palmer’s eye, and knows that Jimmy gets this, and he suddenly feels really sorry for Tony that he was hooking up with nameless strangers for all those years and missed out on it.
May 19, 2013
Shards To A Whole: An NCIS Fanfiction
McGee centric character study/romance. Want to start at the beginning? Click here.
Chapter 94: Sex, Drugs, and Rock and Roll
“What are you two doing next Saturday?” Jimmy asked Tim and Tony during the last week of June.
“Nothing planned.”
“I’d have to ask Ziva, but I don’t think we’ve got anything going on.”
“Good. Molly’s finally sleeping through the night, so Breena’s parents are taking her for the night as a late anniversary present. And we were hoping you’d be interested in getting dressed up and going out clubbing with us.” The six of them hadn’t been out on a date night since before Molly was born, so that was sounding awfully good.
Tim smiled, clubbing with Abby is always a good thing. “We can do that.”
“Even if Ziva has plans, I think she’d reschedule for that.”
The plan was to meet up at Tim and Abby’s place, because they lived closest to everything, and then consolidate into one car and go from there.
It’s getting onto seven, and everyone should be there soon. Tim’s ready to go, dressed, made up, and looking forward to tonight. Abby’s finishing up her hair, she’s pulling it back into the two little buns, one on each side of her head, and doing something sort of Lolita Goth, in a little lacy black dress with petticoats and high boots.
He thinks it’s ridiculously cute and way too hot.
The bell rings and he heads for the door.
“Hey. Tony... Oh.” Tony is in a suit. A really nice charcoal gray suit. With a dress shirt, silk tie, and dress shoes. Ziva’s in something green, silky and slinky.
Just then Palmer and Breena showed up. Palmer’s in a suit, too. Granted Tony in gray looks like James Bond and Palmer in brown looks like the professor in charge of the Library Science department at a particularly esteemed liberal arts college. Meanwhile Breena’s in a halter dress that shows off a lot of naked back.
Tim looks at himself in a kilt, boots, and T-shirt and sighs. “Next time, I think we’ve got to define what dressed up and clubbing means. Come in. We’ll get changed. Palmer, it’s your anniversary, where are we going?”
“Somewhere you can wear the kilt, but you’ll need a jacket and tie to go with it.”
“Okay.”
“Is there somewhere in DC that you are dressed for?” Jimmy asks.
Abby comes out. “Three places.” She looks at the other two couples, sighs and heads back to their bedroom. “Give me about ten minutes.”
Breena’s staring at Tim. “Is that black nail polish?”
He looks at his hands. “Yeah.”
She squints up at him. “Eyeliner?”
He nods.
“Cool. When you get dressed up, you get dressed up. Next time, you pick the place.”
“Will do. Grab yourself something to drink; we’ll be ready soon.”
He quickly washed off the eye makeup and brushed through his hair to tame it back down again, but left on the nail polish. About five minutes after that saw him in a maroon button down, black suit jacket, black tie, and kilt.
“Really, you think him in makeup is cool?” Tony is asking Breena as he heads out of the bedroom.
She shrugs. “Boys in eyeliner is hot in general, and for Tim in specific, yeah, it looks good. Kind of dangerous.”
Tony’s staring at her like she’s speaking in tongues. “You have met McGee, right?”
“Tony, I’m right here.”
Tony looks over at him. “Yeah, but you’re not exactly the poster boy for sex, drugs, or rock and roll.”
“He certainly looked like him five minutes ago,” Breena says.
Tim smiles. “I love sex, didn’t like the drugs I tried, and rock and roll is great, but I like jazz better.”
“What do you know about drugs?” Tony asks.
“I went to college, too, you know.”
“Yes, but you spent the whole time studying.”
Tim smiles, a little wicked glint in his eyes. “Not the whole time.”
Abby comes out, makeup toned down, hair loose around her shoulders, wearing a pretty, and, for her, conservative pink dress and says, “All ready?”
“Yeah,” Jimmy answers, ready to get onto the dancing part of the night.
“You really did illegal drugs in college?” Tony asks Tim as they drive into town. Jimmy’s at the wheel, because he knows where they’re going, and he and Breena are the only ones with a car that seats six. Say what you like about Minivans, but if you want to go somewhere with a bunch of your friends, they’re convenient.
“You didn’t?” Jimmy asks.
“No! Basketball team. Random piss tests. Everyone else around me was playing with coke, but I stuck to alcohol. So, really, you did drugs?”
Tim rolls his eyes a little, surprised that this would get to Tony. “I did a lot of things in college.”
“But, illegal, really?”
“Tony, how many felonies do you think I commit a year? In a good year, it’s five or six. I’ve got most of the guys we put away beat by a long margin. And we’re not just talking about civil liberties infractions here, I mean, I’m guilty of cyber-attacks on the US government, which is considered terrorism, attacks on foreign governments, which is espionage, and honestly, since I’ve had orders for some of it from Vance or Jarvis, possibly causus belli should it ever get traced back to us.”
That stops Tony, makes him think. Tim knows that Tony knows he doesn’t always play by the rules, but he’s getting the sense that exactly how far off the beaten path he sometimes goes is just dawning on him. Finally Tony says, “You’re not killing people.”
“Exactly. And I’ve got no problem breaking the law to catch the guys that do. And in college I had no problem breaking it to try a few new things that I very quickly found I didn’t like, and never tried again.” Which might not have been precisely true. Seventeen-year-old Tim McGee, fresh out of his dad’s house, rebelling against everything the old guy stood for couldn’t have cared less about legal or not. But he didn’t want to get into the story of why he did start caring again, and why it wasn’t long after playing around with drugs. Not with Tony, anyway.
“What did you try?” Abby asks, and he realizes this is something they’ve never talked about.
“Pot once. Just made me sleepy. Didn’t feel good enough to be worth the money or risk.”
“You probably got three quarters oregano with just a little real pot, then,” Jimmy adds.
“Could be, not like I knew what I was doing. Peyote laced with acid. Didn’t like that at all. E.”
“I thought you didn’t party,” Jimmy says.
“I didn’t, well not much. Didn’t mean I wasn’t interested in trying it.”
“But you didn’t like it?” Breena asks.
“It was better than pot, way better than peyote. I just really don’t like being out of control in a way where I can’t get it back if I need it. That’s also why you’ve never seen me anything more than mildly drunk.”
“No safeword,” Abby says.
“Exactly.”
“How did you pass the drug test?” Tony asks.
“Six years between doing the drugs and the test. All of that was first semester freshman year.”
Tony just stares at him like he’d grown a second head. “You were doing peyote in your freshman year?”
He holds up his index finger. “Once. We were playing Call of Cthulu and the GM thought that each of us taking a button before the game would make it more intense. One of the other players thought lacing them with LSD would be even better.”
CthuluAbby winces and then covers her mouth with her hands. “Oh, that’s the worst idea I’ve ever heard!”
Tim’s nodding at her. “Yeah, it really was.”
“What’s a Cthulu?” Breena asks.
“Nasty squid demon-god,” Abby says. “No wonder you didn’t like it.”
“Yeah. Good rule of thumb, avoid hallucinogenic drugs and horror role-playing games based on the idea that you’re slowly going insane. It’s been almost twenty years, and I still won’t read Lovecraft.”
“So, wait.” Tony’s staring at him, looking really confused. “You little D&D geeks were snorking down hardcore drugs while you played?”
Tim rolls his eyes a little. “Not usually. Most of the time it was caffeine, cigarettes, and sugar.”
“You smoked?” Tony doesn’t look like he believed that, either.
“Not really. But if you’re in a room with five other guys, and four of them are smoking, taking a drag or two at the start of the night knocks out your sense of smell long enough to make being there bearable. Palmer, you’re awfully quiet, how about you?”
“Lots of stuff, but Special K was my favorite. I worked in a vet’s office, so I could get it easy. Pre-med and bio background meant I knew how much to take for a nice glow.”
“Wait, were you selling it?” Tony’s staring at Palmer like he’s never seen him before, too.
“No, I meant I could buy it easy. I handled the orders, so getting an extra bottle or two a year wasn’t an issue.”
“Did you like it?” Ziva asks.
“Oh yeah.” He grins at the memory. “Unlike Tim, I liked everything I tried. Liked it a lot. Tried a whole lot, too. K was a good way to cool off on the weekend. E was good, too, lot of fun with pot. Then I was twenty, thirsty all the time, just madly thirsty, and one day I was chugging soda, like maybe six liters of it in two hours, trying to make thirsty stop. Two days later, when I got out of the diabetic coma and the doctors explained how close to dead I had been, I decided taking better care of myself was a good idea.”
Palmer rolled his eyes a little, glancing away from traffic to the rest of them. “I suppose it’s sort of funny. I tried everything I could get my hands on for two solid years, and then I almost died from an overdose of sugar. Anyway, once I was out of the hospital, that was the end of sugar, most carbs, and all the drugs. Started hitting the gym and yoga, and I’m a lot healthier now.”
Tony just stares at the two other guys. Then he looked at the girls. “Let me guess,” he asks Breena, “you used to shoot heroin?”
“Nope. No drugs for me.”
“Ziva?”
“Not recreationally. But my training involved being subjected to some lesser known compounds to get used to them. It’s much easier to keep your head if you know what is happening to you.”
“Of course it did. Abby?”
She smiles. “Like Jimmy, you name it, I tried it at least once. And I got hired before the mandatory drug tests, so that’s how I got in.”
Two hours later, the girls are dancing with each other. The guys are relaxing at the table they’d staked out when they got to the club.
Tony looks at Tim and says, “Really, a kilt?”
Tim smirks a little.
“Nail polish?”
Tim looks at his fingernails. All night people have been looking at him like he’s pretty cool, and especially because he’s standing next to Tony, he’s really been enjoying it. “It’s black.”
“You don’t dress up in her clothing when you’re alone, do you?”
Tim grins and raises an eyebrow. “If I do?”
Tony shudders a little.
“I’m 6’1” and 183. I’d look dumb as hell in her clothing.”
Palmer came back with the drinks. “Okay, I saw him shuddering. What are you freaking him out with now?”
“I’m not freaked out, it’s just weird.”
“The drugs or the kilt?” Palmer put the drinks in front of each of them.
“It’s a skirt.”
“So?” Jimmy says.
Tim takes a drink, watching the two of them. It feels pretty nice to have Jimmy not weirded out by this.
“We’re guys. Not wearing skirts is like one of the primary defining characteristics of guyness.”
“Tim?” Jimmy asks.
“Yeah?”
Jimmy kept his face straight and asks with a completely deadpan expression, “You got balls?”
Tim laughs, hard, leans back against the booth, sips his scotch, and says, “Last time I checked.”
And Jimmy just looks at Tony, huge smirk on his face.
“Yeah, but was that before you put the skirt on?” Tony asks.
“No, that was about twenty minutes ago when Abby and I snuck off and she was licking them.” Tim takes another drink, feeling especially mellow, a little wicked, and just wonderfully fine.
This time, instead of looking disturbed, Tony just grins, shaking his head.
Tim laughs again. “Ease of access.”
“You don’t need a kilt for that,” Jimmy adds.
Tim raises his eyebrow at Jimmy.
Jimmy snorts a quick laugh at them. “Come on, you didn’t invent the quickie. Back when twice a year was a good score for you,” he shifts his gaze from Tim to Tony, “and you were sticking your dick in any girl that would let you, I was having sex on every horizontal and most of the vertical surfaces at work, including Gibbs’ and Ducky’s desks. I can get her completely naked, me completely naked, both of us off, and dressed again in ten minutes, eight if I’m in scrubs and she’s not wearing pantyhose. And if you think doing it in the back hall of a club is kinky, try sneaking off during one of Ducky’s monologues to the storage closet, keeping the door open, having him think those noises you’re making are signs of fascination at his topic, and then making it back for the close, without him noticing.” Palmer settles back into his seat, takes a drink of his Diet Sprite, and looks immensely smug.
Tony shakes his head. “I think I’ve got it figured out. Neither of you ever got laid in college.”
This caused both Tim and Jimmy to bluster.
“Okay, not literally, I know you both got laid a few times. But regularly? Not even close. And to make up for it, you both want everyone on earth to know you’re having sex now.”
Tim and Jimmy both seem to think about that.
Tim shrugs. “That’s probably true.”
“I just really like sex,” Jimmy says.
“No.” Tony points at himself. “I just really like sex. Youlike sex in public that can get you fired or killed. Gibbs’ desk? He’d headslap your brains out through your nose.” He turns to Tim. “And you like... Hell, let’s not get to into that...”
“What do you like?” Jimmy asks Tim.
Tim smiles, sips his drink again. “Let’s put it this way, there’s a good shot that standing next to me, you look vanilla.”
“Really?” That’s got Jimmy’s interest. He’s staring at Tim, like if he looks hard enough he can figure this out.
Tim thinks about what he knows about Jimmy, and realizes it’s equally likely that standing next to Jimmy, he looks vanilla. Gibbs’ desk? Sex in Autopsy, with Ducky there? Jimmy’s got a pretty hardcore exhibitionism kink. “Maybe. What exactly is it with you and shoes?”
“Okay, can we not talk about that? The shoe thing is pretty creepy,” Tony says, staring at Jimmy.
“What? You look at Ziva in that outfit and your eyes stop going down when they hit her ankles? Right!”
“I’m not saying I don’t appreciate the shoes. I’m just saying I don’t know what designer, what they’re made of, or for that matter, what color they are, off the top of my head.” Palmer opened his mouth to answer, and Tony quickly cut in, “And I don’t want to know that you know that off the top of your head, either.”
Tim decides to get them off of Ziva’s shoes. “So, what you’re saying is, you think that because the two of us spent so much time being fairly timid introverts that now we’re showing off right and left because we can?”
“Yeah. For example,” Tony looks away from the other two to watch the girls. It’s a fairly fast song and the three of them are bopping around with each other. His eyes trace over Ziva from hair to shoes (they’re green) lingering on her curves. He sighs, eyes happy and warm at the sight of her dancing. “I love that outfit Ziva’s in. And I certainly want to have sex with her. But I’m not feeling any burning need to do it here. At home, where we’ve got plenty of room and time, and there aren’t two hundred other people, is perfectly fine.”
“Oh, we’ll do it when we get home, too,” Jimmy said with a very wide and happy grin, watching Breena dance, his eye tracking the sway of her skirt on her hips, and the long smooth expanse of naked back. “And probably in the morning, hopefully in the afternoon, as well. Breena’s parents have Molly until tomorrow night, and we are going to take advantage of it.”
“Too?” Tony looks away from Ziva to Jimmy. “Okay, I know he got in a quickie, when did you?”
“‘Bout an hour ago. You guys were dancing with your girls and didn’t notice us head off.”
“Back hallway?” Tim asks. There were a few good spots back there, and Tim was in no way surprised to find that the sort of club Jimmy and Breena liked had several good spots for a quiet fuck against the wall.
“Top floor.” Jimmy pointed to the second level of the club. “Just looked like we were dancing close and slow. Amazingly enough, the fact that I’ve got on pants in no way stopped or hindered that.”
“What do you do about the zipper? I hate getting caught in them,” Tim asks.
Jimmy takes a moment to think about that. “Never really thought about it. Just isn’t a problem for me.”
“You know how I deal with the zipper?” Tony said, voice low and conspiratorial. He waited a beat for them both to lean in to hear his answer. “By having my pants on the floor about ten feet away from my dick. Works every time.”
Tim snorts at him and rolls his eyes, then looks away from the guys to watch Abby dance. Sure, he was a little disappointed to not get to see the Lolita Goth outfit in action, but this little pink number, with the thin straps crisscrossing over her back is awfully good, too.
“So, have you ever had sex in public?” Jimmy asks Tony.
“Of course, back when I was in college, you know, when you’re supposed to do stuff like that.”
“In college you’re supposed to read books, go to class, and study,” Tim starts, not looking away from Abby, she’s saying something to Breena, watching him closely, and he knows that look means good things are going to start happening soon.
“And occasionally ingest hardcore narcotics,” Jimmy finishes.
Tony’s shaking his head. “Nerds. How did I end up with two nerds for best friends?” He sighs and points to himself. “Phys ed major. My job in college was to play basketball, party, and get laid. And let me tell you, if they had had an honors program for partying and getting laid, I would have gotten it. I set the standard for partying and getting laid. Young basketball players at Ohio State are still being told of the legendary DiNozzo partying and laid technique, and they seek to reach such heights, but fail. So, yeah, I’ve done it in public, with three girls, at once, in a room with something like one hundred and fifty other people, while my frat brothers took pictures. But I’m not in college anymore, so I don’t feel the need to act like it.”
“Plus Ziva isn’t going to let you get drunk and hook up with three co-eds,” Tim says.
Jimmy’s still thinking about that. “What were you doing with three of them? I get two. What was the third one doing?”
Tony wiggles his right hand at Jimmy.
“Oh. Yeah. Didn’t do anything like that in college.”
“Me either.”
Jimmy looks at Tim. “Two at once?”
He looks away from Abby to Jimmy. “Nope. Closest I ever got to that was taking Abby, Ziva, and Lee out undercover. You?”
“No.”
Tony takes a drink, settles back, enjoying his turn to look smug, watching the girls.
Tim stares at him, and his eyes narrow. “You know, what? I don’t buy it. This isn’t maturity. You’re just getting old. You were thirty-five when I got to NCIS, right?”
Tony looks at Tim. “Yeah.”
“So back then, you and your frat buddies were still heading off to Spring Break in Mexico and trying to relive your college days.”
Tony smirks. “And succeeding.”
“So, back then, you would have had sex in a club.”
“But I wouldn’t have done it in a skirt.”
“Only because you don’t have the balls to wear one.”
Tony snorts.
Jimmy finishes his drink. “You should change your wedding outfits to kilts. Make him wear one. You know Ducky’s gonna wear one anyway, and you like them...”
Tim smiles while Tony looks appalled.
“You’re just saying that because as Abby’s best man you’re safe from having to wear one.”
Jimmy laughs. “Did you not hear Breena? Tim’s picking the next club we go to, and my guess is she’ll have me coated in makeup and decked out for it.”
Tim looks at Jimmy for a few seconds. “You’re too skinny for a kilt. Places we go, leather pants, chains, ripped t-shirt, contacts. Breena’ll probably do something small and black with the back tattoos again.”
“First off, yeah, you are picking the next club. Second of all, too skinny? Tim, you weigh ten pounds more than I do.”
“Ten pounds that matter.”
Tony watches them bicker about it for a moment before saying, “I think Ziva and I are staying home.”
Jimmy grins. “Nope. She’ll go for it, which means you can’t back out. I mean, unless you want Tim and I to take her out.”
“She’d eat you two pervs whole and spit you out.”
“There are worse fates,” Jimmy says with a huge grin on his face.
Tim smirks at Tony, enjoying this way too much. “Just like laser tag, Tony, once you get over how you think you look, you’ll have a lot of fun. Who knows, maybe your thirty-five-year-old self will come back out again. The clubs Abby and I like more or less expect you to have sex in them.”
