Saturday, July 13, 2013

Shards To A Whole: Chapter 135

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


Chapter 135: He's A Fucking Weasel


It's not a secret that Tim is jealous of Abby's past lovers and that she feels similarly towards his. During the years they didn't date, they didn't strenuously object about each other's "friends," and they both genuinely wished the other happiness, but neither of them was particularly thrilled about the other dating someone other than themselves.

Sort of a if-I-don't-get-to- have-you-no-one-else-does-either vibe.

Now, for Abby, this is not a big deal. Sure, Tim has ex-girlfriends, but not a ton of them, and he tended to date outside of their social/work set. So, it's possible that they might run into one of his exes, but it's unlikely.

For Tim, this is a somewhat thornier problem. Abby has probably four exes to every one of his, and she has dated people they work with, at least on occasion.

And she's remained friends with a decent number of the guys she dated.

So, running into one of her exes was bound to happen sooner or later.

At least, he thinks the guy standing in Abby's lab, in a fedora and vaguely hipsterish outfit is one of the exes.

He's watching her the way an ex would. Eyes hungry and staring, devouring her curves under her lab coat, lingering on her lips, undressing her with his eyes.

Tim's been in the lab for, oh, nine seconds, and he already loathes the guy in front of him.

Abby looks over at him, grins, and says, "Tim, this is Greg Sanders. Greg, Tim McGee. We met at a forensics conference back in..."

"'01." Greg smiles at him and offers his hand. Tim smiles back limply, while shaking.

"So, which lab are you out of?" Tim asks.

"None anymore, I'm a CSI out of Vegas now. I started in their lab, but got into field work a few years later." Tim feels himself drifting closer and closer to Abby with each word Sanders says. By the time Greg's done with the sentence, he's holding her hand.

"So what brings you so far from home?" Get the hell out of my wife's lab and go back to your own!

"My publisher has me giving a seminar on true crime writing, and since I was in town, I thought I'd look Abby up."

"Really. You write? Who are you with?"

"Harper Collins." Tim nods, impressed against his will. They tend to make good books.

"True crime?"

"Yeah, I write about Vegas during the mob days. It's a hobby."

Great, he's standing there, leering at Abby, eye fucking her, or trying at least. She's not returning those looks. And he's a writer. And he's a cop. And he's about the same age Tim is, maybe a tad younger. Certainly cooler. Tan. More handsome. In slightly better shape. Tim wraps an arm over her shoulders, eye narrowing, and growls, very, very softly. But Abby notices and turns to him.

She does not look particularly pleased by him at this moment. "Anything you need, McGee?"

"No, Mrs. McGee. Just wanted to tell you the OB called, our appointment got moved from ten to ten-thirty."

This tells Abby that Tim's on the verge of a melt-down of some sort, because that appointment had been almost a month ago, and though he may call her Mrs. McGee on occasion, (like when they're having sex) he's never done it like that before.

Greg looks up at her and smiles. "You're pregnant?"

"Yes, we're having a baby in July," Tim answers.

That couldn't have backfired worse on him if he had tried. Greg grins at them and pulls Abby into a tight hug, and since Tim already had his arm around her, that means he more or less got hugged by Greg, too. Then Greg shook Tim's hand again-which Tim responds to by not breaking his hand, though he wants to-and says, "This is awesome! Can I take you out to dinner?"

"No," Tim says it, voice flat.

"But I'm free for lunch tomorrow," Abby quickly replies. "How about noon?"

"That sounds great!" Apparently Greg finally got the clue that he didn't need to be in the lab anymore, and left.

Before he's all the way out of the door, Tim had pulled Abby even closer to him and was kissing the daylights out of her. She lets him, for a minute, and then puts her hands on his arms and pushes him back.

"Could you have been more rude?"

"Yes." Tim's nodding emphatically. "And I would have enjoyed it!"

She rolls her eyes and looks exasperated. "Okay, what is going on?"

"Insane jealousy. I mean, Palmer told me about it, but it really is insane. Look, I trust you. I absolutely know that nothing is ever going to happen with that Sanders guy. But the way he was looking at you was just... And I was watching it... And just... Insane."

"Okay, so you know what you did was completely not cool."

"Yes."

"Are you going to apologize to him?"

Tim shrugs. "I'd really prefer not to. I'm not in any way bothered about being rude to him. He deserved it."

"Do you trust me?"

He kisses her again. "Utterly. Nothing is going to happen. He was all but fucking you with his eyes, and you didn't even blink at him. You and me, we're good. He's a fucking weasel."

She's giving him a look somewhere between amused and annoyed. "So, it's not about trust."

"No." He's shaking his head. "Trust you absolutely. It's more about wanting to wipe that smirk off his face, preferably with a lot of force and a good deal of pain, and make sure it's tattooed into his brain that you are MINE."

"Pissing contest?"

"Yes." Tim's nodding emphatically at this, too.

"Eye fucking?" If you were to ask Abby what that encounter looked like, she would have told you it was two friendly colleagues chatting with each other. Sure Greg's attracted to her. What guy isn't? Especially now, pregnancy boobs are insane. But there was absolutely nothing he was doing that was out of line.

Tim, on the other hand, is glaring at the memory of Sanders watching Abby. "He was staring at your breasts, like he really wanted to see them, again, and your lips, like he knew exactly how delicious you are and what you can do with them."

Her eyebrows shoot up as he says that. "You think we've—"

"I know how I used to look at you, and that looked awfully similar to me."

"Huh." Okay, yeah, of course she and Greg slept together, but she didn't see any of that in how he was looking at her. But if Tim noticed it...

"Have you two...?" he asks, looking like he can't believe he let those words come out.

"Do you really want to know?"

"Only if the answer's no."

She looks him straight in the eye. "No. We've never slept together."

He nods, takes a deep breath, and kisses her quickly. When he pulls back he says, "Eventually, when I'm sane again, I might ask again, and that time, tell me the truth?" It's not that he's calling her a liar, not exactly. It's that he knows that she knows that right now any other answer isn't a kindness. And the little sane voice in the back of his head knows that asking her that, and then telling her that he can't handle the answer really isn't fair.

"Sure."

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He kisses her again. This time softer, and longer, and more of just touching her to touch her, less about marking her as his. And this time she lets him until he finishes.

"Can I go to lunch with him without you having a fit?"

"Yeah. As long as I'm not watching him eyeball you, I'll be fine. He knows we're married, right?"

"Well, if he didn't before, he does now. That Mrs. McGee thing wasn't subtle. The fact that I introduced you as Tim McGee when that's the same name on my ID badge, and the name on my Facebook profile, you know, the way he let me know he was going to be in town, might have also tipped him off. Or, since he's a cop, he could have noticed the matching wedding rings, and if he's really sharp, he could have possibly noticed that this," and she touched the lip print on her throat, "matches your lips."

"Okay."

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