Chapter 139: December 31, 2014
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The bullpen was silent. For once. It’s rarely silent.
Technically there’s someone at NCIS every single hour of every single day of
the year (emergency weather cancellations excepted.)
And then it wasn’t. Ralph Simmons has been the night janitor
at NCIS for twenty years, and of all the teams at NCIS the one that fills the
bullpen is the ones he knows best. Not only have they been there the longest
(as a single team unit) they also work later than most of the rest of the NCIS
employees. He knows them best because they’re the ones he sees most often.
As he emptied Gibb’s trash he noticed a few new pictures on
the back of his wall. (Holidays almost always mean new pictures, and he always
enjoys seeing them.) There are the now familiar ones from McGee and Abby’s
wedding. (He can’t believe they all got dressed up like that.) And two new
ones. One’s a blurry black and white shrimp-looking thing (but Ralph isn’t
having a hard time figuring it out, scuttlebutt’s had it for months that Abby’s
pregnant and a few days ago the official email went out.) the other is an older
man who looks a lot like Gibbs, similar build, same blue eyes, but probably
twenty-five or thirty years older, sitting on what looks like a comfortable arm
chair with Palmer’s daughter in his lap.
He heads to Ziva’s desk. In the trash there are four wedding
invitation mock ups. Ones that didn’t pass muster apparently. He looks at them
and shakes his head. Yeah, not right for them. Sure they both have that classic
elegant thing going, but that doesn’t mean anything with lacy little curly cues
is a good plan.
She’s also added a new shot to her computer, Tony lighting
the first candle on the Menorah, just below the one of the two of them dancing
at McGee’s wedding.
DiNozzo’s desk looks just about the same as it always does. Though he does notice there’s a men’s formal wear catalog open. Apparently someone is looking for suits for his wedding. He looks at it closer and sees McGee/Palmer? written next to one of the suit styles.
McGee’s back wall also has the same black and white shrimp
up. Just below the skull photo. (Ralph wonders why he’s got that. It’s been
there for years, but it’s never made any sense to him. Granted McGee’s married
to Abby, so maybe he just likes skulls.) And next to his wedding picture.
(McGee kissing Abby after the vows.)
He empties out McGee’s trash and heads to the next cubicle.
At 11:59:59 Leon Vance was counting down with his children.
He and Jackie had decided they were old enough to stay up for New Year’s five
years ago.
It still hurt, not having her next to him while they did
this, not kissing her a second from now, but it was getting easier to remember
how happy this made them, and how much fun it was.
He hugs his kids and hopes this new year will be better,
easier than the last.
At 11:59:59 Jimmy and Breena Palmer were asleep. At six
weeks shy of her first birthday Molly Palmer (who is also, thankfully, asleep)
does not grasp the concept of sleeping in. She’ll be up at five thirty no
matter what, so they went to bed at their normal time. In the morning, they’ll
joke about how once upon a time they greeted the New Year’s Dawn by staying up
all night, not by waking up early, and how, on that once upon a time, they were
naked and sipping champagne, not swathed in flannel and feeding Cheerios and
bananas to an almost one year old.
And Jimmy will kiss his wife, remind her that Molly’s
morning nap is only three hours away, and he’s certainly in favor of both of
them getting naked then.
She’ll kiss him back, jerk a little from a round of
especially energetic kicking from Sammy, and both of them will be thinking that
life is pretty sweet, even if there is a certain lack of
late-night-naked-champagne-sipping time.
At 11:59:59 Tim was saying, well gasping really, “Oh, God,
Abby, just! Fuck! ABBY!”
At 12:04, she was cuddled into him, saying, “I told you I’d
show you fireworks.”
He was breathing deep and slow, lazy, satisfied smile on his
face. “You did.”
“And look, no driving, no cold, no trying to find parking.”
“I will never suggest we go out into the cold to see New
Year’s fireworks again.”
At 11:59:59 Gibbs was sketching out plans for the inside of
the Shannon. The hull was built, and though he’d had a general idea of what he
was going to do with it when he started it, he has some new ideas now. Like,
if, for example, he’s hoping to take grandkids sailing at some point, maybe
having a few extra berths squeezed into it would be a good plan.