Jimmy’s eyes go wide. “You are so picking the next club.”
Chapter 94: Sex, Drugs, and Rock and Roll
“What are you two doing next Saturday?” Jimmy asked Tim and Tony during the last week of June.
“Nothing planned.”
“I’d have to ask Ziva, but I don’t think we’ve got anything going on.”
“Good. Molly’s finally sleeping through the night, so Breena’s parents are taking her for the night as a late anniversary present. And we were hoping you’d be interested in getting dressed up and going out clubbing with us.” The six of them hadn’t been out on a date night since before Molly was born, so that was sounding awfully good.
Tim smiled, clubbing with Abby is always a good thing. “We can do that.”
“Even if Ziva has plans, I think she’d reschedule for that.”
The plan was to meet up at Tim and Abby’s place, because they lived closest to everything, and then consolidate into one car and go from there.
It’s getting onto seven, and everyone should be there soon. Tim’s ready to go, dressed, made up, and looking forward to tonight. Abby’s finishing up her hair, she’s pulling it back into the two little buns, one on each side of her head, and doing something sort of Lolita Goth, in a little lacy black dress with petticoats and high boots.
He thinks it’s ridiculously cute and way too hot.
The bell rings and he heads for the door.
“Hey. Tony... Oh.” Tony is in a suit. A really nice charcoal gray suit. With a dress shirt, silk tie, and dress shoes. Ziva’s in something green, silky and slinky.
Just then Palmer and Breena showed up. Palmer’s in a suit, too. Granted Tony in gray looks like James Bond and Palmer in brown looks like the professor in charge of the Library Science department at a particularly esteemed liberal arts college. Meanwhile Breena’s in a halter dress that shows off a lot of naked back.
Tim looks at himself in a kilt, boots, and T-shirt and sighs. “Next time, I think we’ve got to define what dressed up and clubbing means. Come in. We’ll get changed. Palmer, it’s your anniversary, where are we going?”“Somewhere you can wear the kilt, but you’ll need a jacket and tie to go with it.”
“Okay.”
“Is there somewhere in DC that you are dressed for?” Jimmy asks.
Abby comes out. “Three places.” She looks at the other two couples, sighs and heads back to their bedroom. “Give me about ten minutes.”
Breena’s staring at Tim. “Is that black nail polish?”
He looks at his hands. “Yeah.”
She squints up at him. “Eyeliner?”
He nods.
“Cool. When you get dressed up, you get dressed up. Next time, you pick the place.”
“Will do. Grab yourself something to drink; we’ll be ready soon.”
He quickly washed off the eye makeup and brushed through his hair to tame it back down again, but left on the nail polish. About five minutes after that saw him in a maroon button down, black suit jacket, black tie, and kilt.
“Really, you think him in makeup is cool?” Tony is asking Breena as he heads out of the bedroom.
She shrugs. “Boys in eyeliner is hot in general, and for Tim in specific, yeah, it looks good. Kind of dangerous.”
Tony’s staring at her like she’s speaking in tongues. “You have met McGee, right?”
“Tony, I’m right here.”
Tony looks over at him. “Yeah, but you’re not exactly the poster boy for sex, drugs, or rock and roll.”
“He certainly looked like him five minutes ago,” Breena says.
Tim smiles. “I love sex, didn’t like the drugs I tried, and rock and roll is great, but I like jazz better.”
“What do you know about drugs?” Tony asks.
“I went to college, too, you know.”
“Yes, but you spent the whole time studying.”
Tim smiles, a little wicked glint in his eyes. “Not the whole time.”
Abby comes out, makeup toned down, hair loose around her shoulders, wearing a pretty, and, for her, conservative pink dress and says, “All ready?”
“Yeah,” Jimmy answers, ready to get onto the dancing part of the night.
“You really did illegal drugs in college?” Tony asks Tim as they drive into town. Jimmy’s at the wheel, because he knows where they’re going, and he and Breena are the only ones with a car that seats six. Say what you like about Minivans, but if you want to go somewhere with a bunch of your friends, they’re convenient.
“You didn’t?” Jimmy asks.
“No! Basketball team. Random piss tests. Everyone else around me was playing with coke, but I stuck to alcohol. So, really, you did drugs?”
Tim rolls his eyes a little, surprised that this would get to Tony. “I did a lot of things in college.”
“But, illegal, really?”
“Tony, how many felonies do you think I commit a year? In a good year, it’s five or six. I’ve got most of the guys we put away beat by a long margin. And we’re not just talking about civil liberties infractions here, I mean, I’m guilty of cyber-attacks on the US government, which is considered terrorism, attacks on foreign governments, which is espionage, and honestly, since I’ve had orders for some of it from Vance or Jarvis, possibly causus belli should it ever get traced back to us.”
That stops Tony, makes him think. Tim knows that Tony knows he doesn’t always play by the rules, but he’s getting the sense that exactly how far off the beaten path he sometimes goes is just dawning on him. Finally Tony says, “You’re not killing people.”
“Exactly. And I’ve got no problem breaking the law to catch the guys that do. And in college I had no problem breaking it to try a few new things that I very quickly found I didn’t like, and never tried again.” Which might not have been precisely true. Seventeen-year-old Tim McGee, fresh out of his dad’s house, rebelling against everything the old guy stood for couldn’t have cared less about legal or not. But he didn’t want to get into the story of why he did start caring again, and why it wasn’t long after playing around with drugs. Not with Tony, anyway.
“What did you try?” Abby asks, and he realizes this is something they’ve never talked about.
“Pot once. Just made me sleepy. Didn’t feel good enough to be worth the money or risk.”
“You probably got three quarters oregano with just a little real pot, then,” Jimmy adds.
“Could be, not like I knew what I was doing. Peyote laced with acid. Didn’t like that at all. E.”
“I thought you didn’t party,” Jimmy says.
“I didn’t, well not much. Didn’t mean I wasn’t interested in trying it.”
“But you didn’t like it?” Breena asks.
“It was better than pot, way better than peyote. I just really don’t like being out of control in a way where I can’t get it back if I need it. That’s also why you’ve never seen me anything more than mildly drunk.”
“No safeword,” Abby says.
“Exactly.”
“How did you pass the drug test?” Tony asks.
“Six years between doing the drugs and the test. All of that was first semester freshman year.”
Tony just stares at him like he’d grown a second head. “You were doing peyote in your freshman year?”
He holds up his index finger. “Once. We were playing Call of Cthulu and the GM thought that each of us taking a button before the game would make it more intense. One of the other players thought lacing them with LSD would be even better.”
CthuluAbby winces and then covers her mouth with her hands. “Oh, that’s the worst idea I’ve ever heard!”Tim’s nodding at her. “Yeah, it really was.”
“What’s a Cthulu?” Breena asks.
“Nasty squid demon-god,” Abby says. “No wonder you didn’t like it.”
“Yeah. Good rule of thumb, avoid hallucinogenic drugs and horror role-playing games based on the idea that you’re slowly going insane. It’s been almost twenty years, and I still won’t read Lovecraft.”
“So, wait.” Tony’s staring at him, looking really confused. “You little D&D geeks were snorking down hardcore drugs while you played?”
Tim rolls his eyes a little. “Not usually. Most of the time it was caffeine, cigarettes, and sugar.”
“You smoked?” Tony doesn’t look like he believed that, either.
“Not really. But if you’re in a room with five other guys, and four of them are smoking, taking a drag or two at the start of the night knocks out your sense of smell long enough to make being there bearable. Palmer, you’re awfully quiet, how about you?”
“Lots of stuff, but Special K was my favorite. I worked in a vet’s office, so I could get it easy. Pre-med and bio background meant I knew how much to take for a nice glow.”
“Wait, were you selling it?” Tony’s staring at Palmer like he’s never seen him before, too.
“No, I meant I could buy it easy. I handled the orders, so getting an extra bottle or two a year wasn’t an issue.”
“Did you like it?” Ziva asks.
“Oh yeah.” He grins at the memory. “Unlike Tim, I liked everything I tried. Liked it a lot. Tried a whole lot, too. K was a good way to cool off on the weekend. E was good, too, lot of fun with pot. Then I was twenty, thirsty all the time, just madly thirsty, and one day I was chugging soda, like maybe six liters of it in two hours, trying to make thirsty stop. Two days later, when I got out of the diabetic coma and the doctors explained how close to dead I had been, I decided taking better care of myself was a good idea.”
Palmer rolled his eyes a little, glancing away from traffic to the rest of them. “I suppose it’s sort of funny. I tried everything I could get my hands on for two solid years, and then I almost died from an overdose of sugar. Anyway, once I was out of the hospital, that was the end of sugar, most carbs, and all the drugs. Started hitting the gym and yoga, and I’m a lot healthier now.”
Tony just stares at the two other guys. Then he looked at the girls. “Let me guess,” he asks Breena, “you used to shoot heroin?”
“Nope. No drugs for me.”
“Ziva?”
“Not recreationally. But my training involved being subjected to some lesser known compounds to get used to them. It’s much easier to keep your head if you know what is happening to you.”
“Of course it did. Abby?”
She smiles. “Like Jimmy, you name it, I tried it at least once. And I got hired before the mandatory drug tests, so that’s how I got in.”
Two hours later, the girls are dancing with each other. The guys are relaxing at the table they’d staked out when they got to the club.
Tony looks at Tim and says, “Really, a kilt?”
Tim smirks a little.
“Nail polish?”
Tim looks at his fingernails. All night people have been looking at him like he’s pretty cool, and especially because he’s standing next to Tony, he’s really been enjoying it. “It’s black.”
“You don’t dress up in her clothing when you’re alone, do you?”
Tim grins and raises an eyebrow. “If I do?”
Tony shudders a little.
“I’m 6’1” and 183. I’d look dumb as hell in her clothing.”
Palmer came back with the drinks. “Okay, I saw him shuddering. What are you freaking him out with now?”
“I’m not freaked out, it’s just weird.”
“The drugs or the kilt?” Palmer put the drinks in front of each of them.
“It’s a skirt.”
“So?” Jimmy says.
Tim takes a drink, watching the two of them. It feels pretty nice to have Jimmy not weirded out by this.
“We’re guys. Not wearing skirts is like one of the primary defining characteristics of guyness.”
“Tim?” Jimmy asks.
“Yeah?”
Jimmy kept his face straight and asks with a completely deadpan expression, “You got balls?”
Tim laughs, hard, leans back against the booth, sips his scotch, and says, “Last time I checked.”
And Jimmy just looks at Tony, huge smirk on his face.
“Yeah, but was that before you put the skirt on?” Tony asks.
“No, that was about twenty minutes ago when Abby and I snuck off and she was licking them.” Tim takes another drink, feeling especially mellow, a little wicked, and just wonderfully fine.
This time, instead of looking disturbed, Tony just grins, shaking his head.
Tim laughs again. “Ease of access.”
“You don’t need a kilt for that,” Jimmy adds.
Tim raises his eyebrow at Jimmy.
Jimmy snorts a quick laugh at them. “Come on, you didn’t invent the quickie. Back when twice a year was a good score for you,” he shifts his gaze from Tim to Tony, “and you were sticking your dick in any girl that would let you, I was having sex on every horizontal and most of the vertical surfaces at work, including Gibbs’ and Ducky’s desks. I can get her completely naked, me completely naked, both of us off, and dressed again in ten minutes, eight if I’m in scrubs and she’s not wearing pantyhose. And if you think doing it in the back hall of a club is kinky, try sneaking off during one of Ducky’s monologues to the storage closet, keeping the door open, having him think those noises you’re making are signs of fascination at his topic, and then making it back for the close, without him noticing.” Palmer settles back into his seat, takes a drink of his Diet Sprite, and looks immensely smug.
Tony shakes his head. “I think I’ve got it figured out. Neither of you ever got laid in college.”
This caused both Tim and Jimmy to bluster.
“Okay, not literally, I know you both got laid a few times. But regularly? Not even close. And to make up for it, you both want everyone on earth to know you’re having sex now.”
Tim and Jimmy both seem to think about that.
Tim shrugs. “That’s probably true.”
“I just really like sex,” Jimmy says.
“No.” Tony points at himself. “I just really like sex. Youlike sex in public that can get you fired or killed. Gibbs’ desk? He’d headslap your brains out through your nose.” He turns to Tim. “And you like... Hell, let’s not get to into that...”
“What do you like?” Jimmy asks Tim.
Tim smiles, sips his drink again. “Let’s put it this way, there’s a good shot that standing next to me, you look vanilla.”
“Really?” That’s got Jimmy’s interest. He’s staring at Tim, like if he looks hard enough he can figure this out.
Tim thinks about what he knows about Jimmy, and realizes it’s equally likely that standing next to Jimmy, he looks vanilla. Gibbs’ desk? Sex in Autopsy, with Ducky there? Jimmy’s got a pretty hardcore exhibitionism kink. “Maybe. What exactly is it with you and shoes?”
“Okay, can we not talk about that? The shoe thing is pretty creepy,” Tony says, staring at Jimmy.
“What? You look at Ziva in that outfit and your eyes stop going down when they hit her ankles? Right!”
“I’m not saying I don’t appreciate the shoes. I’m just saying I don’t know what designer, what they’re made of, or for that matter, what color they are, off the top of my head.” Palmer opened his mouth to answer, and Tony quickly cut in, “And I don’t want to know that you know that off the top of your head, either.”
Tim decides to get them off of Ziva’s shoes. “So, what you’re saying is, you think that because the two of us spent so much time being fairly timid introverts that now we’re showing off right and left because we can?”
“Yeah. For example,” Tony looks away from the other two to watch the girls. It’s a fairly fast song and the three of them are bopping around with each other. His eyes trace over Ziva from hair to shoes (they’re green) lingering on her curves. He sighs, eyes happy and warm at the sight of her dancing. “I love that outfit Ziva’s in. And I certainly want to have sex with her. But I’m not feeling any burning need to do it here. At home, where we’ve got plenty of room and time, and there aren’t two hundred other people, is perfectly fine.”“Oh, we’ll do it when we get home, too,” Jimmy said with a very wide and happy grin, watching Breena dance, his eye tracking the sway of her skirt on her hips, and the long smooth expanse of naked back. “And probably in the morning, hopefully in the afternoon, as well. Breena’s parents have Molly until tomorrow night, and we are going to take advantage of it.”
“Too?” Tony looks away from Ziva to Jimmy. “Okay, I know he got in a quickie, when did you?”
“‘Bout an hour ago. You guys were dancing with your girls and didn’t notice us head off.”
“Back hallway?” Tim asks. There were a few good spots back there, and Tim was in no way surprised to find that the sort of club Jimmy and Breena liked had several good spots for a quiet fuck against the wall.
“Top floor.” Jimmy pointed to the second level of the club. “Just looked like we were dancing close and slow. Amazingly enough, the fact that I’ve got on pants in no way stopped or hindered that.”
“What do you do about the zipper? I hate getting caught in them,” Tim asks.
Jimmy takes a moment to think about that. “Never really thought about it. Just isn’t a problem for me.”
“You know how I deal with the zipper?” Tony said, voice low and conspiratorial. He waited a beat for them both to lean in to hear his answer. “By having my pants on the floor about ten feet away from my dick. Works every time.”
Tim snorts at him and rolls his eyes, then looks away from the guys to watch Abby dance. Sure, he was a little disappointed to not get to see the Lolita Goth outfit in action, but this little pink number, with the thin straps crisscrossing over her back is awfully good, too.“So, have you ever had sex in public?” Jimmy asks Tony.
“Of course, back when I was in college, you know, when you’re supposed to do stuff like that.”
“In college you’re supposed to read books, go to class, and study,” Tim starts, not looking away from Abby, she’s saying something to Breena, watching him closely, and he knows that look means good things are going to start happening soon.
“And occasionally ingest hardcore narcotics,” Jimmy finishes.
Tony’s shaking his head. “Nerds. How did I end up with two nerds for best friends?” He sighs and points to himself. “Phys ed major. My job in college was to play basketball, party, and get laid. And let me tell you, if they had had an honors program for partying and getting laid, I would have gotten it. I set the standard for partying and getting laid. Young basketball players at Ohio State are still being told of the legendary DiNozzo partying and laid technique, and they seek to reach such heights, but fail. So, yeah, I’ve done it in public, with three girls, at once, in a room with something like one hundred and fifty other people, while my frat brothers took pictures. But I’m not in college anymore, so I don’t feel the need to act like it.”
“Plus Ziva isn’t going to let you get drunk and hook up with three co-eds,” Tim says.
Jimmy’s still thinking about that. “What were you doing with three of them? I get two. What was the third one doing?”
Tony wiggles his right hand at Jimmy.
“Oh. Yeah. Didn’t do anything like that in college.”
“Me either.”
Jimmy looks at Tim. “Two at once?”
He looks away from Abby to Jimmy. “Nope. Closest I ever got to that was taking Abby, Ziva, and Lee out undercover. You?”
“No.”
Tony takes a drink, settles back, enjoying his turn to look smug, watching the girls.
Tim stares at him, and his eyes narrow. “You know, what? I don’t buy it. This isn’t maturity. You’re just getting old. You were thirty-five when I got to NCIS, right?”
Tony looks at Tim. “Yeah.”
“So back then, you and your frat buddies were still heading off to Spring Break in Mexico and trying to relive your college days.”
Tony smirks. “And succeeding.”
“So, back then, you would have had sex in a club.”
“But I wouldn’t have done it in a skirt.”
“Only because you don’t have the balls to wear one.”
Tony snorts.
Jimmy finishes his drink. “You should change your wedding outfits to kilts. Make him wear one. You know Ducky’s gonna wear one anyway, and you like them...”
Tim smiles while Tony looks appalled.
“You’re just saying that because as Abby’s best man you’re safe from having to wear one.”
Jimmy laughs. “Did you not hear Breena? Tim’s picking the next club we go to, and my guess is she’ll have me coated in makeup and decked out for it.”
Tim looks at Jimmy for a few seconds. “You’re too skinny for a kilt. Places we go, leather pants, chains, ripped t-shirt, contacts. Breena’ll probably do something small and black with the back tattoos again.”
“First off, yeah, you are picking the next club. Second of all, too skinny? Tim, you weigh ten pounds more than I do.”
“Ten pounds that matter.”
Tony watches them bicker about it for a moment before saying, “I think Ziva and I are staying home.”
Jimmy grins. “Nope. She’ll go for it, which means you can’t back out. I mean, unless you want Tim and I to take her out.”
“She’d eat you two pervs whole and spit you out.”
“There are worse fates,” Jimmy says with a huge grin on his face.
Tim smirks at Tony, enjoying this way too much. “Just like laser tag, Tony, once you get over how you think you look, you’ll have a lot of fun. Who knows, maybe your thirty-five-year-old self will come back out again. The clubs Abby and I like more or less expect you to have sex in them.”
Jimmy’s eyes go wide. “You are so picking the next club.”
