Chapter 60. Being An Adult
Tim woke with a jerk. His heart was pounding, his body
covered in sweat, and the spike of adrenaline from the nightmare made sure he
wasn’t going to fall back to sleep anytime soon.
He checked the clock. 4:17. That was later than he’d managed
to sleep any night in the last week.
“You okay?” Abby asked.
“I will be,” he said gently. “Go back to sleep.”
He hadn’t figured out how to get himself out of the
nightmares without waking her up. The first night she had gotten up with him,
but really, he just wanted to be alone after he pulled out of those dreams.
She’d taken it pretty well when he explained that. She wants
to be there to comfort him, but right now he needs the space to be in his own
head, and she’s willing to let him have that space.
So she went back to sleep, and he got up, pulling on a pair
of pajama pants and heading for his office.
He doesn’t actually remember what he’s dreaming of, there
are no images that go with the heart pounding terror, just the fear. Hell, that
might be the entire dream. It might just be blackness and cold fear. Not like
he didn’t just do that.
He detours to the kitchen, grabbing a glass of water, and
then flicks the light on in his office.
Light helps. It pulls him the rest of the way out of the
dream. It’s not that he’s afraid of the dark these days, it’s just that his
whole mind, whole body knows he’s not in that freezer if there’s light.
He sets the glass on the window sill and opens the window.
Muggy August air flows in, and he stands in front of the window, head bowed,
thumbs pressing into his eyebrows, letting the humid, late summer heat soak
into him.
Tim nodded. That sounded better than staring at the clock
trying to fill an hour with meaningless blather.
“I want you to think about something between now and then.
Last time you almost got killed, you dealt with it by putting your life in
order. And that was good. That was constructive. Your life is in order now. You’ve
got just about everything you’ve ever wanted, and are moving towards the things
you don’t yet have. So the question is, now that you don’t have something to
chase to keep fear away, how are you going to deal with it?”
And the answer is, he doesn’t know.
And he could see that Wolf knew he didn’t deal with the fear
the first time, didn’t even try to. He pushed it aside as fast as possible, and
threw himself into getting the life he wanted, and he didn’t let it touch him.
He rubs his shoulders, staring at his reflection in the
window, listening to the birds starting to wake up. May 12, 2012. August 6,
2013. Too many close calls too close together.
He turns, takes a few steps, sits at his writing desk, and
stares at his typewriter. Then shakes his head and gets back up. Burrowing into
McGregor is just another way of not dealing with it. Then he looks at the
typewriter again, maybe not. Writing the next chapter is a way of not dealing
with it. McGregor isn’t dealing with anything like possibly dying, he’s off hacking
the CIA to wrangle the intel they need.
But McGregor is a safe way for him to deal with the things
that happen to him, a way to give himself the space to think about it, and
while there’s no place for this in the current novel, there’s no reason why
McGregor can’t have a short story, or that this can’t be a theme in the next
novel. Hell, worst comes to worst, he can write his own damn fanfiction. Not
like he’s the only author who occasionally wants to play with his characters in
a way that doesn’t fit with the cannon.
 |
| write his own damn fanfiction |
He’s ten pages into it when Abby knocks on the door.
“Hey?”
She pokes her head in. “You going to work?”
He blinks. “What time is it?”
“7:10.”
As late as he can push it and still get a (very) fast shower,
shave, breakfast, and in the car in time to get there by eight.
“Yes, but I’ll be in late.” Tony’s not back until tomorrow.
Gibbs hasn’t been cleared for anything other than desk duty. And Ziva’s still
ducking Wolf, so she isn’t cleared to be in the field, either. They won’t mind
if he shows up late or takes a half day. Hell, if he gives these pages to Wolf,
he’ll get cleared for active duty before the rest of the team. That might win
him some brownie points from Gibbs. “I’ve got to get this out.”
“Okay. You want some coffee?”
“Yeah. Thanks.”
She’s back a few minutes later with a mug of coffee, just
the way he likes it, and kisses his forehead while he types. He nods a little,
and smiles when she does it, but his mind is on the page, in McGregor’s head,
or his own, hard to tell right now where the line is, but that’s the point of
this.
He didn’t hear it when she headed out.
By 10:00 he had twenty-five pages next to him, and was
feeling... better? Probably. More sure of himself, yes. Somewhere around page
thirteen he fully shifted out of McGregor and into himself, and that was a good
thing.
And he also knew what he needed to do. He’s not putting fear
aside by this. He’s not hiding from death. He’s preparing for it. If the first
step of being a real grown-up was getting a life worth living, the next step is
accepting you won’t always be here, and making it as easy as possible on the
ones you leave behind.
He stood up, stretched for a moment. Noticed the empty
coffee cup next to him, and got a refill along with a bagel and a banana.
Then he headed back to his office, and this time to his
computer. Most of this wouldn’t take too long. He got online, headed to his
bank, and set Abby as his next of kin and beneficiary. He did the same for his
IRA, for his money market account, for the 401K, and his investment account.
She’d been his medical proxy since 2006, so that wasn’t an issue. He went to the NCIS human resources benefits
page, and set her up as the beneficiary on his life insurance and pension.
One last thing. He called in to the NCIS switchboard and
asked to be connected to Legal. They
could see him at 11:30.
He texted Ziva, letting her know he’d be in after lunch.
By two, when he was back in the Bullpen, his will was done
and would be filed before end of business that day.
Once he got to his desk, he packed up the pages he’d written
in one of the red interoffice mail envelopes, put Wolf’s name on it, along with
a note saying he wanted those pages back eventually.
Gibbs and Ziva watched him do it, but didn’t ask any
questions. And right that moment he felt the lack of Tony in the desk next to
them very acutely.
He’ll be back
tomorrow.
And then he settled in for three hours of paperwork.
After dinner he took Abby into his office, gave her all of
his passwords, a copy of his will, and took her through all of his accounts.
He wasn’t sure how she’d take it. Beyond setting up a joint
checking account for rent, food, and utilities, they’d kept their finances
separate. He hoped she wouldn’t be annoyed that he put her on all of his accounts
without asking first. And she wasn’t.
She was sad. Not that he had done it, but that it needed to
be done at all.
She half-smiled at him, trying to lighten the words, and
said, “No happy endings.”
He shook his head. “Not in real life. Eventually it’ll be
just one or the other of us.”
“I never thought I’d envy my parents.”
He looked at her, confused. From everything he’s heard about
them, there were a lot of great things about Gloria and Thomas Sciuto, things
worth envying.
“The way they died. Didn’t have to deal with any of this.”
“Oh.” Her parents had died together. “I’m not sure leaving
your young kids behind counts as the happy ending, either.”
“Not for us, at least.” She sighed. “I’ll see the guys in
legal tomorrow, get my stuff in order.”
“Thanks. I was thinking, since we don’t have any family
nearby, how about asking Jimmy and Breena to be the guardians for our kids?”
She smiled, eyes tearing. “I think they’d be a really good
choice.”
“Yeah.”
It certainly hadn’t been a light or fluffy evening. But when
they got to bed he was feeling easier than he had in ten days. And that night, he slept until morning, waking up at his usual time.
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