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| Happy New Year |
He pulled back a few seconds later. “You know what I was
thinking?”
She rubbed up against him. “Going home soon sounds like a
good plan?”
He gave her another kiss, a very long, very hot look, and
then flicked his tongue against her bottom lip. “Yes. I was thinking something
else, too.”
“What.”
“This is the last New Year’s I’ll spend with a girlfriend.
This time next year, I’ll ring in the New Year with my wife.”
A wide, pleased smile spread across her face.
At 11:59:59 Dr. Donald Mallard was having a late supper with
Penny Langston PhD.
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| Link |
They were having a somewhat serious conversation about his
and possibly their future.
There are certain things that Ducky is quiet aware of, one
of them being that he will be eighty in the spring, has already had one heart
attack, and that when push comes to shove, Jimmy is doing more and more of the
work around Autopsy.
He’s been debating having a conversation with Leon about
this, and is bouncing the idea off Penny first. He’s not ready to retire, not
yet. But he can see the point where he won’t be up to lugging bodies around,
and where his vision won’t be good enough to catch the details the way he used
to. And it’s not nearly as far off as he wishes it was.
When that day comes, he’d like to partially retire. He’d
stay on as a forensic psychologist. Continue to help the team by profiling,
adding what he can, but hand over running Autopsy to Jimmy. He’ll need a new space
(“That cubicle next to Tim’s?” Penny asked. He nodded; that would work.) so
Jimmy wouldn’t feel like he was hovering, and so he wouldn’t feel like Autopsy
was still his.
She nodded at him, thinking that sounded like a solid plan,
and asked him, “And if you were partially retired, what would you do with all
of your new free time?”
He smiled at her. “I would like to spend it with the people
who are precious to me. I know it’s certainly late in the game to be thinking
about this, but I’d like to work on being a better family man. I have a feeling
that in the not wildly distant future there will be a rather large crop of
young people who have never heard any of my stories, and I’d like to share
them. And that their parents wouldn’t mind me taking said young people out for
walks in the park or the like to tell them those stories.”
In fact, he’s been enjoying spending time with Molly Palmer
more than he thought he possibly could. He’d never felt any special desire to
engage with infants before, but if he doesn’t get to see her regularly, he gets
grumpy. One of his favorite Sunday afternoon (when they aren’t working)
pastimes is taking her out for walks. From what he can tell, she seems to
approve, as well. And while she doesn’t have all that much more to add to the
conversation than the bodies in Autopsy do, she is a much more enthusiastic
listener. And he has a very deep suspicion that he will also deeply enjoy
spending time with Sammy and McSciuto. (To the point where he’s been googling
three seat strollers so he can take all three out at once.)
“And I was thinking, that if I weren’t working all the
time,” he took her hand in his, “that I’d be able to make dates with you on a
significantly more regular basis, and actually attend them, and I was wondering
if you’d welcome that.”
Penny smiled at him, squeezing his hand in hers.
“And if that worked out well?” she asked with an amused
glint in her eye, enjoying the formality of how he’s addressing this. Yes,
Penny is an old-school second-wave feminist, she burned her bra with the best
of them and fought her way through a man’s world that didn’t know what to do
with a brilliant scientist who happened to be female, but she also appreciates
Ducky’s old-world gentility, knowing that it’s based in a deep respect for who
she is and who she hopes to be.
“I’ve been enjoying having you here this last week, quite a
bit, and maybe, if things continued to go well, eventually, you’d see fit to
share a home with me?”
“Are you asking to court me, Dr. Mallard?” she asked with a
playful tone. This is serious, but it’s also fun, and she intends to enjoy it.
He smiled at her. “In a manner of speaking. I’d imagine that
at this point in our lives, a marriage would only complicate things for both of
us. But a dear companion to share the winter of one’s life with is something I
think I would like very much.”
A very warm smile spread over Penny’s face. “I think I
would, too.”
| New Years Fireworks |
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