May 18, 2013
Shards To A Whole: An NCIS Fanfiction
McGee centric character study/romance. Want to start at the beginning? Click here.
Chapter 93: June 2014
Some things about planning the Sciuto-McGee wedding required some extra help.
Steampunk for Dummies night was one of those things.
While it’s true that Palmer and Breena both get the idea of Steampunk, it’s also true that the majority of the wedding party has this idea firmly filed under ‘weird stuff Abby and McGee like’ with no concrete ideas of what exactly that means.
With four months to go, it was time to get some wedding costumes ready, and yes, Abby’s, Ziva’s, and Breena’s dresses had all been designed and put on order quite a while ago, not all that much had been done for the guys.
Because, while it can take a lot of dressmaking skill to turn out something properly flouncy for a steampunk wedding gown, or bridesmaid dress, for the guys things were quite a bit easier.
So, it was a quiet Saturday in the beginning of June when the entire wedding party gathered at Tim and Abby’s for grilling and getting the guys costumed.
Or at least getting them set with ideas.
SimonTim figured that if Gibbs and Fornell watched Firefly, that the rest of the crew could handle it, and when the burgers had been handed out and everyone was comfy in the living room, he queued up Firefly, Shindig, identifying all of the characters, and wrapped up with, “If Mal or Simon would wear it, then you can, too.” Then he hit play, and they watched.
He noticed that Tony seemed a whole lot more into it than he was expecting, really enjoying the duel at the end, and Ducky seemed to be taking notes on what might constitute appropriate garb.
At the end of it, he turned it off. “So, everyone have a pretty good idea of what we’re going for here?”
Nods all around.
“Is a kilt appropriate?” Ducky asked.
“Kilts are always appropriate for anything hosted by Tim and I, anything,” Abby answered. “What colors is your tartan?”
“Gray, tan, burgundy.”
Dueling scene“That’ll be fine,” Tim answered. “Official wedding colors are black, crimson, and white, though that’s a guideline more than a rule. My ceremony suit is gray, though the vest and tie is crimson. Abby’s got all white for the ceremony.”
Tony raised an eyebrow. “You have a ceremony suit?”
“Yeah,” Tim nodded. “The ceremony will be formal, at least for the two of us, we don’t expect anyone else to get two suits for this, and the reception a bit more relaxed.”
“How relaxed?” Gibbs asked.
“I’m going from a morning suit to something rakish. There aren’t any real hard rules here, though we’d certainly appreciate something in the spirit of this. Why, what are you thinking?”
Gibbs just smiled.
“Hats?” Jimmy asked.
“I wasn’t planning on one, but knock yourself out if you want to,” Tim answered. “You thinking a bowler?”
“Of course!” Breena smiled at Jimmy and ruffled his hair affectionately.
“What are you thinking, Tony?” Ziva asked.
“Not a bowler. So, basically, this is pretty much like any other suit, just the vest is cut higher and the tie’s a little different.”
Tim nodded a bit, that sounded right. “Pretty much. Collar can be squared off or pointed. Jacket’ll be longer.”
Tony nodded at that.
Ducky looked back at the television. “Timothy, are there more episodes of this?”
“Yeah, thirteen of them and a movie.”
“I’d be interested in watching more.”
Tim smiled widely at that.
Chapter 93: June 2014
Some things about planning the Sciuto-McGee wedding required some extra help.
Steampunk for Dummies night was one of those things.
While it’s true that Palmer and Breena both get the idea of Steampunk, it’s also true that the majority of the wedding party has this idea firmly filed under ‘weird stuff Abby and McGee like’ with no concrete ideas of what exactly that means.
With four months to go, it was time to get some wedding costumes ready, and yes, Abby’s, Ziva’s, and Breena’s dresses had all been designed and put on order quite a while ago, not all that much had been done for the guys.
Because, while it can take a lot of dressmaking skill to turn out something properly flouncy for a steampunk wedding gown, or bridesmaid dress, for the guys things were quite a bit easier.
So, it was a quiet Saturday in the beginning of June when the entire wedding party gathered at Tim and Abby’s for grilling and getting the guys costumed.
Or at least getting them set with ideas.
SimonTim figured that if Gibbs and Fornell watched Firefly, that the rest of the crew could handle it, and when the burgers had been handed out and everyone was comfy in the living room, he queued up Firefly, Shindig, identifying all of the characters, and wrapped up with, “If Mal or Simon would wear it, then you can, too.” Then he hit play, and they watched.He noticed that Tony seemed a whole lot more into it than he was expecting, really enjoying the duel at the end, and Ducky seemed to be taking notes on what might constitute appropriate garb.
At the end of it, he turned it off. “So, everyone have a pretty good idea of what we’re going for here?”
Nods all around.
“Is a kilt appropriate?” Ducky asked.
“Kilts are always appropriate for anything hosted by Tim and I, anything,” Abby answered. “What colors is your tartan?”
“Gray, tan, burgundy.”
Dueling scene“That’ll be fine,” Tim answered. “Official wedding colors are black, crimson, and white, though that’s a guideline more than a rule. My ceremony suit is gray, though the vest and tie is crimson. Abby’s got all white for the ceremony.”Tony raised an eyebrow. “You have a ceremony suit?”
“Yeah,” Tim nodded. “The ceremony will be formal, at least for the two of us, we don’t expect anyone else to get two suits for this, and the reception a bit more relaxed.”
“How relaxed?” Gibbs asked.
“I’m going from a morning suit to something rakish. There aren’t any real hard rules here, though we’d certainly appreciate something in the spirit of this. Why, what are you thinking?”
Gibbs just smiled.
“Hats?” Jimmy asked.
“I wasn’t planning on one, but knock yourself out if you want to,” Tim answered. “You thinking a bowler?”
“Of course!” Breena smiled at Jimmy and ruffled his hair affectionately.
“What are you thinking, Tony?” Ziva asked.
“Not a bowler. So, basically, this is pretty much like any other suit, just the vest is cut higher and the tie’s a little different.”
Tim nodded a bit, that sounded right. “Pretty much. Collar can be squared off or pointed. Jacket’ll be longer.”
Tony nodded at that.
Ducky looked back at the television. “Timothy, are there more episodes of this?”
“Yeah, thirteen of them and a movie.”
“I’d be interested in watching more.”
Tim smiled widely at that.
May 17, 2013
Shards To A Whole: An NCIS Fanfiction
McGee centric character study/romance. Want to start at the beginning? Click here.
Chapter 92: May 2014
“How was the shopping trip?” Tim called out when he heard the door shut.
He was in his office, jazz playing loud, staring at the proof version of The Traitor Within. He hated this part of it. Writing the story in the first place, lot of fun. Editing, that was pretty good, too, it was always interesting to see what another set of eyes thought was happening. Proofreading? He’d rather watch paint dry. Tim had already seen the book so many times he could barely see what was on the page, and when things did jump out at him, they were usually the sort of change that was so big he couldn’t make it.
This point in the journey there were no real rewrites, it was just fine tuning, like spelling issues or turning a comma into a semi colon.
He also didn’t much like this phase because he was fifty thousand words into Deep Six part five and he really didn’t like stopping that dead to go back to Deep Six part four.
“A lot of fun!” Abby said as she came in. “Tony’s got really good taste in jewelry.”
She sat on the edge of the desk, one foot resting between his legs on the seat of his chair, turning him away from the proof and toward her.
“Glad to hear it.” He bent forward and kissed her knee, resting his chin on it, looking up at her. “Good to know one of us had a fun afternoon. Ziva going to be happy?”
“I think so. Unless she was lying about loving sapphires.”
“What’s it look like?”
Abby took her phone out of her pocket. “He made me promise to delete this after you saw it. Doesn’t want her running into it by accident or by snooping on my phone.”
“He thinks she might snoop?”
“I get the sense he didn’t come up with a great excuse for why the three of us were out this afternoon.”
“Why were you three out?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t ask what our cover story was.”
Tim shook his head. “Amateurs.”
“Breena and I are bad liars to begin with. Everyone is better off if we don’t get asked, than if we end up having to try and cover.” She finished flipping through the images on her phone and showed him the ring.
He stared at it, smiling. “It’s beautiful.”
“Yeah.”
He looked at it for another minute. Round cut white diamond, some sort of white setting metal, a ring of sapphires around the diamond, and a small, round, white diamond at either side.
“What’s the setting?”
“White gold.”
He nodded, then shook his head a little, wry amusement on his face. “How big is it?”
Abby held up her fingers about a quarter of an inch apart. “Why are you shaking your head?”
“One of his goals was to outspend me on an engagement ring. I think he might have.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Really?”
“That’s what he told me. Ziva went with me to buy the stones, so that was his absolute minimum price.”
Abby rolled her eyes a little. “That’s silly.”
“I told him that, too.”
She looked at the ring on her finger. Then thought about what Tony spent. “Do I want to know how much this cost?”
“Depends,” Tim said with a smile. “Are you going to slap me upside the back of the head if I went a little bonkers on it?”
“No. But by ‘a little bonkers’ do you mean ‘a little’ or ‘full blown insane?’”
He leaned back in his chair, fingers tracing down her leg. “Probably closer to ‘full blown insane’ than a ‘little.’ You like it?”
“I love it.”
He grinned. “Then ‘full blown insane’ was exactly what I needed to do.”
She smiled at him and looked at her ring again.
“Do you want to know?”
“Nah.”
She shifted her gaze to his proof copy and the very few red marks on the page. “How’s it going?”
“Slow.” He stuck out his tongue and rolled his eyes. “Two hundred more pages to go.”
“Yippiee!” Tim truly appreciated the amount of sarcasm she managed to work into that one word.
“Exactly. What’s on for the rest of your day?”
“What’s your deadline for that?”
“Nine on Monday.”
Abby looked disappointed. “So you actually need to finish it?”
“Yeah.” The whole paying for the wedding thing would be significantly easier with a pile of cash, and they weren’t going to send him any more of it until the proof was marked up and sent back.
“In that case, Bioshock 3.”
Yeah, it came out months ago, but their game backlog is pretty steep these days. They only got into it a week earlier and it was awesome! He stared at her for a minute, images of sitting next to her, playing it with her in his head. “You’re killing me.”
She smiled widely at him. “You got to play for three hours on Friday while I was trapped in the lab.”
“True.” And because of that she’d be mostly going through bits he’d already done, still… Bioshock!
“You going to be able to break for dinner?”
He checked the clock, four hours until they usually ate. Two hundred pages of careful reading to go. “Yeah. This goes well, we might be able to play together after dinner.”
“Ohhh!”
Being on the other side of the your-buddy-is-getting-engaged thing was pretty cool. First off, it’s always easier to be the sounding board than it is to be the guy coming up with the ideas in the first place. Second of all, and granted, it wasn’t like Abby was going to say no, but still, when you’re the buddy, there’s no risk involved, and that’s pretty nice. Thirdly, he is really, genuinely pleased that Tony’s feeling ready to take this step, and he’s happy about it.
Really happy.
Like having a hard time keeping a straight face happy.
Which might be why Ziva’s a bit suspicious when he more or less wrestled the keys away from her and drove them, very slowly, back from gathering evidence on May 22, 2014.
She “knew” Tony had made reservations to take them out for their anniversary, and Tim, very carefully driving ten miles an hour below the speed limit, making them later and later for that dinner was driving her crazy.
What she didn’t know, and Tim did, and why he was driving so slow, is that Tony, as soon as possible, had booked home and was getting their real dinner set up. Sure it was take out, but it was really good take out, and though Tony hadn’t been too specific about his plans with Tim, he’s fairly sure the whole apartment will be decked out in flowers and candles and all the rest of the traditional Hallmark card/Valentine’s Day style romance that Tony seems to do so well.
So, Tim’s job, as soon to be best man, is to deliver Ziva to Tony’s place as slowly as possible, making sure he’s had time to get everything set up.
And Tim’s doing a good job of it. Even though at this point she’s getting awfully close to threatening to shoot him.
“McGee, if you do not speed up I will… That’s the exit! Why are you driving me past our exit? I have to get back to my car, home, and changed, and Tony’s going to be there in less than half an hour.”
“Relax. Check your go bag.”
She’s glaring at him, but digs through her bag. He looks away from traffic for a second and sees her come up with a pink envelope. She slits it with the knife Tony had made for her, unfolds the paper inside, and reads it quickly.
“It says, ‘Don’t kill McGee.’ Why is Tony giving me a piece of paper with instructions not to kill you?”
Tim shrugged. When Tony told him that once Ziva started asking questions to let her know about the note, he had certainly expected there to be something more than “Don’t kill McGee” in there as well.
“Where are you taking me?”
“Tony’s.”
“And why are you doing that?”
“He asked me to.”
“And did he ask you to drive at this infuriatingly slow pace?”
“Actually, yes, he did.”
She sighed and glared at him again. He grinned at her.
“And what is going to happen when I get there.”
“I don’t actually know.” Sure he could hazard an extremely accurate guess, but he doesn’t, as a matter of fact, know.
She’s watching him carefully, and really listening to what he’s said. “Then what do you think will happen?”
“Not telling. It’s a surprise.”
“Hmmm… And would this surprise have something to do with Abby, Tony, and Breena all vanishing together on Saturday?”
“That’s entirely possible.” And with that Ziva smiled, and began talking about the case.
Fifteen minutes later he dropped her off at Tony’s and as she shut the door he fired off a quick text to Tony. She’s two minutes away. Hope you’re ready.
A second later he got a shot of Tony’s apartment, picnic dinner laid out in the center of the living room floor, candles lighting everything gold, along with Look good?
Yeah, looks good. Have fun.
No ‘Good luck’?
You don’t need it.
On Friday, May 23rd, he and Abby headed to the Bullpen, waiting for Tony and Ziva to get in. And yeah, seeing both of them glowing with happiness was a very good thing. Seeing Gibbs kiss Ziva’s cheek while hugging her, and then pull Tony into the hug as well, that was even better.
Chapter 92: May 2014
“How was the shopping trip?” Tim called out when he heard the door shut.
He was in his office, jazz playing loud, staring at the proof version of The Traitor Within. He hated this part of it. Writing the story in the first place, lot of fun. Editing, that was pretty good, too, it was always interesting to see what another set of eyes thought was happening. Proofreading? He’d rather watch paint dry. Tim had already seen the book so many times he could barely see what was on the page, and when things did jump out at him, they were usually the sort of change that was so big he couldn’t make it.
This point in the journey there were no real rewrites, it was just fine tuning, like spelling issues or turning a comma into a semi colon.
He also didn’t much like this phase because he was fifty thousand words into Deep Six part five and he really didn’t like stopping that dead to go back to Deep Six part four.
“A lot of fun!” Abby said as she came in. “Tony’s got really good taste in jewelry.”
She sat on the edge of the desk, one foot resting between his legs on the seat of his chair, turning him away from the proof and toward her.
“Glad to hear it.” He bent forward and kissed her knee, resting his chin on it, looking up at her. “Good to know one of us had a fun afternoon. Ziva going to be happy?”
“I think so. Unless she was lying about loving sapphires.”
“What’s it look like?”
Abby took her phone out of her pocket. “He made me promise to delete this after you saw it. Doesn’t want her running into it by accident or by snooping on my phone.”
“He thinks she might snoop?”
“I get the sense he didn’t come up with a great excuse for why the three of us were out this afternoon.”
“Why were you three out?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t ask what our cover story was.”
Tim shook his head. “Amateurs.”
“Breena and I are bad liars to begin with. Everyone is better off if we don’t get asked, than if we end up having to try and cover.” She finished flipping through the images on her phone and showed him the ring.
He stared at it, smiling. “It’s beautiful.”
“Yeah.”
He looked at it for another minute. Round cut white diamond, some sort of white setting metal, a ring of sapphires around the diamond, and a small, round, white diamond at either side. “What’s the setting?”
“White gold.”
He nodded, then shook his head a little, wry amusement on his face. “How big is it?”
Abby held up her fingers about a quarter of an inch apart. “Why are you shaking your head?”
“One of his goals was to outspend me on an engagement ring. I think he might have.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Really?”
“That’s what he told me. Ziva went with me to buy the stones, so that was his absolute minimum price.”
Abby rolled her eyes a little. “That’s silly.”
“I told him that, too.”
She looked at the ring on her finger. Then thought about what Tony spent. “Do I want to know how much this cost?”
“Depends,” Tim said with a smile. “Are you going to slap me upside the back of the head if I went a little bonkers on it?”
“No. But by ‘a little bonkers’ do you mean ‘a little’ or ‘full blown insane?’”
He leaned back in his chair, fingers tracing down her leg. “Probably closer to ‘full blown insane’ than a ‘little.’ You like it?”
“I love it.”
He grinned. “Then ‘full blown insane’ was exactly what I needed to do.”
She smiled at him and looked at her ring again.
“Do you want to know?”
“Nah.”
She shifted her gaze to his proof copy and the very few red marks on the page. “How’s it going?”
“Slow.” He stuck out his tongue and rolled his eyes. “Two hundred more pages to go.”
“Yippiee!” Tim truly appreciated the amount of sarcasm she managed to work into that one word.
“Exactly. What’s on for the rest of your day?”
“What’s your deadline for that?”
“Nine on Monday.”
Abby looked disappointed. “So you actually need to finish it?”
“Yeah.” The whole paying for the wedding thing would be significantly easier with a pile of cash, and they weren’t going to send him any more of it until the proof was marked up and sent back.
“In that case, Bioshock 3.”
Yeah, it came out months ago, but their game backlog is pretty steep these days. They only got into it a week earlier and it was awesome! He stared at her for a minute, images of sitting next to her, playing it with her in his head. “You’re killing me.”
She smiled widely at him. “You got to play for three hours on Friday while I was trapped in the lab.”
“True.” And because of that she’d be mostly going through bits he’d already done, still… Bioshock!
“You going to be able to break for dinner?”
He checked the clock, four hours until they usually ate. Two hundred pages of careful reading to go. “Yeah. This goes well, we might be able to play together after dinner.”
“Ohhh!”
Being on the other side of the your-buddy-is-getting-engaged thing was pretty cool. First off, it’s always easier to be the sounding board than it is to be the guy coming up with the ideas in the first place. Second of all, and granted, it wasn’t like Abby was going to say no, but still, when you’re the buddy, there’s no risk involved, and that’s pretty nice. Thirdly, he is really, genuinely pleased that Tony’s feeling ready to take this step, and he’s happy about it.
Really happy.
Like having a hard time keeping a straight face happy.
Which might be why Ziva’s a bit suspicious when he more or less wrestled the keys away from her and drove them, very slowly, back from gathering evidence on May 22, 2014.
She “knew” Tony had made reservations to take them out for their anniversary, and Tim, very carefully driving ten miles an hour below the speed limit, making them later and later for that dinner was driving her crazy.
