Chapter 104: October 30th
He jerked a little at the sound of Jimmy’s voice, sloshing
his coffee.
“You’re a million miles away. Thinking about the wedding?”
T-minus two days, and his last day at work until the middle of November.
No, not really. Thinking about Abby, wondering if the
pregnancy test would turn positive, wondering about a baby, flashing between
images of a little girl and an little boy.
He shrugged a little, said, “That, too,” and returned to
stirring the cream into his coffee.
Jimmy nudged him over a few inches so he could get to the
creamer and began to doctor his own coffee.
“Nervous?”
“Eh.” He shrugged at that, too. No, he’s not nervous about
getting married. His vows are another subject all together, though.
“Vows still killing you?”
Tim turned to lean back against the counter in the break
room and face Jimmy. “Yeah. I’m a writer. I’m a good writer. People pay me
money to put words on paper and express thoughts. I’ve got a book’s worth of
poetry I’ve written for her. And yeah, some of it’s dumb, but none of it is bad,
and she loves all of it. This shouldn’t be so hard.”
“So, what’s the problem?” The only issue Jimmy had had with
his own vows was cutting them down. He could have happily gone on for a good
half hour, but Ducky had, after reading them, gently suggested that he needed
to cut at least half and better yet seventy-five percent of what he had,
because no one, not even Breena, wanted to stand there for that long.
“How do you wrap up a life in, at most, a minute?”
“You’re not writing a eulogy, Tim. This is a wedding. You
live the life, and your vows are just the broad outline of how you’re going to
do it. Stick the pen in your hand, think about how much you love her, and let
yourself go.”
Tim blinked slowly, remembering Palmer’s vows, and sighed.
“Jimmy, I say this as someone who loves and respects you immensely, but you
have no filter between your brain and your mouth, and you really needed one for
your vows. You went on for six minutes, and yes, Breena loved them, but
everyone else was silently begging you to get done. And if I take your advice
and just let go, I will sound like a moron, blathering away Hallmark Card style
in trite, and likely rhyming, verse, and it will be a disaster.”
Palmer raised one eyebrow and took a sip of his coffee, then
said dryly, “If the reports I got from Ziva are right, you have no idea what my
vows were because you were only paying attention to Abby.”
“I caught enough of them. What was the thing about butterfly
kisses?”
 |
| "She loved that!" |
Tim nodded, that was true. Sure, he hadn’t been paying much
attention to Jimmy or Breena, but even he noticed the fact that Breena had been
staring at Jimmy, completely enraptured as he said his vows. “Yes, she did.
Everyone else cringed, but she loved it.”
Jimmy smiled smugly. “And when it comes to your vows, that’s
all that matters.”
Tim sighed, fairly sure he can’t make himself ignore
everyone else at his wedding the way Jimmy did. “When we’re alone together, I
may indeed, actually, probably will let go and blather away and be happy as a
clam about it, but not with forty other people watching.”
“Okay, Tony.”
Tim rolled his eyes and drank some of his coffee. “Don’t
start that.”
“Stop acting like him if you don’t want me to rag on you.
He’s too cool to say what he really feels. Fine. News flash, you aren’t and
never have been. I’m not either. And no one expects either of us to be cool
about getting married. We’re allowed to be soft and romantic and sappy about
it.”
Tim thought about that for a moment; that actually was a
pretty good point. “You might be. You go off blathering away and what happens?
Nothing. Ducky shrugs a little at you, and starts talking about the history of
wedding vows. I’ve got to work with Gibbs and Tony and Ziva.”
“Come on, what’s the worst that happens? He calls you
McRomeo for a few days, and Gibbs slaps you upside the head during the
reception? Like that’s a problem.”
That was probably true, but when it came down to it, it was
an excuse. “It’s a problem for me, okay? I want it to be beautiful and
meaningful, and…” he looked around for a moment, trying to find the right word
for this, “real. It’s too important to be mushy and sappy. And it’s got to deal
with the fact that there’s darkness here as well as light. That it’s not all
going to be good times, and I’m still going to be there. That this is me,
laying my life at her feet, giving her my everything, and building a life with
her forever.”
Jimmy smiled, warmly. “That sounded just fine to me.”
Tim snorted. “I’m not marrying you.”
“Thank God.” Palmer sipped his coffee. “You said, ‘too.’
What else has you standing in front of the creamer just staring at it for two
minutes?”
Tim thinks about it for a second, but decides Abby won’t
mind him talking to Palmer about this. “Did you and Breena plan to get
pregnant?”
Jimmy grinned at him. “Oh.” He laughed a little. “Yeah, I
remember this. The only time in your life where you’re sitting there thinking, ‘Come
on period, show up faster!’”
“More like, ‘Don’t show up at all,’ but yeah, that’s the
basic idea.”
“You know they have tests now that’ll tell you a week before
her period’s due.”
“Yep, got one sitting in the bathroom already.”
Jimmy laughed. “How long have you been trying?”
“Six days.”
He rolled his eyes and slapped Tim on the shoulder. “Please.
Took four shots before we got Molly.”
“You two start right after you got kidnapped?”
“Month before actually, but that certainly added some…
intensity to it.”
Tim grinned. “Intensity, there’s a good word for it. If she
hadn’t been on Depo last summer, we’d probably have a kid by now.”
“It’s what we’re built for, you know? Make more life, and
nothing sharpens that need more than almost dying. We didn’t even get into the
house the first time. We were in the car, in the garage, and nothing mattered
more than that at that second.”
“Yeah, I remember that. Hell, you almost getting killed got both of us thinking along those lines…”
He remembered the frantic up against the wall sex when they got home that
night. Smirked a little at the idea that Palmer was doing pretty much the exact
same thing at the exact same time, and then pulled his mind away from sex to
what sex does. “I can feel it every time I’m not really thinking about
something else. Is she pregnant? Did we just make a baby? Am I about to be a
dad?”
Jimmy squeezed his shoulder. “I’ve done this twice now, and
I can say getting surprised is a lot easier to deal with than planning it out.”
For Labor Day, Team Gibbs was on call, so they had gotten together at Jimmy’s
for a cook out. No calls came in, and shortly after everyone had sat down for
dinner, Jimmy and Breena announced they were expecting a second baby in May.
“New baby was an accident?”
“Not exactly. Not really trying yet, but not really doing
anything to prevent it either. But since we weren’t charting, there wasn’t any
sort of waiting with baited breath, trying to make the calendar go faster sort
of thing.”
“Okay.” Tim gets that and could see how that would be
appealing. And really, they have sex often enough that it’s not like there’s
any shot of missing an ovulation unless he gets sent away again, in which case
it wouldn’t matter.
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