Shads To A Whole: Chapter 137

McGee-centric character study/romance. Want to start at the beginning? Click here.


Chapter 137: Get Some Coffee With Me

Palmer showed up at Tim's desk a little after lunch the next day. "Get some coffee with me?"

"Sure."

"I crashed Abby's lunch date."

Tim was giving Palmer a very confused look. He hadn't even told Palmer that was up. And suddenly he got what Gibbs meant by "We've got your six."

"Did Gibbs send you?"

"Yeah. He figured it'd look more natural if I did it than if Tony did."

"Good thinking."

Whatever it is these
things are.

"Okay first of all," and here he gently smacked Tim upside the back of the head. "Sanders is a puppy. And not like a pit bull puppy, which might, eventually with enough time turn out to be an issue, but like, what are they, those tiny, little dogs girls buy to cuddle with?"

"Chihuahuas?"

"No, the ones with the hair they put in bows, that, you know, grow to be maybe eight inches tall." Palmer was gesturing with his hands to get the size of whatever that kind of dog is across.

"Sounds an awful lot like a Chihuahua."

"Chihuahuas have short hair and big ears. The thing I'm thinking of is really fluffy and looks like a dust mop. Some kind of terrier. Anyway, what the hell is wrong with you, man?"

"He was watching Abby, undressing her with his eyes, and just—"

Jimmy just nodded, looking really smug, and put his hand on Tim's shoulder consolingly. "Okay, you're full on pregnant daddy insane. I get that. But seriously, nothing even remotely out of line happened."

"Good. I think they slept together back when they first met."

"You think?"

Link

"I asked; she said no."

Jimmy rolled his eyes and smacked him upside the back of the head again, this time hard enough to sting. He held up two fingers, back of his hand to Tim, and Tim wonders idly if Jimmy knows he's using the British gesture to flip him off. "Two things you never, ever ask, because if you ask you are making her lie to you. One," And his index finger curled down. Tim's feeling awfully sure that at some point Jimmy picked up some rude gestures from Ducky. "Have you had sex with him? Two," and he curled his middle finger down, so possibly this might be another of those moments where Jimmy's lack of mental filter is showing, "was he better/longer? Never, ever ask. How long ago was it?"

"Thirteen-fourteen years ago."

"Then it's fairly safe to say that's not his kid in her belly, and nothing else really matters."

Tim sighed. "Okay, you're right, I'm insane. Great. Now what?"

"Work on coping."

"I'm trying. She went to lunch with him; I did not freak out."

"Good."

"How are you handling it?" Tim asked Jimmy. Senior had been flirting pretty hard with Breena during the Christmas party, but besides Jimmy's eyes narrowing a little and a slight clench to his jaw, nothing happened.

"It's like sex."

Tim stared at Palmer, eyebrows furrowed. "I'm not following you."

"After the first time I wanted to beat the hell out of a guy for being too polite to Breena, and she just stared at me like I was a complete jerk, I figured it out. It's like sex."

Still not following you.

The furrow between Tim's eyebrows got deeper. "Still not following."

"Look. You're fooling around, who's gonna get off first?"

"She is."

"Right. Why?"

"Uh..." He was staring at Palmer like this is conversation is twenty million shades of wrong.

"Just go with it, okay?"

"Fine, she gets off first because things pretty much end when I get off."

"Go deeper, Tim. Why is that an issue?"

"Because I want her to have a good time, too."

"Closer." Jimmy was looking expectantly at him.

"I don't want her to think I'm the asshole who gets off and then falls asleep immediately after."

Exactly!

"Exactly." Jimmy beamed at him.

Tim shook his head wondering what on earth could possibly make Jimmy think this made any sort of sense whatsoever. "I still have no idea why you've brought this up."

Jimmy was flashing him the you can't possibly be this dumb look, and begins to explain in a very patient sounding voice, "Right, so you're screwing and you want to get off, but she's not done yet, so you don't. You control it. You put what she wants first, so she doesn't think you're a jerk."

Tim nodded; that was right. And he was finally seeing where Jimmy was going with this.

"But sometimes, she wants you to get off first. Sometimes she's doing it for you. And sometimes, she's not there at all, and you can do it however you like. And sometimes she does something and you just lose it, but it's okay because you don't do that a lot."

"True."

"Okay, Timmy, same sort of thing with this. Most of the time you're doing it for her. She's around, so you take your cues from her. She's not annoyed by the guy, so you've got to control it and just let it flow by, let her see you aren't a jerk. Every now and again, he does something that just pisses you off, so you go a little bonkers, but she forgives you because you don't do it too often. If she is annoyed at the guy, you get to be the jerk you want to be, and at least verbally beat the hell out of him. And sometimes, she's not there, so you can do whatever you want." Jimmy smiled at that last one.

"Why are you getting defensive if she isn't there?"

"I'm sorry, that was you, right--I mean, it looked a whole lot like you--telling me about how you almost hit me when I was joking about sleeping with Abby?"

Tim nodded. "Got you. And her being annoyed by the guy, that's the equivalent of when she's doing you for your sake?"