What she didn’t know, and Tim did, and why he was driving so slow, is that Tony, as soon as possible, had booked home and was getting their real dinner set up. Sure it was take out, but it was really good take out, and though Tony hadn’t been too specific about his plans with Tim, he’s fairly sure the whole apartment will be decked out in flowers and candles and all the rest of the traditional Hallmark card/Valentine’s Day style romance that Tony seems to do so well.
So, Tim’s job, as soon to be best man, is to deliver Ziva to Tony’s place as slowly as possible, making sure he’s had time to get everything set up.
And Tim’s doing a good job of it. Even though at this point she’s getting awfully close to threatening to shoot him.
“McGee, if you do not speed up I will… That’s the exit! Why are you driving me past our exit? I have to get back to my car, home, and changed, and Tony’s going to be there in less than half an hour.”
“Relax. Check your go bag.”
She’s glaring at him, but digs through her bag. He looks away from traffic for a second and sees her come up with a pink envelope. She slits it with the knife Tony had made for her, unfolds the paper inside, and reads it quickly.
“It says, ‘Don’t kill McGee.’ Why is Tony giving me a piece of paper with instructions not to kill you?”
Tim shrugged. When Tony told him that once Ziva started asking questions to let her know about the note, he had certainly expected there to be something more than “Don’t kill McGee” in there as well.
“Where are you taking me?”
“Tony’s.”
“And why are you doing that?”
“He asked me to.”
“And did he ask you to drive at this infuriatingly slow pace?”
“Actually, yes, he did.”
She sighed and glared at him again. He grinned at her.
“And what is going to happen when I get there.”
“I don’t actually know.” Sure he could hazard an extremely accurate guess, but he doesn’t, as a matter of fact, know.
She’s watching him carefully, and really listening to what he’s said. “Then what do you think will happen?”
“Not telling. It’s a surprise.”
“Hmmm… And would this surprise have something to do with Abby, Tony, and Breena all vanishing together on Saturday?”
“That’s entirely possible.” And with that Ziva smiled, and began talking about the case.
Fifteen minutes later he dropped her off at Tony’s and as she shut the door he fired off a quick text to Tony. She’s two minutes away. Hope you’re ready.
A second later he got a shot of Tony’s apartment, picnic dinner laid out in the center of the living room floor, candles lighting everything gold, along with Look good?
Yeah, looks good. Have fun.
No ‘Good luck’?
You don’t need it.
On Friday, May 23rd, he and Abby headed to the Bullpen, waiting for Tony and Ziva to get in. And yeah, seeing both of them glowing with happiness was a very good thing. Seeing Gibbs kiss Ziva’s cheek while hugging her, and then pull Tony into the hug as well, that was even better.
May 16, 2013
Shards To A Whole: An NCIS Fanfiction.
McGee centric character study/romance. Want to start at the beginning? Click here.
Chapter 91: How Much
“How much did Abby’s ring cost?” Tony asked Tim as they drove to question a suspect.
“What?” That question is so far out of bounds he doesn’t even know what to start doing with it.
“Ziva knows how much you spent on the stones, so I can’t get her a ring that costs less than that.”
“What?” He’s still stunned Tony is asking about this.
“Engagement ring for Ziva, I can’t get her less of a ring than you got Abby.”
“This is how you tell me you’re going to ask Ziva to marry you?”
Tony shot him a see, that’s what it feels like look. “I thought the fact that I’d do it sooner or later was pretty obvious.”
“Okay, yeah it was, still something other than, ‘Hey, I intend to outspend you,’ would have been nice.”
“Fine. I’m going to ask Ziva to marry me, so I need a ring, and because you had the brilliant idea to take her gem shopping when you got Abby her ring, and because C.I.Ray already whipped out a huge stone for her, she’s got expectations now, and I can’t fall short of them. So, how much was Abby’s ring?”
Tim was staring at Tony like he couldn’t believe this. “Your main engagement ring goal is to out romance me?”
“No.” Tony thought about it. “Yes. If I don’t, then this is just routine for her, something she’s already seen.”
Tim laughed. “First off, taking her along was Gibbs’ idea. Secondly, you’re screwed, $15,300.”
“For a ring!?!” Tony’s eyes just about fell out of his head at that idea, and he pulled over and stopped the car.
Tim shrugged. “Gems came in at a little over 7,000 and the custom design work and materials on the ring was a bit over 8,000.”
“You spent three months of your salary on a ring?”
Tim grinned at Tony, enjoying this way too much. “Five after taxes.”
“What the hell is wrong with you?”
“Nothing. I had the cash. I wanted to get her the perfect ring. That’s what the perfect ring cost.”
Tony looked to the sky and said, “Why?”
“I did, however, get some intel for you.”
Tony’s eyes narrowed; he looked interested. “What?”
“She likes sapphires. But she wouldn’t tell me what sort of proposal she wanted.”
“Hmmm...”
“So, besides determining you want to get her a ‘better’ ring than I got Abby, do you have any ideas?”
Tony sighed. “Shooting you in the head for spending so goddamn much.”
Tim snorted. “I wasn’t aware I was setting a ring budget for you. And if I had known that... I would have done exactly the same thing. She loves that ring. It is absolutely perfect for her. And she is going to wear it every single day for the rest of her life. So, get over how much it cost. Abby helped Palmer pick out Breena’s ring, and I didn’t feel any need to compete with that.”
“Because you blew it out of the water by a mile before you even got one of your stones picked out.”
Tim shrugged. “Really wasn’t thinking about it at all. What I was thinking about was spending months searching online looking at pre-made rings and thinking that none of them were right for Abby. But you aren’t marrying Abby, you’re marrying Ziva, who likes classic, elegant, beautiful things which you can just walk into a jewelry store and buy.”
“There is that.”
“And I highly doubt Ziva cares at all how much her ring is going to cost.”
“I care.”
“Why?”
Tony shrugged. “I just do. And I don’t want my dad looking at it and smirking about it. Man’s bought more engagement rings than Gibbs has, so he’s got ideas about what they should look like.”
“I can take you to where I got Abby’s gems, and the guy who’s making our wedding rings seems to know what he’s doing. The guy who did her engagement ring took three times as long as he said he would, so unless you do want killer filigree work way late, I don’t recommend him. So, besides expensive, what do you want to get her?”
Tony was facing in Tim’s direction, but not really looking at him. “It should be smooth and strong. She works with her hands, fights with them, so it can’t have soft, easily snagged bits on it. But it should still be beautiful and delicate.”
“Were you thinking diamonds?”
“I was, but if she likes sapphires, I should probably look at them. Plus sapphires would have the advantage of not looking anything like the ring C.I.Ray got her.”
“Good plan.”
“Yeah.”
Tony thought for a moment, then he looked at Tim, curiously. “You just had fifteen thousand dollars lying around?”
Tim shrugged, watching traffic speed by. “Yeah.”
“Why?”
He turned his eyes back to Tony and squinted a little, the sort of gesture that means, I’ll answer this, but don’t get to deep into it, okay? “First off, it took me almost half a year to even get the stones. That’s a good chunk of time to save. Secondly, I do have another job.”
Tony was staring at him, looking a little suspicious.
“They actually pay me to write mysteries. It’s not just a hobby.”
“Oh. Right. Gemcity. Does that pay well?”
Tim shook his head dismissively, this is what he doesn’t want to get too into. Sure, he hadn’t been subtle about the cash on the first book, but after losing everything he’s been a whole lot pickier about how he spends his money. Tony’s probably noticed he’s got a good watch and wears expensive stuff when they aren’t at work, and that their apartment is awfully nice, but it’s not like he’s bought a new Porsche recently. “I’m not Rick Castle, but I do okay. So, you given any thought as to what to do with the ring once you’ve got it?” he asked, turning them into more comfortable territory.
“Yeah.”
“And?”
“And, besides the fact that our year anniversary is coming up, I don’t know. Hard though this might be for you to understand, McWordsmith, some of us don’t have an easy time coming up with poetry and spilling out perfectly formed verse about why we love our girlfriends.”
Tim smiled. “I asked if she still had the Marilyn dress, talked about the two of us going out for Halloween as Monroe and Miller, she looked at me and said, ‘Weren’t they married?’ and I just grinned, whipped out the ring and said, ‘Will you marry me?’ I left the poetry for other days.”
“So, wait, you write her love poems, but didn’t to ask her to marry you?”
“She knows I adore her. She’s got a box full of poems I’ve written her. So, no, I didn’t feel a need for a long, drawn out, here’s all the reasons you’re perfect proposal. Of course, I was also holding a designed specifically for her fifteen thousand dollar ring. That might have spoken louder than words.” Tony punched him on the shoulder while Tim grinned. “Guess you’ll just have to keep working on getting your words right.”
“You’re an asshole.”
“Oh come on, Tony! How often do I get to do this to you? If Palmer was here, he’d be smirking at you, too.”
“He would. I should ask him what he said to Breena. At least that way I’ll know where the outer lines of way too sappy are.”
“That’s not a bad idea. You wanna borrow Abby for ring help?”
“I might. Or maybe not. I have a feeling she’d think anything I’d like for Ziva would be boring. Breena probably has closer jewelry taste to Ziva than Abby does.”
“Might be true. Still take one of the girls, they talk to each other, so she might have more information about what Ziva wants than I do. And even if she doesn’t have specific information, she’ll probably have a better feel for what Ziva wants.”
Next
Chapter 91: How Much
“How much did Abby’s ring cost?” Tony asked Tim as they drove to question a suspect.
“What?” That question is so far out of bounds he doesn’t even know what to start doing with it.
“Ziva knows how much you spent on the stones, so I can’t get her a ring that costs less than that.”
“What?” He’s still stunned Tony is asking about this.
“Engagement ring for Ziva, I can’t get her less of a ring than you got Abby.”
“This is how you tell me you’re going to ask Ziva to marry you?”
Tony shot him a see, that’s what it feels like look. “I thought the fact that I’d do it sooner or later was pretty obvious.”
“Okay, yeah it was, still something other than, ‘Hey, I intend to outspend you,’ would have been nice.”
“Fine. I’m going to ask Ziva to marry me, so I need a ring, and because you had the brilliant idea to take her gem shopping when you got Abby her ring, and because C.I.Ray already whipped out a huge stone for her, she’s got expectations now, and I can’t fall short of them. So, how much was Abby’s ring?”
Tim was staring at Tony like he couldn’t believe this. “Your main engagement ring goal is to out romance me?”
“No.” Tony thought about it. “Yes. If I don’t, then this is just routine for her, something she’s already seen.”
Tim laughed. “First off, taking her along was Gibbs’ idea. Secondly, you’re screwed, $15,300.”
“For a ring!?!” Tony’s eyes just about fell out of his head at that idea, and he pulled over and stopped the car.
Tim shrugged. “Gems came in at a little over 7,000 and the custom design work and materials on the ring was a bit over 8,000.”
“You spent three months of your salary on a ring?”
Tim grinned at Tony, enjoying this way too much. “Five after taxes.”
“What the hell is wrong with you?”
“Nothing. I had the cash. I wanted to get her the perfect ring. That’s what the perfect ring cost.”
Tony looked to the sky and said, “Why?”
“I did, however, get some intel for you.”
Tony’s eyes narrowed; he looked interested. “What?”
“She likes sapphires. But she wouldn’t tell me what sort of proposal she wanted.”
“Hmmm...”
“So, besides determining you want to get her a ‘better’ ring than I got Abby, do you have any ideas?”
Tony sighed. “Shooting you in the head for spending so goddamn much.”
Tim snorted. “I wasn’t aware I was setting a ring budget for you. And if I had known that... I would have done exactly the same thing. She loves that ring. It is absolutely perfect for her. And she is going to wear it every single day for the rest of her life. So, get over how much it cost. Abby helped Palmer pick out Breena’s ring, and I didn’t feel any need to compete with that.”
“Because you blew it out of the water by a mile before you even got one of your stones picked out.”
Tim shrugged. “Really wasn’t thinking about it at all. What I was thinking about was spending months searching online looking at pre-made rings and thinking that none of them were right for Abby. But you aren’t marrying Abby, you’re marrying Ziva, who likes classic, elegant, beautiful things which you can just walk into a jewelry store and buy.”
“There is that.”
“And I highly doubt Ziva cares at all how much her ring is going to cost.”
“I care.”
“Why?”
Tony shrugged. “I just do. And I don’t want my dad looking at it and smirking about it. Man’s bought more engagement rings than Gibbs has, so he’s got ideas about what they should look like.”
“I can take you to where I got Abby’s gems, and the guy who’s making our wedding rings seems to know what he’s doing. The guy who did her engagement ring took three times as long as he said he would, so unless you do want killer filigree work way late, I don’t recommend him. So, besides expensive, what do you want to get her?”
Tony was facing in Tim’s direction, but not really looking at him. “It should be smooth and strong. She works with her hands, fights with them, so it can’t have soft, easily snagged bits on it. But it should still be beautiful and delicate.”
“Were you thinking diamonds?”
“I was, but if she likes sapphires, I should probably look at them. Plus sapphires would have the advantage of not looking anything like the ring C.I.Ray got her.”
“Good plan.”
“Yeah.”
Tony thought for a moment, then he looked at Tim, curiously. “You just had fifteen thousand dollars lying around?”
Tim shrugged, watching traffic speed by. “Yeah.”
“Why?”
He turned his eyes back to Tony and squinted a little, the sort of gesture that means, I’ll answer this, but don’t get to deep into it, okay? “First off, it took me almost half a year to even get the stones. That’s a good chunk of time to save. Secondly, I do have another job.”
Tony was staring at him, looking a little suspicious.
“They actually pay me to write mysteries. It’s not just a hobby.”
“Oh. Right. Gemcity. Does that pay well?”
Tim shook his head dismissively, this is what he doesn’t want to get too into. Sure, he hadn’t been subtle about the cash on the first book, but after losing everything he’s been a whole lot pickier about how he spends his money. Tony’s probably noticed he’s got a good watch and wears expensive stuff when they aren’t at work, and that their apartment is awfully nice, but it’s not like he’s bought a new Porsche recently. “I’m not Rick Castle, but I do okay. So, you given any thought as to what to do with the ring once you’ve got it?” he asked, turning them into more comfortable territory.
“Yeah.”
“And?”
“And, besides the fact that our year anniversary is coming up, I don’t know. Hard though this might be for you to understand, McWordsmith, some of us don’t have an easy time coming up with poetry and spilling out perfectly formed verse about why we love our girlfriends.”
Tim smiled. “I asked if she still had the Marilyn dress, talked about the two of us going out for Halloween as Monroe and Miller, she looked at me and said, ‘Weren’t they married?’ and I just grinned, whipped out the ring and said, ‘Will you marry me?’ I left the poetry for other days.”
“So, wait, you write her love poems, but didn’t to ask her to marry you?”
“She knows I adore her. She’s got a box full of poems I’ve written her. So, no, I didn’t feel a need for a long, drawn out, here’s all the reasons you’re perfect proposal. Of course, I was also holding a designed specifically for her fifteen thousand dollar ring. That might have spoken louder than words.” Tony punched him on the shoulder while Tim grinned. “Guess you’ll just have to keep working on getting your words right.”
“You’re an asshole.”
“Oh come on, Tony! How often do I get to do this to you? If Palmer was here, he’d be smirking at you, too.”
“He would. I should ask him what he said to Breena. At least that way I’ll know where the outer lines of way too sappy are.”
“That’s not a bad idea. You wanna borrow Abby for ring help?”
“I might. Or maybe not. I have a feeling she’d think anything I’d like for Ziva would be boring. Breena probably has closer jewelry taste to Ziva than Abby does.”
“Might be true. Still take one of the girls, they talk to each other, so she might have more information about what Ziva wants than I do. And even if she doesn’t have specific information, she’ll probably have a better feel for what Ziva wants.”
Next
May 15, 2013
Shards To A Whole: An NCIS Fanfiction
McGee centric character study/romance. Want to start at the beginning? Click here.
Chapter 90: The Morning After
Tim woke up with a jolt of adrenaline, wondering where he was. It took a second before he figured out that he was on Gibbs’ sofa. Took another second to check his watch, see it was 8:30 and figure out the reason his entire body was screaming get up at him was because it was a work day and he was late.
He listened for a moment, house was quiet, and no one had dropped any water on him or yelled at him to get up, so he was fairly sure Gibbs was still out. It was 5:00 when they kicked the bottle, (round about the halfway point he started spilling as he poured, partly to help sell the illusion that he’d had a lot more to drink than he actually had, partly because while drunk, talking Gibbs was the goal, taking him to the hospital with alcohol poisoning wasn’t.) and he dragged Gibbs into his bed before crashing on the sofa.
He checked his cell. Three texts from Abby.
6:32 Guessing you’re still at his place
7:47 Telling Leon you both won’t be in today
8:22 Let me know you’re okay.
That one was ten minutes old. He sent one back, fast. Okay. Just woke up. What’s your best hangover cure?
How bad is it?
No idea. I’m not the one hung over. But Gibbs is still asleep, so I’m thinking it’ll be brutal when it hits.
4 Advil, Gatorade, hot shower, go back to sleep.
I’ll see what I can do.
What happened?
We’re both fine. Got enough alcohol into him to get him talking about Shannon. Mini wake. Hope it helped. Tell you more when I see you.
Okay
He looked at the picture of Shannon, Kelly, and Gibbs on the mantle. I love you, Abby.
XOXOXOXO
He headed for the kitchen, extremely doubtful as to the likelihood of there being Gatorade in there. And he was right. A little bit of food. Not much to drink besides coffee and more booze, and neither of them were good plans.
He found the largest glass Gibbs owned, filled it with water, and rummaged around for Advil or some sort of painkiller. Nothing in the kitchen. Tried the hall bathroom, nothing in there either.
He headed for Gibbs’ room, very quietly. Didn’t want to wake him up, and even though, technically, Gibbs should still be drunk as opposed to hung over, still doesn’t mean him waking up is a good plan.
Fortunately it didn’t work that way. He crept in, put the water on the nightstand, and headed for the man’s bathroom. Unfortunately he didn’t have any painkillers in there.
What kind of guy doesn’t have at least one bottle of Tylenol in the house?
The guy who never gets sick and probably thinks hangovers are deserved punishment or something.
Screw it.
He found a pad and a pen and left a note next to the glass.
Out getting supplies. Back in a bit. Abby called in sick for you. Go back to sleep.
An hour later he had Gatorade, Advil, and breakfast. Two of the three he left on Gibbs’ nightstand. The last he stuck in the oven on warm.
While eating his breakfast, he got a text from Tony.
What did you do to him?
Got him drunk and talking. That was the plan, right?
You got him so drunk he called out?
I got him so drunk he’s still asleep. Abby called him out.
He can feel Tony shaking his head as he looks at that text.
What did you do, shoot him with a tranquilizer dart?
Something like that.
Think it helped?
We’ll find out.
Then he went back to sleep. It was a surprisingly comfy sofa, long enough for him to lie full out on, and he was out in a flash. Sure he can function on three hours sleep, but he doesn’t have to, so he won’t.
It was after three when he woke up to the sound of loud cursing and the shower running.
He headed upstairs, found the Advil and Gatorade untouched and the door to the bathroom open. He picked up the Gatorade and took it in.
Gibbs was on the other side of the shower curtain, groaning.
Tim put the Gatorade on the edge of the tub. “Part of why you’re hurting is that you’re dehydrated. Drink it.”
“Coffee.”
“Will suck even more water out of you. Drink the Gatorade. Drink the next one I bring you. Then I’ll make us coffee.”
Gibbs pulled back the curtain and grabbed the drink, glared blearily in Tim’s direction, then snapped the curtain shut again.
Tim went down, got another Gatorade, and then made some coffee.
Gibbs got down an hour later, looking like he’d been run over by a truck. Tim pointed at the table where there was coffee, water, and food.
“You’ll live?” Tim asked very quietly.
Gibbs nodded.
“Then I’m going to head home. Keep drinking the water with the coffee. There’s a full pot in the kitchen. More food and Gatorade in the fridge. Abby says you should go back to sleep as soon as you can.”
Gibbs nodded again.
Tim sent a text to Tony while he was waiting for a light to go from red to green. Your turn. Just check in on him, and if he’s awake tonight, keep him company.
???
We kicked the bottle, and I only had two shots. He’s feeling like crap and probably shouldn’t be alone tonight.
Got it.
When Tim got home, Abby wasn’t there, yet. But it was a bit after five thirty, so with any luck she’d be home soon.
He poked around the kitchen, nothing looked ready to become dinner, so he ordered them some Chinese. He didn’t really want to cook anyway.
Mostly he just wanted to curl up with her, hold her close, and devoutly give thanks to the God who’s existence he greatly doubted that she’s alive and whole and in his life and that he’s not sitting in a house filled only with memories.
Food got there before she did. But not by much. He was just starting to shut the door when he saw her.
“Hi.” Abby smiled brightly at him as she slid in the door.
“Hey.” He put the bag on the floor and wrapped around her, head on her shoulder, arms around her waist.
That was significantly more clingy than their usual hello hug. She petted his arms. “You okay?”
“Yeah, just not taking you for granted. I love you.”
“Love you, too.”
He can feel the fact that she’s got a perplexed look on her face, but he’s still not moving, still holding onto her, smelling her skin, feeling her warm and in his arms.
“Tim?”
He raises his head from her shoulder and spends a moment just looking at her, eyes wide and earnest, fingers cupping her face. “He was three years younger than I am when she died.” He kissed her, soft and gentle, not sexual so much as an expression of thanks. “And I need to hold onto you for a while. Is that okay?”
She smiled softly at him. “That’s okay. I’m not going anywhere. Other than maybe the sofa, with you. Come tell me about it, and we’ll snuggle.”
He nodded, that sounded good.
An hour later, he was sitting with Abby on the sofa, sharing a carton of chicken and broccoli, telling her about Shannon, when his phone beeped. Text from Tony:
McGee, the plan was get him drunk and talking, not married again. What the hell did you do?
He’s awake?
Crashed out on the sofa, wearing a wedding ring!
Relax. That’s Shannon’s ring.
Why would that make me relax?
Because it means he’s doing what he needed to do when she died. At least, I hope that’s how this works.
What’s the plan here? Send him back 23 years, cling to her harder, and just give up on anyone else?
I really hope not. He got married three times and whatever it was with Jen in less than ten years. Took the ring off right after the funerals. Never said another word about them to anyone for more than a decade. Diane found out about Shannon by going through his wallet, and I don’t think he ever mentioned Kelly. He just shut it away. The plan is to actually try mourning and saying goodbye and letting her go.
Think he can?
Yeah.
May 14, 2013
Shards To A Whole: An NCIS Fanfiction
McGee centric character study/romance. Want to start at the beginning? Click here.
Chapter 89: Susan
Tony rubbed the back of his head gently as Gibbs stormed off. “That’s the third time I’ve been headslapped today.”
“I know. And I hate to say it, but you’re not any more off than you ever are. What happened with you two?” Tim asked.
“Nothing. He’s just in a pissy mood.”
Tim wasn’t buying that at all. “Pissy mood? Come on. Something is going on. You and Ziva okay?”
Tony flashes him his really, you’re going there look. “We’re fine. Why would you ask that?”
“He’d headslap you if you’re pissing her off.”
That made sense, sort of. “If I’m pissing her off, I’ve done it without her letting me know.”
“That’s not like her.”
“No it’s not. So it’s him.”
They both winced when Gibbs double slapped them. “More work, less gossip.”
“If you weren’t slapping the hell out of Tony every two minutes, we’d be working. What’s going on?”
Gibbs just glared at Tim, so he flashed Tony his talk later look, and both of them got back to working the crime scene.
Two days later, Tim said to Tony, “I feel like I woke up in 2004.”
Tony looks up at him like a light just went on. “That’s it! We fell into a time warp and somehow we’re ten years back in time. How did that happen? Tell me that, Probie.”
Tim glared at Tony. “Don’t you start. It’s not 2004, and I will kick your ass if you start that Probie crap up again.”
“Fine. Still, he hasn’t been this hard in years. As Senior Field Agent, I’m thinking it’s time to do a little investigating.”
Tim nods, this sound promising. “Good, let me know how that goes.”
“You let me know.” Tony smiled, looking satisfied.
Tim’s eyes went wide. “Nooo… I don’t want to poke into his life.”
Tony flashed him his I’m being totally reasonable here, even if you think this is insane look. “I’m not asking you to hack him, just head over tonight and talk.”
“Why do you want me to do that?” There are a lot of things Tim McGee is good at, walking up to people, even people he loves, and saying, “So, tell me why you’re acting like there’s a stick up your ass and you don’t want it there,” isn’t one of them. He’s much better at the whole respecting privacy and leaving them alone until they sort it out for themselves thing.
“’Cause this has gone on long enough. You’re free tonight, and I’ve got Schul.”
“Skip it.”
“Can’t. I missed the last two weeks because of cases. Rabbi’s getting annoyed at my attendance.”
“Great.”
“Besides, I think he’d rather talk to you about stuff like this.”
“Stuff like what?” Sure Gibbs was being a bear lately, but Tim hadn’t figured out the cause, yet.
“When was the last time you saw Susan?”
“Oh.” Tim realized it had been close to a month. “You think that’s why he’s so angry?”
“Could be. He wasn’t much fun after Hollis left, and I think that was the last one he really liked.”
“And he did like Susan, didn’t he?” Well, if they had broken up that could explain it. It’d been more than six months, so that could mean the thing with Susan was fairly serious, and she was the first woman in ten years he could remember being invited to some of the social things for their group. So, that was another mark in the serious column.
“Yeah. Look, if he’s still being a bastard after you talk to him, I’ll go see him tomorrow, and pump Ducky for information, too.”
Tim shook his head, sure how that was going to go. “That’s not going to end well.”
“I’m hoping that you’ll talk to him and it’ll help.”
“Why do you think he’d talk to me about this?”
“You’re good at this stuff.”
Tim’s sending Tony his are you insane look. “What on earth makes you think I’m good with relationships?”Tony’s got the same look on his face, stupefied that Tim would even ask that. “You’re getting married in six months.”
“I’m good with Abby, which is not the same thing as being good at relationships.” An idea hit as he said that. “Abby! She can go talk to him!”
“He won’t talk to her, not about this sort of stuff. Broken heart stuff is man talk. Usually involving alcohol and maybe steaks.”
“It sounds like you know what you’re doing. How about we wait until tomorrow and you handle it?”
“Just get on it.”
Tim glared at Tony a little and then flashed a text to Abby about his post-work errand.
Two minutes later he got back Thank God, it’s about time one of you did it! I’ll pick up some bourbon for you to bring over.
Wonderful. See you at lunch?
Sure.
Gibbs glanced up from his workbench when he heard the steps, feeling mildly surprised to see McGee standing there holding a bottle of bourbon.
“You’re supposed to be DiNozzo.”
McGee nodded. “I agree. But he’s at Schul, so,” he put the bottle on the workbench next to Gibbs, “I’m here. Look, I’ve never done this before. Do we just drink until you’re ready to stop being a jerk?”
Gibbs looked at the bottle of Blanton’s Original. It’s not anything he’s ever drunk. The bottle is globe shaped, looking a lot more like some sort of cordial than anything he’d think of as bourbon. McGee doesn’t drink hard alcohol much and when he does, he goes for scotch, so if he picked it out that means he probably went online and looked it up. If Abby did, than that’s probably her year bartending showing. He hoped Abby picked it out.
McGee sat there, waiting for him to say something. There was one difference between doing this with McGee versus DiNozzo, Tim, once he got comfortable, did quiet pretty well. Tony either never really got comfortable or just couldn’t handle the quiet.
Gibbs touched the bottle, turning the label toward him. “Gonna take a bigger bottle.”
“You’ve got more if this isn’t enough. What happened with Susan?”
Gibbs stared at him, looking amused. DiNozzo would have spent half an hour talking about, well, Gibbs isn’t sure, he wouldn’t have paid much attention to it. Just would have been noise to let the alcohol sink in a bit before getting to the main topic. “You’ve really never done this, have you?”
“No. The only guy who would come to me with something like this is Palmer, and he’s doing just fine with his love life.”
McGee pulled up a stool and opened the bottle, pouring a glass for each of them. Then he pushed one of them toward Gibbs.
“Talk to me. It won’t hurt. Might help. And if we both still think this is stupid tomorrow, we’ll both slap Tony.”
Gibbs grinned a little at that, and took a sip. Not bad. Not sweet, but tastes like sugar and orange, or maybe it just makes him think of oranges rather than tastes like oranges. Mostly tastes like alcohol. Nothing he’d pick out for himself, but nothing he minds drinking.
“You aren’t drinking.”
“I’m pacing myself. I don’t want to be hung over tomorrow.”
Gibbs took another drink. “The idea is get drunk so you hurt as bad on the outside as you do on the inside.”
McGee shot his back. “Better?”
Gibbs nodded, and he realized McGee always takes a drink from him, but rarely finishes it or has more than a few sips. “You don’t like bourbon, do you?”
“No. Though this is a lot better than I thought it’d be. So, let me guess, the other part of both of us drunk is so I don’t really remember what you’ve said?”
“Something like that.”
“Won’t blab. Won’t tell Abby if you don’t want me to.”
“Abby’s fine. The ten million people who read your next book are the problem.”
“I won’t put it in there. What happened?”
Gibbs finished his, and poured himself another. “Nothing.”
McGee raised his eyebrow, very clearly signaling you’ve been a complete asshole for a week over nothing?
“She’s sweet, and funny, and beautiful, and sexy, and nothing happens. Nothing ever happens. I can enjoy having her around. I can feel protective about a woman. I enjoy the sex. But that’s it. It never gets any deeper.”
“You weren’t in love with her.”
The tilt of Gibbs’ head says yes. “At least by now I know to cut out before she gets too attached to me. It took three tries but I figured out that sticking around longer and getting married and hoping isn’t going to make me fall in love.”
“Why not?”
He just stared at McGee.
McGee sent him his best I’m not an idiot look. “Say it out loud, see if it helps.”
And after a long quiet minute, he did. “Because she’s not Shannon.”
“You ever talk to anyone about Shannon?”
“Mike. A little.”
“He handled her case, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Talk to me. Tell me about her. How’d you two meet?”
Gibbs stared at McGee, not saying anything, not sure if he could make himself say anything. He was never a big talker, learned early with his Dad that silence was armor, a good way to protect himself, but he started talking again when Shannon came into his life, and when she died, his words went with her. Too many memories, too many feelings went with words, and keeping them bound and silent let him function.
McGee waited patiently, not in any hurry, a somewhat expectant look on his face.
Then Gibbs got up, heading upstairs. When he came down, he was holding a framed photo, and his glass was refilled.
He put the picture on the workbench in front of McGee. “Christmas 1990. Last shot of the three of us together.” It was a pretty standard family portrait. Everyone was smiling at the camera, Gibbs had his arm around Shannon, and one hand rested on Kelly’s shoulder.
“They were beautiful.” McGee’s voice was low as he said that, and Gibbs realized that part of never saying anything was never having anyone around who really understood how much he had lost. Most of his friends were bachelors, like Ducky or Mike, never settled on one woman. He watched Tim, and realizes sometime between putting the picture in front of him and now, he switched from McGee to Tim, study the picture and could almost feel the raw shock of aching sympathy from Tim as he felt, and knew, what Gibbs lost.
“Yeah, they were.” Gibbs took another long drink.
“How old are you in this picture?” Tim looked up at him.
“Almost thirty-three.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah. Didn’t go gray until after. Didn’t even notice for something like a year. Had to renew my driver’s license. I listed my hair as brown. The DMV lady just stared at me for a minute before grabbing a compact and showing me myself in the mirror.”
Tim smiled at that. He looked at the picture again. “She would have been about Ziva’s age, right?”
“Kelly was born in ’82. So, yeah, same age as Ziva.”
Tim looked back up at him. “You love Abby, right? And Ziva? Really love them, not just fond and protective of them?”
Gibbs nodded.
“What’s different? They aren’t Kelly, can’t be Kelly, won’t be Kelly.”
Gibbs shrugged, feeling the alcohol hit, hard. Might taste sweet but there was a real punch hiding in there. “Kelly wasn’t mine. You’ll realize that soon, I hope. Your kids don’t belong to you. They belong to themselves, and, eventually, whoever they give themselves to.”
“Shannon was yours.”
And while that’s true, that’s also not the problem. “I was hers.” Gibbs sighed and stared at his drink. “I was eighteen, home on leave, and she was at the train stop, and…” He took out his wallet and pulled out another picture. It’s easier to show the pictures than to say the words. “She’s twenty in that shot.” Shannon, smiling, in a long, simple, white dress, standing in front of a huge scarlet maple, sunset lighting the shot golden pink; her hair was in a long, loose braid, wind blowing tendrils of it behind her, a bouquet of pink and white flowers in her hands.
“That’s your wedding, isn’t it?” Tim asked, fingers lightly tracing the edge of the photo.
“Yeah. October 20, 1979.” Gibbs rubbed his eyes, feeling that moment. She was smiling at him. The photographer said he wanted a shot of her by herself, so he was standing a few feet away from the man as he clicked the camera. Ten seconds later he joined her, holding her hands as he snapped more pictures. The words started to come out before he could stop them, before he could feel the desire to shut them down. “She put that ring on me, and I was whole and home and all that other stupid love song crap that isn’t when you really love a woman… And I know for you and Abby the ceremony is just… fun. But it mattered to us. We didn’t get married an inch at a time. We jumped in all at once, and nothing has ever felt like that before or since.”
“She was your first?”
Gibbs closed his eyes and swallowed, remembering that as well, thinking of a moment of sublime, ecstatic joy forever tinged with the excruciating pain of having lost that moment. “She was my only, and yeah, my first, too. We waited until we got married, and you do that, and…you say the words, make the promise, put on the rings, and then share yourself like that, feel her body on yours, your one and only and her one and only, and you are married.”
He rubbed his eyes again. He was not crying, or trying not to cry, or maybe Tim was just doing a very good job of not seeing him cry. And with the tears (or lack of tears) words started to rush out. “She was mine and I was hers and none of it matters because she’s not here. She’s been dead almost twice as long as we were married at this point. And yeah, it gets better and it gets easier, but she’s still gone, and the hole she’s supposed to fill is still there, and this house is still empty when I come home, and there aren’t any pictures on the mantle of the three of us growing old together, and I don’t have grandkids, and I didn’t get to give the bride away, or dance with my wife at our daughter’s wedding.” He paused, inhaled fast and deep. “We aren’t getting ready to retire, and we didn’t go to the places we were supposed to, and she’ll never set foot on this boat, and the future we wanted to build didn’t happen. And it’s all so fucking wrong!” Gibbs shot his drink back, and Tim poured him more.
“And every time I try to rebuild, it comes back up again. I’m hers, and she’s not here, and I don’t know how to belong to someone else.”
Gibbs drank some more.
Tim touched his arm. “Find the right girl, Palmer told me that. It won’t work with the wrong girl and no amount of trying will make it work. I’m sure everyone and their cousin has told you Shannon wouldn’t have wanted you to mourn her forever, but if you haven’t found someone you can fall in love with yet, then you haven’t. Maybe sex and friendship is what you can do. Maybe it’s all you need.”
Gibbs snorted. “Been telling myself that lie for years. It’s not. I miss the way love felt. I want it. I just can’t get it. I should have loved Hollis. Really should have loved Jen. Should have loved the exes. Should have loved Susan. They deserved to be loved. Just, can’t do it.”
Tim thought about that while Gibbs stared at his drink, then he asked, “Where’s your wedding ring?”
“Upstairs.”
“When did you take it off?”
Gibbs almost answered and then stopped.
“After Hernandez?” Tim asked.
He figured that it really shouldn’t be a surprise that Tim knows that. He half wondered if Abby told him, but decided Tim figured it out for himself. Abby may have confirmed it, but she wouldn’t have told. “Yeah.”
“Go put it back on. You’re still married. Leave it on until it’s actually time to take it off.”
Of all the things Tim could have come up with, that was something he would have never expected. “It’s been twenty-three years.”
“I know.” Tim tapped his glass, he’s only had the one shot, hasn’t poured himself a second. “I haven’t had so much I can’t do subtraction. You aren’t done being her husband, so put your ring back on. Maybe if you go back a few steps, try it again, you can get to where you need to go.”
Much to Tim’s surprise Gibbs got up.
“You still have hers?” he asked as Gibbs set foot on the bottom step.
“No. She was buried wearing it.”
“Okay.”
“Why?”
“If you had it, I would have suggested put it on, too.”
Gibbs nodded, that made sense to him. It didn’t take him long to find. It’d been living in his sock drawer, in the small black box his service medals live in. Plain gold band, wide, still fit, and looked very right on his hand.
“Feel better?” Tim asked when he returned.
“A little.” And it did, which was probably wrong, but… at this point he wasn’t going to argue with it. He hated having that finger naked, and sticking other rings on it never helped, so why not put the one that belonged there back on?
“Good. So, tell me about her. In my family, when someone we loves dies, we get drunk and tell stories, and we laugh until we cry and then cry until we can laugh again. I’m going to take a wild guess and bet that you never did that for Shannon or Kelly.” Gibbs nodded. Tim poured another shot into Gibbs’ glass, poured more for himself as well. “Tell me some stories.”
And Gibbs did.
Chapter 89: Susan
Tony rubbed the back of his head gently as Gibbs stormed off. “That’s the third time I’ve been headslapped today.”
“I know. And I hate to say it, but you’re not any more off than you ever are. What happened with you two?” Tim asked.
“Nothing. He’s just in a pissy mood.”
Tim wasn’t buying that at all. “Pissy mood? Come on. Something is going on. You and Ziva okay?”
Tony flashes him his really, you’re going there look. “We’re fine. Why would you ask that?”
“He’d headslap you if you’re pissing her off.”