"I think so. Anyway, anger and orgasms are a lot alike. Use whatever technique you use not to get off to keep control of your temper. It'll work."

"I hadn't thought of that."

"Yeah, well," Jimmy had a pretty smug see I'm not insane expression on his face as he said this, "I didn't figure it out at first, either, but then it just sort of clicked."

"Huh." Tim thought about that for a moment. "Doesn't she wonder why you're suddenly not really there?"

"Yeah, but when she asked, I told her, and she seemed to think it was better than me getting pissed off at every guy near her."

Tim nodded at that, then looked at Palmer for a minute and decided what the hell, this was already a weird conversation. "So what do you do?"

Jimmy grinned. "Pick a letter and recite every bone in the body alphabetically from there. Backwards if I really need the distraction."

Tim nodded again. That requires attention and is not even remotely sexy.

"You?"

"Replay whichever level of whatever game I was most recently playing."

Palmer nodded. Then stopped, thinking about that more carefully. "You might want to come up with something other than that to control your temper."

"Good point, beating the hell out of something electronically might not be a good choice."

Tony joined them. "What are you two talking about hiding over here?"

Tim was on the verge of saying, "You really don't want to know" when Palmer, with a big, happy smile beat him to it and said, "Orgasm delay techniques. What do you do?"

Tony stared at them in stupefaction and finally said, "What are you, girls? I leave you alone for five minutes and you talk about this?"

"Sure." Jimmy nodded. "Not that we're girls, but that we're talking about this." Palmer thought about it for a moment. "Tony, girls don't need orgasm delay techniques. It's not anything they do."

Tony took a deep breath and stared at Jimmy like he's some sort of alien. Then he shook his head, sighed, and said, "Movie quotes. If I need the big guns..." and here he paused, looked around, lowered his voice, and said, "Gibbs in a Speedo."

Both Jimmy and Tim looked stunned. Finally Tim said, slowly nodding, "Yeah, that'd do it."

Jimmy stared at Tony, disbelief all over his face. "The idea is to not get off, no go completely soft and end up curled into a ball whimpering."

"Look, if I'm..." and once again he looked around, and once again Gibbs was nowhere nearby, "thinking about that, Ziva's got me so hard I could drive nails with it and I'm so close the tingles have all but started."

"Okay, so extreme emergency situations," Palmer said, the look of disbelief not entirely gone, but it eased up.

"Yeah, for when she needs like one minute more and I'm almost insane."

"That makes sense," Tim added.

"So, do I want to know why you two were talking about this?"

Jimmy shrugged, and Tim rolled his eyes, orgasm delay techniques he came up with in a second, but why they might be talking about it was something Jimmy's willing to see if Tim actually wants to share with Tony.

"Jimmy suggested using the same technique to control my temper so I don't beat the hell out of the next guy who eyeballs Abby."

"Oh, right, Gibbs mentioned that. So, it's bad?"

"Tim was getting ready to beat the hell out of a guy, who from everything I can tell is gay, because he was," and Jimmy did the quote hand gesture to go with the next two words, "'checking out' Abby."

Tim turned on Jimmy, voice hot, and pointing as he spoke. "Look, he's not gay, and you were not there! He was undressing her with his eyes, and looking at her lips, imagining the best blow job ever, and I had to stand there and watch him do it."

"Uh huh." Palmer nodded, then looked at Tony Tim's insane clearly on his face. "So gay! On the overreaction scale of one to ten, Tim blew a fifteen."

"Fifteen is when I actually shoot the guy." Tim shook his head. "My wife, pregnant with my kid, I'm allowed to get overprotective."

Jimmy smiled at him. "Told you it was insane."

"Yeah, it is."

Then they both turned to Tony, and smirked.

Tony backed up a little. "Oh no. Do not sit there and smirk at me. I'm not joining your insane, over-protective daddy club anytime soon!"

"Uh huh." Bullshit Jimmy's expression clearly said this time.

"Two years," Tim added.

"We're not even married, yet."

"Please, that's four months off," Jimmy said.

"Didn't stop Abby and I. And your dad is right, people might go blind by looking directly at Ziva made up for her wedding and a few months pregnant."

Jimmy's voice got serious. "Think about it, you wait two years to have a kid, not start on one, but to have a kid, and you're going to be seventy-two when he graduates college. You want to be young enough to do dad stuff with your kid--"

"I needed to start ten years ago, so it's a moot point. There's not a huge difference between seventy-two and seventy-four, and since the youngest I could possibly be is seventy, I'm not feeling any need to rush."

"Okay, how about this, you want to be alive to see your kids get married? Want to actually walk your daughter down the aisle, instead of hobble?"

"My dad's eighty and doing fine. Grandad made it to 88. Great-grandfather made it to 90. DiNozzos are hard to kill off."

"If you say so," Jimmy said. "Just keep it in mind."

"Thanks. Anyway, we need to get back to the bullpen. Gibbs and Ziva are due back with the suspect any minute and you know how he gets when he gets back and we don't have something to report the second he walks in."

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