That made sense, sort of. “If I’m pissing her off, I’ve done it without her letting me know.”
“That’s not like her.”
“No it’s not. So it’s him.”
They both winced when Gibbs double slapped them. “More work, less gossip.”
“If you weren’t slapping the hell out of Tony every two minutes, we’d be working. What’s going on?”
Gibbs just glared at Tim, so he flashed Tony his talk later look, and both of them got back to working the crime scene.
Two days later, Tim said to Tony, “I feel like I woke up in 2004.”
Tony looks up at him like a light just went on. “That’s it! We fell into a time warp and somehow we’re ten years back in time. How did that happen? Tell me that, Probie.”
Tim glared at Tony. “Don’t you start. It’s not 2004, and I will kick your ass if you start that Probie crap up again.”
“Fine. Still, he hasn’t been this hard in years. As Senior Field Agent, I’m thinking it’s time to do a little investigating.”
Tim nods, this sound promising. “Good, let me know how that goes.”
“You let me know.” Tony smiled, looking satisfied.
Tim’s eyes went wide. “Nooo… I don’t want to poke into his life.”
Tony flashed him his I’m being totally reasonable here, even if you think this is insane look. “I’m not asking you to hack him, just head over tonight and talk.”
“Why do you want me to do that?” There are a lot of things Tim McGee is good at, walking up to people, even people he loves, and saying, “So, tell me why you’re acting like there’s a stick up your ass and you don’t want it there,” isn’t one of them. He’s much better at the whole respecting privacy and leaving them alone until they sort it out for themselves thing.
“’Cause this has gone on long enough. You’re free tonight, and I’ve got Schul.”
“Skip it.”
“Can’t. I missed the last two weeks because of cases. Rabbi’s getting annoyed at my attendance.”
“Great.”
“Besides, I think he’d rather talk to you about stuff like this.”
“Stuff like what?” Sure Gibbs was being a bear lately, but Tim hadn’t figured out the cause, yet.
“When was the last time you saw Susan?”
“Oh.” Tim realized it had been close to a month. “You think that’s why he’s so angry?”
“Could be. He wasn’t much fun after Hollis left, and I think that was the last one he really liked.”
“And he did like Susan, didn’t he?” Well, if they had broken up that could explain it. It’d been more than six months, so that could mean the thing with Susan was fairly serious, and she was the first woman in ten years he could remember being invited to some of the social things for their group. So, that was another mark in the serious column.
“Yeah. Look, if he’s still being a bastard after you talk to him, I’ll go see him tomorrow, and pump Ducky for information, too.”
Tim shook his head, sure how that was going to go. “That’s not going to end well.”
“I’m hoping that you’ll talk to him and it’ll help.”
“Why do you think he’d talk to me about this?”
“You’re good at this stuff.”
Tim’s sending Tony his are you insane look. “What on earth makes you think I’m good with relationships?”Tony’s got the same look on his face, stupefied that Tim would even ask that. “You’re getting married in six months.”
“I’m good with Abby, which is not the same thing as being good at relationships.” An idea hit as he said that. “Abby! She can go talk to him!”
“He won’t talk to her, not about this sort of stuff. Broken heart stuff is man talk. Usually involving alcohol and maybe steaks.”
“It sounds like you know what you’re doing. How about we wait until tomorrow and you handle it?”
“Just get on it.”
Tim glared at Tony a little and then flashed a text to Abby about his post-work errand.
Two minutes later he got back Thank God, it’s about time one of you did it! I’ll pick up some bourbon for you to bring over.
Wonderful. See you at lunch?
Sure.
Gibbs glanced up from his workbench when he heard the steps, feeling mildly surprised to see McGee standing there holding a bottle of bourbon.
“You’re supposed to be DiNozzo.”
McGee nodded. “I agree. But he’s at Schul, so,” he put the bottle on the workbench next to Gibbs, “I’m here. Look, I’ve never done this before. Do we just drink until you’re ready to stop being a jerk?”
Gibbs looked at the bottle of Blanton’s Original. It’s not anything he’s ever drunk. The bottle is globe shaped, looking a lot more like some sort of cordial than anything he’d think of as bourbon. McGee doesn’t drink hard alcohol much and when he does, he goes for scotch, so if he picked it out that means he probably went online and looked it up. If Abby did, than that’s probably her year bartending showing. He hoped Abby picked it out.McGee sat there, waiting for him to say something. There was one difference between doing this with McGee versus DiNozzo, Tim, once he got comfortable, did quiet pretty well. Tony either never really got comfortable or just couldn’t handle the quiet.
Gibbs touched the bottle, turning the label toward him. “Gonna take a bigger bottle.”
“You’ve got more if this isn’t enough. What happened with Susan?”
Gibbs stared at him, looking amused. DiNozzo would have spent half an hour talking about, well, Gibbs isn’t sure, he wouldn’t have paid much attention to it. Just would have been noise to let the alcohol sink in a bit before getting to the main topic. “You’ve really never done this, have you?”
“No. The only guy who would come to me with something like this is Palmer, and he’s doing just fine with his love life.”
McGee pulled up a stool and opened the bottle, pouring a glass for each of them. Then he pushed one of them toward Gibbs.
“Talk to me. It won’t hurt. Might help. And if we both still think this is stupid tomorrow, we’ll both slap Tony.”
Gibbs grinned a little at that, and took a sip. Not bad. Not sweet, but tastes like sugar and orange, or maybe it just makes him think of oranges rather than tastes like oranges. Mostly tastes like alcohol. Nothing he’d pick out for himself, but nothing he minds drinking.
“You aren’t drinking.”
“I’m pacing myself. I don’t want to be hung over tomorrow.”
Gibbs took another drink. “The idea is get drunk so you hurt as bad on the outside as you do on the inside.”
McGee shot his back. “Better?”
Gibbs nodded, and he realized McGee always takes a drink from him, but rarely finishes it or has more than a few sips. “You don’t like bourbon, do you?”
“No. Though this is a lot better than I thought it’d be. So, let me guess, the other part of both of us drunk is so I don’t really remember what you’ve said?”
“Something like that.”
“Won’t blab. Won’t tell Abby if you don’t want me to.”
“Abby’s fine. The ten million people who read your next book are the problem.”
“I won’t put it in there. What happened?”
Gibbs finished his, and poured himself another. “Nothing.”
McGee raised his eyebrow, very clearly signaling you’ve been a complete asshole for a week over nothing?
“She’s sweet, and funny, and beautiful, and sexy, and nothing happens. Nothing ever happens. I can enjoy having her around. I can feel protective about a woman. I enjoy the sex. But that’s it. It never gets any deeper.”
“You weren’t in love with her.”
The tilt of Gibbs’ head says yes. “At least by now I know to cut out before she gets too attached to me. It took three tries but I figured out that sticking around longer and getting married and hoping isn’t going to make me fall in love.”
“Why not?”
He just stared at McGee.
McGee sent him his best I’m not an idiot look. “Say it out loud, see if it helps.”
And after a long quiet minute, he did. “Because she’s not Shannon.”
“You ever talk to anyone about Shannon?”
“Mike. A little.”
“He handled her case, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Talk to me. Tell me about her. How’d you two meet?”
Gibbs stared at McGee, not saying anything, not sure if he could make himself say anything. He was never a big talker, learned early with his Dad that silence was armor, a good way to protect himself, but he started talking again when Shannon came into his life, and when she died, his words went with her. Too many memories, too many feelings went with words, and keeping them bound and silent let him function.
McGee waited patiently, not in any hurry, a somewhat expectant look on his face.
Then Gibbs got up, heading upstairs. When he came down, he was holding a framed photo, and his glass was refilled.
He put the picture on the workbench in front of McGee. “Christmas 1990. Last shot of the three of us together.” It was a pretty standard family portrait. Everyone was smiling at the camera, Gibbs had his arm around Shannon, and one hand rested on Kelly’s shoulder. “They were beautiful.” McGee’s voice was low as he said that, and Gibbs realized that part of never saying anything was never having anyone around who really understood how much he had lost. Most of his friends were bachelors, like Ducky or Mike, never settled on one woman. He watched Tim, and realizes sometime between putting the picture in front of him and now, he switched from McGee to Tim, study the picture and could almost feel the raw shock of aching sympathy from Tim as he felt, and knew, what Gibbs lost.
“Yeah, they were.” Gibbs took another long drink.
“How old are you in this picture?” Tim looked up at him.
“Almost thirty-three.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah. Didn’t go gray until after. Didn’t even notice for something like a year. Had to renew my driver’s license. I listed my hair as brown. The DMV lady just stared at me for a minute before grabbing a compact and showing me myself in the mirror.”
Tim smiled at that. He looked at the picture again. “She would have been about Ziva’s age, right?”
“Kelly was born in ’82. So, yeah, same age as Ziva.”
Tim looked back up at him. “You love Abby, right? And Ziva? Really love them, not just fond and protective of them?”
Gibbs nodded.
“What’s different? They aren’t Kelly, can’t be Kelly, won’t be Kelly.”
Gibbs shrugged, feeling the alcohol hit, hard. Might taste sweet but there was a real punch hiding in there. “Kelly wasn’t mine. You’ll realize that soon, I hope. Your kids don’t belong to you. They belong to themselves, and, eventually, whoever they give themselves to.”
“Shannon was yours.”
And while that’s true, that’s also not the problem. “I was hers.” Gibbs sighed and stared at his drink. “I was eighteen, home on leave, and she was at the train stop, and…” He took out his wallet and pulled out another picture. It’s easier to show the pictures than to say the words. “She’s twenty in that shot.” Shannon, smiling, in a long, simple, white dress, standing in front of a huge scarlet maple, sunset lighting the shot golden pink; her hair was in a long, loose braid, wind blowing tendrils of it behind her, a bouquet of pink and white flowers in her hands.
“That’s your wedding, isn’t it?” Tim asked, fingers lightly tracing the edge of the photo.
“Yeah. October 20, 1979.” Gibbs rubbed his eyes, feeling that moment. She was smiling at him. The photographer said he wanted a shot of her by herself, so he was standing a few feet away from the man as he clicked the camera. Ten seconds later he joined her, holding her hands as he snapped more pictures. The words started to come out before he could stop them, before he could feel the desire to shut them down. “She put that ring on me, and I was whole and home and all that other stupid love song crap that isn’t when you really love a woman… And I know for you and Abby the ceremony is just… fun. But it mattered to us. We didn’t get married an inch at a time. We jumped in all at once, and nothing has ever felt like that before or since.”
“She was your first?”
Gibbs closed his eyes and swallowed, remembering that as well, thinking of a moment of sublime, ecstatic joy forever tinged with the excruciating pain of having lost that moment. “She was my only, and yeah, my first, too. We waited until we got married, and you do that, and…you say the words, make the promise, put on the rings, and then share yourself like that, feel her body on yours, your one and only and her one and only, and you are married.”
He rubbed his eyes again. He was not crying, or trying not to cry, or maybe Tim was just doing a very good job of not seeing him cry. And with the tears (or lack of tears) words started to rush out. “She was mine and I was hers and none of it matters because she’s not here. She’s been dead almost twice as long as we were married at this point. And yeah, it gets better and it gets easier, but she’s still gone, and the hole she’s supposed to fill is still there, and this house is still empty when I come home, and there aren’t any pictures on the mantle of the three of us growing old together, and I don’t have grandkids, and I didn’t get to give the bride away, or dance with my wife at our daughter’s wedding.” He paused, inhaled fast and deep. “We aren’t getting ready to retire, and we didn’t go to the places we were supposed to, and she’ll never set foot on this boat, and the future we wanted to build didn’t happen. And it’s all so fucking wrong!” Gibbs shot his drink back, and Tim poured him more.
“And every time I try to rebuild, it comes back up again. I’m hers, and she’s not here, and I don’t know how to belong to someone else.”
Gibbs drank some more.
Tim touched his arm. “Find the right girl, Palmer told me that. It won’t work with the wrong girl and no amount of trying will make it work. I’m sure everyone and their cousin has told you Shannon wouldn’t have wanted you to mourn her forever, but if you haven’t found someone you can fall in love with yet, then you haven’t. Maybe sex and friendship is what you can do. Maybe it’s all you need.”
Gibbs snorted. “Been telling myself that lie for years. It’s not. I miss the way love felt. I want it. I just can’t get it. I should have loved Hollis. Really should have loved Jen. Should have loved the exes. Should have loved Susan. They deserved to be loved. Just, can’t do it.”
Tim thought about that while Gibbs stared at his drink, then he asked, “Where’s your wedding ring?”
“Upstairs.”
“When did you take it off?”
Gibbs almost answered and then stopped.
“After Hernandez?” Tim asked.
He figured that it really shouldn’t be a surprise that Tim knows that. He half wondered if Abby told him, but decided Tim figured it out for himself. Abby may have confirmed it, but she wouldn’t have told. “Yeah.”
“Go put it back on. You’re still married. Leave it on until it’s actually time to take it off.”
Of all the things Tim could have come up with, that was something he would have never expected. “It’s been twenty-three years.”
“I know.” Tim tapped his glass, he’s only had the one shot, hasn’t poured himself a second. “I haven’t had so much I can’t do subtraction. You aren’t done being her husband, so put your ring back on. Maybe if you go back a few steps, try it again, you can get to where you need to go.”
Much to Tim’s surprise Gibbs got up.
“You still have hers?” he asked as Gibbs set foot on the bottom step.
“No. She was buried wearing it.”
“Okay.”
“Why?”
“If you had it, I would have suggested put it on, too.”
Gibbs nodded, that made sense to him. It didn’t take him long to find. It’d been living in his sock drawer, in the small black box his service medals live in. Plain gold band, wide, still fit, and looked very right on his hand.
“Feel better?” Tim asked when he returned.
“A little.” And it did, which was probably wrong, but… at this point he wasn’t going to argue with it. He hated having that finger naked, and sticking other rings on it never helped, so why not put the one that belonged there back on?
“Good. So, tell me about her. In my family, when someone we loves dies, we get drunk and tell stories, and we laugh until we cry and then cry until we can laugh again. I’m going to take a wild guess and bet that you never did that for Shannon or Kelly.” Gibbs nodded. Tim poured another shot into Gibbs’ glass, poured more for himself as well. “Tell me some stories.”
And Gibbs did.
May 13, 2013
Shards To A Whole: An NCIS Fanfiction
McGee centric character study/romance. Want to start at the beginning? Click here.
Chapter 87: April
“Thank God, you’re both here!” Abby said rushing to sit down next to Tim and Jimmy. They were grabbing some lunch and hadn’t expected her to join them.
“What?” Tim asked, dread in his voice, Abby looked really upset.
“Tim! It’s awful! The Adam’s House called and they can’t get the linens in crimson, ebony, and snow. They’ve only got scarlet, midnight, and cream. But if we do scarlet and cream that means we’ve got to change the flowers because they won’t look right, but the florist tells me the that cream colored roses don’t grow in the late fall, and if we want the roses to match, the linens have to be snow and not cream, and the black cala lilies are more of a warm black, but the midnight linens are a cool black and there’s no such thing as a cool toned black lily, and even if they dye them it won’t look right, because the underlying tone won’t go, and I’m about to laugh so hard I’m going to wet my pants, you should see the looks on both of your faces right now!” And with that Abby did start laughing.
“Everything is fine?” Tim asked once he realized he wasn’t about to have to deal with a bridezilla moment. So far there hadn’t been any, but both Gibbs and Palmer seemed to think it would happen any day now, and that for all intents and purposes you aren’t really married until you’ve talked your bride out of jumping off a cliff because some stupid screwed-up wedding detail that no man in the history of maleness has ever cared about.
She sat next to him and wrapped an arm around his shoulders, kissing his cheek. “April first, baby.”
Jimmy sighed, hard. “Don’t do that! You just gave me a flashback to my wedding when Breena really did freak out because the flowers weren’t going to match the napkins.”
“Yeah, she told me about it, which gave me the idea. Don’t worry, I know you two can’t even see the difference between snow and cream or scarlet and crimson, let alone care about it. Okay, I’ve got to get back to the lab. Have a good lunch!”
Abby bopped away, and Jimmy looked at Tim. “I don’t know if she’s evil or the coolest woman ever.”
“Coolest woman ever. Have I mentioned she didn’t cry when I told her I couldn’t care less what color anything was?”
“I was there, sitting next to you, silently begging you not to say it, waiting for her to explode about how you obviously didn’t love her if you didn’t care about the wedding details.”
“Coolest woman ever!” Tim said with a grin as he took a bite of his burger.
Some parts of planning the Sciuto-McGee wedding were going to be a whole lot of fun.
And while it was true that there were aspects of the wedding that Tim literally could not care less about, pretty much anything involving how the place looked for example, there were some things he really did care about.
When he’d explained the idea of what they were going to do to Gibbs, he’d just stared at him in stupefaction. Apparently back when he married Diane (The last time he’d had a wedding. He and Stephanie eloped) wedding cake came in one flavor: sawdust, and the only decision was how many layers you wanted.So, on a bright and sunny Saturday afternoon in mid-April they were heading to the bakery to figure out what sort of cake they wanted.
Options, so many options, and all of them so, so good. They were sitting at a small table, with a collection of cupcakes in front of them. They’d already narrowed the twenty or so options from the menu down to four. But going from four to one was a killer.
See, the thing about a family only wedding, and not having tons of family is that you don’t need a big wedding cake. Which pretty much limits you to one flavor. And picking just one out of the four in front of them… Black Forrest cake: dark chocolate cake soaked in rum and cherries with a sinfully deep vanilla frosting. Lemon-Raspberry Cake: lemon pound cake, raspberry mousse filling, raspberry gelle, and white chocolate frosting. Peanut butter cake, peanut butter mousse, chocolate ganache. And finally almond cake, chocolate ganache, cherry gelle, vanilla frosting. They sat there, happily munching away, more or less agreeing that all of them were the best thing in the history of cake and that deciding on one of them was impossible.
Finally, Sherri, the baker said to them, “You don’t have to pick just one. You need enough cake to feed forty, right?”
Abby nodded.
“That’s not a big enough cake to make different tiers a good idea, but we can do cupcakes. The ones in front of you are pretty plain, but we can make them fancy if you like. They cost more, because it takes more work to make and decorate a lot of little cakes, but…” And she let the idea trail off as Tim and Abby stared at the cupcakes in front of them.
Then Abby looked at him, licked a bit of white chocolate frosting off her fork, and smiled.
Tim grinned back, grinned wide. There was one sort of cake he’d been very interested in, but it didn’t make the final cut because Abby doesn’t like coffee. But if they were going to get a lot of flavors instead of just one, it could go on the list. Tiramisu cake: white sponge cake soaked coffee syrup, whipped mascarpone frosting, chocolate sprinkles. “Can you make the tiramisu cake as a cupcake?”
“No problem.” Sherri stood up and was back a minute later, placing small, creamy café au lait colored cupcake sprinkled with cocoa and a chocolate curl propped on the frosting in front of Tim. “It’s one of our better sellers.”
Tim bit into it, and groaned with pleasure, it was exactly as good as he had hoped it would be. He looks at Abby, smiling, very pleased with this idea.
“How many cupcakes do you recommend for a group of forty?” Abby asked.
“We usually suggest eighty. Though, if you’ve got a lot of kids in your group, more might be a good idea.”
“Not a lot of kids. Lot of hardcore coffee addicts, but not a lot of kids,” she said, watching the expression of utter, sublime joy on Tim’s face as he chewed his cupcake.
Sherri smiled. “So, would you want sixteen of each? We do a minimum order of six, but anything over that is fine. If you want, we can make them all look the same, cover them with fondant and whatever decorations you want, or we can decorate them so it’s fairly obvious what they are. We can arrange them on a tray or do tiered clusters, so they’d look more like a traditional wedding cake. Pretty much whatever you can imagine, we can do.”
And so, but the end of the afternoon, an order for eighty cupcakes, each decorated to show what they were on the inside, displayed on eight black pedestals, each at a different height, with white roses and chocolate covered strawberries strewn around them was placed, and Tim and Abby were one step closer to having a wedding planned and ready to go.
Chapter 87: April
“Thank God, you’re both here!” Abby said rushing to sit down next to Tim and Jimmy. They were grabbing some lunch and hadn’t expected her to join them.
“What?” Tim asked, dread in his voice, Abby looked really upset.
“Tim! It’s awful! The Adam’s House called and they can’t get the linens in crimson, ebony, and snow. They’ve only got scarlet, midnight, and cream. But if we do scarlet and cream that means we’ve got to change the flowers because they won’t look right, but the florist tells me the that cream colored roses don’t grow in the late fall, and if we want the roses to match, the linens have to be snow and not cream, and the black cala lilies are more of a warm black, but the midnight linens are a cool black and there’s no such thing as a cool toned black lily, and even if they dye them it won’t look right, because the underlying tone won’t go, and I’m about to laugh so hard I’m going to wet my pants, you should see the looks on both of your faces right now!” And with that Abby did start laughing.
“Everything is fine?” Tim asked once he realized he wasn’t about to have to deal with a bridezilla moment. So far there hadn’t been any, but both Gibbs and Palmer seemed to think it would happen any day now, and that for all intents and purposes you aren’t really married until you’ve talked your bride out of jumping off a cliff because some stupid screwed-up wedding detail that no man in the history of maleness has ever cared about.
She sat next to him and wrapped an arm around his shoulders, kissing his cheek. “April first, baby.”
Jimmy sighed, hard. “Don’t do that! You just gave me a flashback to my wedding when Breena really did freak out because the flowers weren’t going to match the napkins.”
“Yeah, she told me about it, which gave me the idea. Don’t worry, I know you two can’t even see the difference between snow and cream or scarlet and crimson, let alone care about it. Okay, I’ve got to get back to the lab. Have a good lunch!”
Abby bopped away, and Jimmy looked at Tim. “I don’t know if she’s evil or the coolest woman ever.”
“Coolest woman ever. Have I mentioned she didn’t cry when I told her I couldn’t care less what color anything was?”
“I was there, sitting next to you, silently begging you not to say it, waiting for her to explode about how you obviously didn’t love her if you didn’t care about the wedding details.”
“Coolest woman ever!” Tim said with a grin as he took a bite of his burger.
Some parts of planning the Sciuto-McGee wedding were going to be a whole lot of fun.
And while it was true that there were aspects of the wedding that Tim literally could not care less about, pretty much anything involving how the place looked for example, there were some things he really did care about.
When he’d explained the idea of what they were going to do to Gibbs, he’d just stared at him in stupefaction. Apparently back when he married Diane (The last time he’d had a wedding. He and Stephanie eloped) wedding cake came in one flavor: sawdust, and the only decision was how many layers you wanted.So, on a bright and sunny Saturday afternoon in mid-April they were heading to the bakery to figure out what sort of cake they wanted.
Options, so many options, and all of them so, so good. They were sitting at a small table, with a collection of cupcakes in front of them. They’d already narrowed the twenty or so options from the menu down to four. But going from four to one was a killer.
See, the thing about a family only wedding, and not having tons of family is that you don’t need a big wedding cake. Which pretty much limits you to one flavor. And picking just one out of the four in front of them… Black Forrest cake: dark chocolate cake soaked in rum and cherries with a sinfully deep vanilla frosting. Lemon-Raspberry Cake: lemon pound cake, raspberry mousse filling, raspberry gelle, and white chocolate frosting. Peanut butter cake, peanut butter mousse, chocolate ganache. And finally almond cake, chocolate ganache, cherry gelle, vanilla frosting. They sat there, happily munching away, more or less agreeing that all of them were the best thing in the history of cake and that deciding on one of them was impossible.
Finally, Sherri, the baker said to them, “You don’t have to pick just one. You need enough cake to feed forty, right?”
Abby nodded.
“That’s not a big enough cake to make different tiers a good idea, but we can do cupcakes. The ones in front of you are pretty plain, but we can make them fancy if you like. They cost more, because it takes more work to make and decorate a lot of little cakes, but…” And she let the idea trail off as Tim and Abby stared at the cupcakes in front of them.
Then Abby looked at him, licked a bit of white chocolate frosting off her fork, and smiled.
Tim grinned back, grinned wide. There was one sort of cake he’d been very interested in, but it didn’t make the final cut because Abby doesn’t like coffee. But if they were going to get a lot of flavors instead of just one, it could go on the list. Tiramisu cake: white sponge cake soaked coffee syrup, whipped mascarpone frosting, chocolate sprinkles. “Can you make the tiramisu cake as a cupcake?”
“No problem.” Sherri stood up and was back a minute later, placing small, creamy café au lait colored cupcake sprinkled with cocoa and a chocolate curl propped on the frosting in front of Tim. “It’s one of our better sellers.”
Tim bit into it, and groaned with pleasure, it was exactly as good as he had hoped it would be. He looks at Abby, smiling, very pleased with this idea.
“How many cupcakes do you recommend for a group of forty?” Abby asked.
“We usually suggest eighty. Though, if you’ve got a lot of kids in your group, more might be a good idea.”
“Not a lot of kids. Lot of hardcore coffee addicts, but not a lot of kids,” she said, watching the expression of utter, sublime joy on Tim’s face as he chewed his cupcake.
Sherri smiled. “So, would you want sixteen of each? We do a minimum order of six, but anything over that is fine. If you want, we can make them all look the same, cover them with fondant and whatever decorations you want, or we can decorate them so it’s fairly obvious what they are. We can arrange them on a tray or do tiered clusters, so they’d look more like a traditional wedding cake. Pretty much whatever you can imagine, we can do.”
And so, but the end of the afternoon, an order for eighty cupcakes, each decorated to show what they were on the inside, displayed on eight black pedestals, each at a different height, with white roses and chocolate covered strawberries strewn around them was placed, and Tim and Abby were one step closer to having a wedding planned and ready to go.
May 12, 2013
Shards To A Whole: An NCIS Fanfiction
McGee centric character study/romance. Want to start at the beginning? Click here.
Chapter 87: A Christening
The christening was a week away when Tim finally got some time alone with Jimmy. They were having lunch, mostly just catching up, and as things were wrapping up Tim said, “So… okay… The thing about being a godfather. I don’t really believe in God.”
Jimmy spends a moment just staring at him, looking confused. “Don’t you and Abby go to church like, every Sunday?”
“Yeah. But I do it because it’s important to her. It’s not important to me.”
Jimmy just looks at him. “And that would be different from me, how?”
That takes Tim by surprise. “You’re not into the whole God thing?”
“Agnostic. I really don’t know, and evidence seems pretty thin.”
“Exactly. I won’t say there isn’t a God, because I don’t see how you could know that, either. But…”
“Yeah. So, no, it doesn’t bother me.”
“Will it bother Breena?”
Jimmy shakes his head. “She married me, and I’m going to be a bit more involved in raising our kids than you are, so I don’t think it’ll be an issue.”
“Okay. Good point. Am I going to have to renounce Satan?”
“And that would be a problem why?” Jimmy asked, wryly. “Or is this where you tell me that, yeah, you attend Catholic church, but just to swipe the holy water and relics so you can pervert them for Black Mass on Saturday.”
“You’re onto me.” Tim flashed his best evil grin. “Just, I may be iffy on God, I’m pretty sure on the no Satan thing.”
“You believe in evil right?”
Tim shrugs a little, of course he believes in evil, sees it or its aftermath at work every day. Just like he believes in grace, sees that and the soldiers of it, every day, as well. But evil is one thing, while a malevolent spirit that controls all the evil in the world is another all-together. “Evil, yes. Satan, no.”
“Me either, but we certainly see more than enough of it. So, I’m comfortable with the idea of promising to renounce it, and if Satan is the term they want to use, fine with me. Anthropomorphic personifications don’t bother me.”
That triggers a million year old memory from Catechism. “The Jesuits would call that mental reservation.”
“Then we will reserve the right to be reserved.”
“That’s the worst pun I’ve heard all year.”
Jimmy smiled. “Thank you. Look, for your part of this, it’s about having you and Abby stand up and promise to help us raise our kids, and as long as you’re on board with that, I don’t care what’s going on in your mind while the Pastor dribbles water on Molly.”
“That I can do. So, what else is it for?”
“Keep the in-laws happy. Make my mom stop bugging me about it. Show my family and Breena’s that we’ve picked you and Abby. Her parents aren’t thrilled with that. They’d prefer we had picked one of her sisters.”
Tim looks perplexed, not that he knows Breena’s sisters well, but they’re all pretty young and single. “None of them are married or settled.”
The look on Jimmy’s face makes it clear that that’s exactly what he and Breena were thinking and that it’s nice to have some validation on this. “Thank you. Amy’s the oldest and she’s four years out of school. She doesn’t need a baby. Anyway, if it ever comes down to it, there’ll be an entire church full of people who saw that we picked you.”
“Smart.”
“So, we’re good on this?”
“Yeah, we are.”
Spring in DC can be a tricky thing. First of all, it shows up whenever it feels like. And that can be anytime between mid-February and late April, but for 2014, it decided to show up for Molly Palmer’s christening.
Second of all, it shows up fast. It might play around a little, a nice day here, a nice one there, and piles of cold, wet, rainy-snowy crud in between. But once it decides to come, it’s bursts forth over the course of what seems to be two days.
So, while it was true, that Thursday, when Jimmy and Breena were finishing getting the pre-christening party stuff ready, it was cold, wet, and gray, with nary a leaf in sight, by Sunday, when the actual christening was happening, every tree was covered in tiny green leaves and white and pink flowers.
Ed Slater sober is a piece of work. If he’s got a filter between his brain and his mouth, it’s got a really wide mesh. Ed Slater with two beers in him, well, at that point the filter vanishes. One thing Jimmy has privately wondered for years now is how on earth the Slater Funeral Home has managed to stay in business. His best guess is that Jeannie, Breena’s mom, never lets Ed anywhere near the customers.
And by the third snide remark out of Ed about “real” family, Tim can see he and Jimmy are headed for a confrontation, so he keeps his eyes open, ready to head over and help out if need be.
It was two hours into the post-christening party when it happened.
Ed more or less drug Jimmy into the garage, apparently he had enough sense to know you don’t do this in front of everyone. But not enough sense to respect Jimmy and Breena’s decision.
“You should pick family for something like this!”
Tim heard the louder, sharp voices and decided it was time to join in, offer back up. “Hey, everyone okay?”
Ed Slater turned to him. “No.”
Jimmy shrugged and sent Tim an apologetic look. “Ed’s having a fit over picking you and Abby for Molly’s guardians.”
“Look, I’m sure you and your Goth are perfectly nice people, really weird, but nice, but this should stay in the family.”
“Tim and Abby are our family!”
“They’re your friends.”
“Family,” Tim added.
“Really, you grew up with Jimmy? You certainly didn’t grown up with Breena. I was there, and I don’t remember seeing you.”
“I’m here now. Abby’s here now. And we aren’t going anywhere.”
“You say that, but you don’t know it. Amy, Kristin, or Jamie will be here forever. Hell, what about your brother?” Ed said to Jimmy.
“Look around, Ed, Clark isn’t here. He wasn’t at our wedding. He lives in Tokyo and only makes it back stateside three days a year. Amy’s twenty-seven, Kristin is twenty-five, and Jamie is twenty-three. They are barely adults. They don’t have homes. They don’t have their lives set up. None of them are ready to take care of kids, or for that matter, wants to.”
Ed just stares at Tim, disdain on his features. “And those two are? I know what you guys make, and both of them work with you.”
Well, if money was an issue, Tim had a ready answer for that. “I’m Thom Gemcity.”
“What the hell does that mean?” Ed asked.
“It means he’s a best-selling author, Ed, and that if money is the issue, he and Abby make a ton more than Breena and I do.”
“And it shouldn’t be an issue, because even if both of us were working for pennies, we’ve got jobs, we’ve got a home, and we’re ready to take care of a child if need be. We’ll have one of our own in a year or two.”
“Great, you’re ready to be parents. Doesn’t mean you’ll be around in ten years. My girls will.”
“We will be here. Both Abby and I understand that by saying yes to this we basically married Jimmy and Breena. And, as horrifying as Abby and I might find this, that also means you’re now part of our family, too. Because, if something does happen to Jimmy and Breena and we end up raising Molly, you’ll be at all of our Christmas and Thanksgiving and birthday parties for the rest of our lives. And the fact that I’m willing to let a jerk like you into my home because you’re my goddaughter’s grandfather should speak loud and clear on how important this is to Abby and I.”
Ed just blinked at him, scowled a little, and headed off.
Jimmy smiled. “We basically got married?”
“We signed up to be here for you and your kids for the rest of our lives. You got a better way to put that?”
Jimmy thought about it and shrugged. “Not really.” Then he smiled. “So does this mean I can sleep with Abby?”
Tim punched him on the shoulder. “Just as soon as I get a turn with Breena.”
“Get in line.” Jimmy’s shaking his head. “God, he’s such a jerk.”
“He’s probably worried that if something happens to you, we’ll take your kids, and they’ll never see them again. That’s something that won’t be an issue if you had picked one of the girls.”
“Maybe. It probably is the issue for Breena’s mom. I think he’s just a control-freak asshole who wants everything under his thumb.”
“Or it could be that. He really offered you a job? Doesn’t seem like he likes you enough to want to work with you every day.”
“Did I mention control-freak asshole?”
Tim squints a little, obviously that makes sense to Jimmy, but not to him. “Not seeing how that fits.”
“If I work for him, all of our income comes from him. He ends up owning us.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah. Not going near that job with a million foot poll.”
“Good plan.”
“Why’d you head over?”
“Saw him pull you away, heard the voices, though you might like backup.”
“Thanks. Never thought I’d say this, but I envy the fact you’ve got Gibbs for a father-in-law.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah. He’s a terrifying hard-ass, but at least he’s a quiet one.”
Tim laughed. “Come on, let’s get back to the party.”
Chapter 87: A Christening
The christening was a week away when Tim finally got some time alone with Jimmy. They were having lunch, mostly just catching up, and as things were wrapping up Tim said, “So… okay… The thing about being a godfather. I don’t really believe in God.”
Jimmy spends a moment just staring at him, looking confused. “Don’t you and Abby go to church like, every Sunday?”
“Yeah. But I do it because it’s important to her. It’s not important to me.”
Jimmy just looks at him. “And that would be different from me, how?”
That takes Tim by surprise. “You’re not into the whole God thing?”
“Agnostic. I really don’t know, and evidence seems pretty thin.”
“Exactly. I won’t say there isn’t a God, because I don’t see how you could know that, either. But…”
“Yeah. So, no, it doesn’t bother me.”
“Will it bother Breena?”
Jimmy shakes his head. “She married me, and I’m going to be a bit more involved in raising our kids than you are, so I don’t think it’ll be an issue.”
“Okay. Good point. Am I going to have to renounce Satan?”
“And that would be a problem why?” Jimmy asked, wryly. “Or is this where you tell me that, yeah, you attend Catholic church, but just to swipe the holy water and relics so you can pervert them for Black Mass on Saturday.”
“You’re onto me.” Tim flashed his best evil grin. “Just, I may be iffy on God, I’m pretty sure on the no Satan thing.”
“You believe in evil right?”
Tim shrugs a little, of course he believes in evil, sees it or its aftermath at work every day. Just like he believes in grace, sees that and the soldiers of it, every day, as well. But evil is one thing, while a malevolent spirit that controls all the evil in the world is another all-together. “Evil, yes. Satan, no.”
“Me either, but we certainly see more than enough of it. So, I’m comfortable with the idea of promising to renounce it, and if Satan is the term they want to use, fine with me. Anthropomorphic personifications don’t bother me.”
That triggers a million year old memory from Catechism. “The Jesuits would call that mental reservation.”
“Then we will reserve the right to be reserved.”
“That’s the worst pun I’ve heard all year.”
Jimmy smiled. “Thank you. Look, for your part of this, it’s about having you and Abby stand up and promise to help us raise our kids, and as long as you’re on board with that, I don’t care what’s going on in your mind while the Pastor dribbles water on Molly.”
“That I can do. So, what else is it for?”
“Keep the in-laws happy. Make my mom stop bugging me about it. Show my family and Breena’s that we’ve picked you and Abby. Her parents aren’t thrilled with that. They’d prefer we had picked one of her sisters.”
Tim looks perplexed, not that he knows Breena’s sisters well, but they’re all pretty young and single. “None of them are married or settled.”
The look on Jimmy’s face makes it clear that that’s exactly what he and Breena were thinking and that it’s nice to have some validation on this. “Thank you. Amy’s the oldest and she’s four years out of school. She doesn’t need a baby. Anyway, if it ever comes down to it, there’ll be an entire church full of people who saw that we picked you.”
“Smart.”
“So, we’re good on this?”
“Yeah, we are.”
Spring in DC can be a tricky thing. First of all, it shows up whenever it feels like. And that can be anytime between mid-February and late April, but for 2014, it decided to show up for Molly Palmer’s christening.
Second of all, it shows up fast. It might play around a little, a nice day here, a nice one there, and piles of cold, wet, rainy-snowy crud in between. But once it decides to come, it’s bursts forth over the course of what seems to be two days.
So, while it was true, that Thursday, when Jimmy and Breena were finishing getting the pre-christening party stuff ready, it was cold, wet, and gray, with nary a leaf in sight, by Sunday, when the actual christening was happening, every tree was covered in tiny green leaves and white and pink flowers.
Ed Slater sober is a piece of work. If he’s got a filter between his brain and his mouth, it’s got a really wide mesh. Ed Slater with two beers in him, well, at that point the filter vanishes. One thing Jimmy has privately wondered for years now is how on earth the Slater Funeral Home has managed to stay in business. His best guess is that Jeannie, Breena’s mom, never lets Ed anywhere near the customers.
And by the third snide remark out of Ed about “real” family, Tim can see he and Jimmy are headed for a confrontation, so he keeps his eyes open, ready to head over and help out if need be.
It was two hours into the post-christening party when it happened.
Ed more or less drug Jimmy into the garage, apparently he had enough sense to know you don’t do this in front of everyone. But not enough sense to respect Jimmy and Breena’s decision.
“You should pick family for something like this!”
Tim heard the louder, sharp voices and decided it was time to join in, offer back up. “Hey, everyone okay?”
Ed Slater turned to him. “No.”
Jimmy shrugged and sent Tim an apologetic look. “Ed’s having a fit over picking you and Abby for Molly’s guardians.”
“Look, I’m sure you and your Goth are perfectly nice people, really weird, but nice, but this should stay in the family.”
“Tim and Abby are our family!”
“They’re your friends.”
“Family,” Tim added.
“Really, you grew up with Jimmy? You certainly didn’t grown up with Breena. I was there, and I don’t remember seeing you.”
“I’m here now. Abby’s here now. And we aren’t going anywhere.”
“You say that, but you don’t know it. Amy, Kristin, or Jamie will be here forever. Hell, what about your brother?” Ed said to Jimmy.
“Look around, Ed, Clark isn’t here. He wasn’t at our wedding. He lives in Tokyo and only makes it back stateside three days a year. Amy’s twenty-seven, Kristin is twenty-five, and Jamie is twenty-three. They are barely adults. They don’t have homes. They don’t have their lives set up. None of them are ready to take care of kids, or for that matter, wants to.”
Ed just stares at Tim, disdain on his features. “And those two are? I know what you guys make, and both of them work with you.”
Well, if money was an issue, Tim had a ready answer for that. “I’m Thom Gemcity.”
“What the hell does that mean?” Ed asked.
“It means he’s a best-selling author, Ed, and that if money is the issue, he and Abby make a ton more than Breena and I do.”
“And it shouldn’t be an issue, because even if both of us were working for pennies, we’ve got jobs, we’ve got a home, and we’re ready to take care of a child if need be. We’ll have one of our own in a year or two.”
“Great, you’re ready to be parents. Doesn’t mean you’ll be around in ten years. My girls will.”
“We will be here. Both Abby and I understand that by saying yes to this we basically married Jimmy and Breena. And, as horrifying as Abby and I might find this, that also means you’re now part of our family, too. Because, if something does happen to Jimmy and Breena and we end up raising Molly, you’ll be at all of our Christmas and Thanksgiving and birthday parties for the rest of our lives. And the fact that I’m willing to let a jerk like you into my home because you’re my goddaughter’s grandfather should speak loud and clear on how important this is to Abby and I.”
Ed just blinked at him, scowled a little, and headed off.
Jimmy smiled. “We basically got married?”
“We signed up to be here for you and your kids for the rest of our lives. You got a better way to put that?”
Jimmy thought about it and shrugged. “Not really.” Then he smiled. “So does this mean I can sleep with Abby?”
Tim punched him on the shoulder. “Just as soon as I get a turn with Breena.”
“Get in line.” Jimmy’s shaking his head. “God, he’s such a jerk.”
“He’s probably worried that if something happens to you, we’ll take your kids, and they’ll never see them again. That’s something that won’t be an issue if you had picked one of the girls.”
“Maybe. It probably is the issue for Breena’s mom. I think he’s just a control-freak asshole who wants everything under his thumb.”
“Or it could be that. He really offered you a job? Doesn’t seem like he likes you enough to want to work with you every day.”
“Did I mention control-freak asshole?”
Tim squints a little, obviously that makes sense to Jimmy, but not to him. “Not seeing how that fits.”
“If I work for him, all of our income comes from him. He ends up owning us.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah. Not going near that job with a million foot poll.”
“Good plan.”
“Why’d you head over?”
“Saw him pull you away, heard the voices, though you might like backup.”
“Thanks. Never thought I’d say this, but I envy the fact you’ve got Gibbs for a father-in-law.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah. He’s a terrifying hard-ass, but at least he’s a quiet one.”
Tim laughed. “Come on, let’s get back to the party.”
May 11, 2013
Shards To A Whole: An NCIS Fanfiction
McGee centric character study/romance. Want to start at the beginning? Click here.
Chapter 86: Uncle Tim and Aunt Abby
“How are you doing?” Tim asked Jimmy his first day back at NCIS post-baby. He and Abby tried to get over to visit at least a few times between Molly getting home and now, but the last eight days had seen three hot cases in a row, so neither of them had been over to visit in more than ten days.
But today, thank any and every higher power, is a paperwork day, so come the start of lunchtime, Tim was heading down to Autopsy to see Jimmy.
For a long few seconds, Jimmy just stared at him, eyes glazed and dull, and then said, “I’ve pulled multiple back to back all-nighters. I worked close to twenty hours a day for more than seven days in a row when we were hunting Dearing. I had a full time job with NCIS while doing my residency. And I have never, ever been this tired. It’s like she can tell when one of us is about to fall asleep and as soon as it happens she starts to cry. You know how they say do all the fun stuff you like before the baby comes, ‘cause you won’t get to do it for a while after?” Tim nodded, mostly just to keep Jimmy talking, because honestly, no, no one has ever said that to him. “They’re lying. Sleep. Sleep every second you can before the baby comes.”
“Okay. Besides exhausted?”
Jimmy stared at him, eyes empty, wasted, in the sense of left to rot, not drugged. “There is no beyond exhausted. Everything in the world narrows down to a tiny person who won’t let you sleep.”
“Jimmy?”
“Yeah.”
“How about Abby and I come over tonight and take Molly for a few hours so you and Breena can crash.”
“Thank you.” That was dangerously close to a whimper.
“As soon as we’re wrapped up for today, we’ll come over. And bring food. I thought Breena’s mom was staying with you.”
“She was. Went home last week.”
“Okay. Do you want to get lunch, or just grab a nap.”
“I’m going to crash in the back.”
“Like hell. Abby’s got something worth sleeping on in her office. Come on.”
He flashed a quick text to Abby, and by the time he got Jimmy to the lab, she had the rugs rolled out, and two pillows laid on them. Just as he was laying down, Tim got another text, this time from Tony.
“Damn it!”
“Gotta go?” Abby asked.
“Yeah. So much for lunch. You got him?”
She nodded. “Oh yeah.”
Forty minutes later, Abby gently poked Jimmy awake. “Time to get up.”
He blinked, looking completely undone, but slowly found his glasses and put them back on. “Nap was probably a bad idea. I’m even more tired, now.”
“Food’ll help.” She pointed to the tray on the floor next to the rugs. “Iced-tea, no sugar, sesame tuna lettuce wrap, edamame.”
Jimmy looks at the food for a second, and then back to Abby. “I love you.”
“Thanks. Eat up, then get back to Ducky.”
If Palmer looked wasted at work, Breena’s whatever comes three or four steps beyond that.
Abby saw it too, and said to both of them while putting the dinner they brought on the counter, “Food later. Sleep for both of you.”
Tim stepped closer to Breena to take Molly, but Breena didn’t want to let her go. She had black circles under her eyes and a half-mad glint in them.
“Have you ever done this before?”
Tim wasn’t sure which of the two of them she’s asking, but since he’s the one who can say yes, he answered, “Yes. It’s been a while, but yes, I’ve babysat a newborn before. We won’t leave the property. You’ll be right nearby if we need anything, but you two need to sleep.”
“She just ate, so she should be good for another two and a half hours.” Tim pried Molly out of Breena’s arms as she said that.
“Then go crash. We’ve got her.”
Jimmy, firmly, took Breena by the shoulders and led her upstairs toward their bedroom.
“You’re really good at this,” Abby said as he’s holding Molly.
“Thanks. I like babies. Or, I like this part of babies. They’re cute when they’re quiet. Not as much fun when they’re screaming.”
Which apparently Molly took as a request. Twenty minutes of patting and shushing didn’t seem to help.
“You wanna try?”
Abby was staring at Molly, looking really disconcerted. “Honestly, no.”
“Give it a shot anyway, ours are gonna scream, too. Might as well practice.”
He began to hand Molly over, and Abby said, “Wait!”
He snuggled her in closer and kept patting her. “What?” A second later he figured out what Abby was thinking as she began to unsnap her collar. Her collar and wrist cuffs all had small pyramid shaped metal spikes on them.
“Let me get them off first.”
“Good plan. Don’t want to explain to Breena how we had Molly for less than an hour and took one of her eyes out.”
Abby glared at him.
Once she had her hardware off, he handed Molly over. Abby got her settled against her shoulder, and began to pat her while bouncing a little.
“I really don’t like this.”
He kissed her cheek. “No one does. You’re doing fine, just keep bouncing and patting, and eventually she’ll fall asleep.”
After a minute of that, an impressively large belch echoed out of Molly, and in a minute after that she was fast asleep.
“See.”
Abby switched from a gentle bouncing step to a sort of rocking one. “So, your mom let you watch your sister?”
“Yeah. My dad was, as usual, gone. And we were out of Alameda then, so my grandparents lived three hours away. There were a lot of nights where it was just the three of us. I was still young enough that five AM wake up wasn’t an issue, so I’d watch her from five to eight, until I had to leave for school, and let my mom get some sleep.”
“That’s insane.”
“It’s the way it was. My grandparents would come down on weekends, and we’d all get more rest.”
“How old was she when your dad got back?”
“Four, five months? Something like that? He shipped out right before she was born.”
Abby looked at the sleeping girl on her shoulder, petting her hair lightly, and kisses her gently. “So, now what?”
He wasn’t sure if she’s asking him or Molly, but since Molly isn’t going to answer, he said, “You could put her in her crib.”
“Not sure I want to let go.”
He smiled, sat on the sofa, and held out his arms to her. She snuggled up in his lap, while Molly slept on her shoulder.
Eventually Molly started crying again, and this time she kept trying to scootch down on Abby’s shoulder to get to her chest. “What is this?”
“If memory serves, that’s baby for ‘MILK!’ Even at three weeks old, they can scoot a little to try and find a breast.”
“Interesting.” Abby stood up and headed toward Jimmy and Breena’s room.
She came down about a minute later. “You want to take another round of this?”
Tim checked the clock. It was a little after nine. “Sure.”
“I’ll let them know.”
When Abby came back, he’d put together two plates of food. “You think they want to eat, or just put the plates in their room so they can scrounge as needed.”
“I’m thinking scrounging. Jimmy hasn’t moved when I’ve gone in. I think he’s out for as long as we’re here.”
“Okay.”
The second round followed the same pattern as the first. Half an hour of pretty intense crying, massive burp, and Molly conking out pretty quickly right after.
“I kind of remember there being something that helped them burp easier,” Tim said when Molly finally fell asleep.
“Gas-X for babies?”
“Yeah something like that.”
Abby got her phone out and googled. “Yeah, there is.”
“Feel like going on a drug store run? Get them some of it. See if it helps.”
“Sure. Back in a bit.”
“We’ll just hang out here.”
She smiled at Tim, and kissed him and Molly before heading off.
Forty minutes later, Abby snuck back into the Palmers’ house. She’d found Mylicon pretty easily, and was ready to show it off to Jimmy and Breena when she took Molly back in to eat.
“I found...” her voice trailed off as she stepped into the living room.
She snapped a few pics, and quickly updated her Facebook feed.
Tim asleep, laying on the sofa, stretched out, feet up, Molly on his chest, his hand on her back, making sure she stayed in place was just way too good not to share.
By the time Tim saw it the next morning, the shot labeled “Uncle Tim and Molly Get A Nap” had 416 likes, 8 shares, and close to a hundred comments.
Chapter 86: Uncle Tim and Aunt Abby
“How are you doing?” Tim asked Jimmy his first day back at NCIS post-baby. He and Abby tried to get over to visit at least a few times between Molly getting home and now, but the last eight days had seen three hot cases in a row, so neither of them had been over to visit in more than ten days.
But today, thank any and every higher power, is a paperwork day, so come the start of lunchtime, Tim was heading down to Autopsy to see Jimmy.
For a long few seconds, Jimmy just stared at him, eyes glazed and dull, and then said, “I’ve pulled multiple back to back all-nighters. I worked close to twenty hours a day for more than seven days in a row when we were hunting Dearing. I had a full time job with NCIS while doing my residency. And I have never, ever been this tired. It’s like she can tell when one of us is about to fall asleep and as soon as it happens she starts to cry. You know how they say do all the fun stuff you like before the baby comes, ‘cause you won’t get to do it for a while after?” Tim nodded, mostly just to keep Jimmy talking, because honestly, no, no one has ever said that to him. “They’re lying. Sleep. Sleep every second you can before the baby comes.”
“Okay. Besides exhausted?”
Jimmy stared at him, eyes empty, wasted, in the sense of left to rot, not drugged. “There is no beyond exhausted. Everything in the world narrows down to a tiny person who won’t let you sleep.”
“Jimmy?”
“Yeah.”
“How about Abby and I come over tonight and take Molly for a few hours so you and Breena can crash.”
“Thank you.” That was dangerously close to a whimper.
“As soon as we’re wrapped up for today, we’ll come over. And bring food. I thought Breena’s mom was staying with you.”
“She was. Went home last week.”
“Okay. Do you want to get lunch, or just grab a nap.”
“I’m going to crash in the back.”
“Like hell. Abby’s got something worth sleeping on in her office. Come on.”
He flashed a quick text to Abby, and by the time he got Jimmy to the lab, she had the rugs rolled out, and two pillows laid on them. Just as he was laying down, Tim got another text, this time from Tony.
“Damn it!”
“Gotta go?” Abby asked.
“Yeah. So much for lunch. You got him?”
She nodded. “Oh yeah.”
Forty minutes later, Abby gently poked Jimmy awake. “Time to get up.”
He blinked, looking completely undone, but slowly found his glasses and put them back on. “Nap was probably a bad idea. I’m even more tired, now.”
“Food’ll help.” She pointed to the tray on the floor next to the rugs. “Iced-tea, no sugar, sesame tuna lettuce wrap, edamame.”
Jimmy looks at the food for a second, and then back to Abby. “I love you.”
“Thanks. Eat up, then get back to Ducky.”
If Palmer looked wasted at work, Breena’s whatever comes three or four steps beyond that.
Abby saw it too, and said to both of them while putting the dinner they brought on the counter, “Food later. Sleep for both of you.”
Tim stepped closer to Breena to take Molly, but Breena didn’t want to let her go. She had black circles under her eyes and a half-mad glint in them.
“Have you ever done this before?”
Tim wasn’t sure which of the two of them she’s asking, but since he’s the one who can say yes, he answered, “Yes. It’s been a while, but yes, I’ve babysat a newborn before. We won’t leave the property. You’ll be right nearby if we need anything, but you two need to sleep.”
“She just ate, so she should be good for another two and a half hours.” Tim pried Molly out of Breena’s arms as she said that.
“Then go crash. We’ve got her.”
Jimmy, firmly, took Breena by the shoulders and led her upstairs toward their bedroom.
“You’re really good at this,” Abby said as he’s holding Molly.
“Thanks. I like babies. Or, I like this part of babies. They’re cute when they’re quiet. Not as much fun when they’re screaming.”
Which apparently Molly took as a request. Twenty minutes of patting and shushing didn’t seem to help.
“You wanna try?”
Abby was staring at Molly, looking really disconcerted. “Honestly, no.”
“Give it a shot anyway, ours are gonna scream, too. Might as well practice.”
He began to hand Molly over, and Abby said, “Wait!”
He snuggled her in closer and kept patting her. “What?” A second later he figured out what Abby was thinking as she began to unsnap her collar. Her collar and wrist cuffs all had small pyramid shaped metal spikes on them.
“Let me get them off first.”
“Good plan. Don’t want to explain to Breena how we had Molly for less than an hour and took one of her eyes out.”
Abby glared at him.
Once she had her hardware off, he handed Molly over. Abby got her settled against her shoulder, and began to pat her while bouncing a little.
“I really don’t like this.”
He kissed her cheek. “No one does. You’re doing fine, just keep bouncing and patting, and eventually she’ll fall asleep.”
After a minute of that, an impressively large belch echoed out of Molly, and in a minute after that she was fast asleep.
“See.”
Abby switched from a gentle bouncing step to a sort of rocking one. “So, your mom let you watch your sister?”
“Yeah. My dad was, as usual, gone. And we were out of Alameda then, so my grandparents lived three hours away. There were a lot of nights where it was just the three of us. I was still young enough that five AM wake up wasn’t an issue, so I’d watch her from five to eight, until I had to leave for school, and let my mom get some sleep.”
“That’s insane.”
“It’s the way it was. My grandparents would come down on weekends, and we’d all get more rest.”
“How old was she when your dad got back?”
“Four, five months? Something like that? He shipped out right before she was born.”
Abby looked at the sleeping girl on her shoulder, petting her hair lightly, and kisses her gently. “So, now what?”
He wasn’t sure if she’s asking him or Molly, but since Molly isn’t going to answer, he said, “You could put her in her crib.”
“Not sure I want to let go.”
He smiled, sat on the sofa, and held out his arms to her. She snuggled up in his lap, while Molly slept on her shoulder.
Eventually Molly started crying again, and this time she kept trying to scootch down on Abby’s shoulder to get to her chest. “What is this?”
“If memory serves, that’s baby for ‘MILK!’ Even at three weeks old, they can scoot a little to try and find a breast.”
“Interesting.” Abby stood up and headed toward Jimmy and Breena’s room.
She came down about a minute later. “You want to take another round of this?”
Tim checked the clock. It was a little after nine. “Sure.”
“I’ll let them know.”
When Abby came back, he’d put together two plates of food. “You think they want to eat, or just put the plates in their room so they can scrounge as needed.”
“I’m thinking scrounging. Jimmy hasn’t moved when I’ve gone in. I think he’s out for as long as we’re here.”
“Okay.”
The second round followed the same pattern as the first. Half an hour of pretty intense crying, massive burp, and Molly conking out pretty quickly right after.
“I kind of remember there being something that helped them burp easier,” Tim said when Molly finally fell asleep.
“Gas-X for babies?”
“Yeah something like that.”
Abby got her phone out and googled. “Yeah, there is.”
“Feel like going on a drug store run? Get them some of it. See if it helps.”
“Sure. Back in a bit.”
“We’ll just hang out here.”
She smiled at Tim, and kissed him and Molly before heading off.
Forty minutes later, Abby snuck back into the Palmers’ house. She’d found Mylicon pretty easily, and was ready to show it off to Jimmy and Breena when she took Molly back in to eat.
“I found...” her voice trailed off as she stepped into the living room.
She snapped a few pics, and quickly updated her Facebook feed.
Tim asleep, laying on the sofa, stretched out, feet up, Molly on his chest, his hand on her back, making sure she stayed in place was just way too good not to share.
By the time Tim saw it the next morning, the shot labeled “Uncle Tim and Molly Get A Nap” had 416 likes, 8 shares, and close to a hundred comments.
