McGee-centric character study/romance. Want to start at the beginning? Click here.
Chapter 404: Words
"So this is what you two do when I'm out?" wakes Jimmy out of his doze.
He looks up and sees Abby grinning at him, and promptly realizes he's in bed, in her bed, with Tim, and apparently was asleep.
He stretches a little, sees that Tim's still asleep, and notices his phone on the bed next to him. What happened starts to slide back into his mind: bed, comfy, boring reading, somewhat dim light, sound of rain, and off to sleep he went.
He rubs his eyes, sees Abby still grinning. She gets (gently, Tim's still asleep) into the bed, between them, and quietly says, while poking Jimmy, and still grinning. "So…" She's enjoying this way too much. "What sort of fun did you two get up to that got you so tired out?"
Jimmy rolls his eyes, but notices that Tim settles in against Abby. He doesn't appear to have woken up, but he knows she's near and has snuggled in closer. He smiles a little at that. Breena does that when he comes home late and slips into bed without waking her.
"Kelly?" Jimmy asks.
"Naptime for her, too. I was just going to crash. You want to hang out here, you're welcome."
Jimmy checks the clock, little before two. He shakes his head. "Nah. Gotta eat." He sits up and stretches. "MOPs'll be done by the time I get home. Play with my girls some, and do some more studying."
Abby kisses his cheek. "Have fun."
Jimmy smiles, tucking his phone back into his pocket and slipping his feet into his shoes. "I will."
Breena's in an exceptionally good mood when he gets home.
"Hi." He kisses her before heading through the living room to the coat closet by the front door. The trashed living room. He gets the point of the MOPs group. How they alternate between each other's houses, so seven weeks out of eight, Breena gets some time to socialize with other adult women with kids, have a good cup of coffee, yummy snacks, and what she refers to as 'girl talk', the kids can run around and wreck someone else's house, and having eight sets of adult eyes to watch fourteen kids is a hell of a lot easier than one set of eyes and two kids.
So he gets it, but, Lord, his living room looks like a tornado went through it. They're gonna need Federal disaster relief to get this cleaned up.
"I take it, it was a good meet?" He tosses his shoes into the closet and heads back to where she is, at the kitchen table, looking over the PL statements for the last quarter for Slaters'.
She smiles up at him, and he kisses her again.
"Good meeting, and Abby just sent me the cutest photo ever." There's a massive grin on her face.
Jimmy rolls his eyes again, and heads to the fridge. "She took pictures?" It's possible he sounds a tad whiny at that.
"Of course!"
He opens the door. "You want anything?"
"Nah. Everyone brings food, and Elise made it this week…" He knows Elise is the baker, and when she comes she always brings some sort of amazing, high calorie, chocolate-intensive thing that the girls regret eating but usually snarf down in about ten seconds. Elise runs a bakery that handles catering a lot of the post-viewing/post-funeral wakes that Slaters' throws.
Actually, he thinks about it more, a lot of those women run businesses that work with Slaters'.
Ed and his brothers are part of a bunch of businessmen's groups, where they get together and do whatever it is they do over golf and beer or whatever. Jimmy's fuzzy on the details what with never having attended any of those meetings. He's heard the extended Slater clan talking about it at Sunday dinner, though, and it sounds very nineteenth century.
Breena and her friends are doing the same thing, at home, while watching kids. Pulling this tradition into the twenty-first century and multi-tasking it.
Jimmy closes the fridge door, and heads over to Breena. He hugs her from behind, and she absently tilts her head, the way she usually does when she's expecting a kiss, but paying attention to something else. He shifts over a step, tilts her head toward him so she's looking into his eyes and says, "I don't tell you how amazing you are nearly often enough."
She smiles at that. "What's bringing this on?"
"You." He kisses her again.
"I'm really not bugged by you catching a nap with Tim."
"Huh?" He pulls back, confused.
"I'm cool with it, you don't have to get extra sweet with me because of it."
"Uh… Okay." His eyebrows furrow. He doesn't think that's what he's doing. He thinks for another second. "No. That's not happening. I was thinking about how you're handling the girls and your business all at once, and how you're just on top of everything."
She looks very pleased by that. "Oh! In that case, yes, I'm awesome." She grins at him again, and he gently shoves her shoulder, heading back to the fridge and locate lunch.
"I saved the lettuce wraps Chloe brought to the meeting."
"Mmmm…" He sees them and grabs them. "You really are awesome." He doesn't know how she makes them, some sort of secret recipe that shall not be divulged, but they're hummus and red peppers and black olives and pine nuts all mixed into some sort of paste with a bunch of yummy herbs wrapped up in romaine lettuce and if he ever had leftovers he'd take them to Abby and ask her to analyze them so he could make them for himself. But he's never had the self-control to have leftovers.
He sits down next to her, happily chewing. "So, you think I'm being extra sweet to you for catching a nap with Tim?"
She shrugs. "Wasn't sure entirely what that eye roll was. Hoping you're not feeling guilty."
Now he's slightly alarmed. "What the hell do you think we did?"
"Slept."
Okay, that's right. "Then why would I be guilty?"
"I don't know? You shouldn't be. It's not a big deal."
"I'm not. And you're acting like it's a big deal."
"There was some edge in the way you shrugged at me."
Jimmy thinks about that. Some edge with Abby, too. Okay, why? "Irked," he says after a few seconds. "You and Abby are petting and praising me like I'm a toddler who successfully peed in the potty."
Breena lights up. "Not to derail this, because this is important, but I might forget to tell you otherwise…" Jimmy nods. They have a lot of conversations where they start on one topic, flip over to another one, and eventually get back to the original one. Just part of busy lives, two full-time jobs, parenting, friending, and all the rest of it. "Molly did successfully notice she had to go, stopped playing with her toys, and got to the potty in time."
He smiles at that. "Way to go, little girl!" Molly, if asked, will make it to the potty in time, but if she's doing something she finds interesting, she usually doesn't notice that she has to go until she's sitting in a puddle. "Have to do something special for that."
"Already in place. Rented a new episodes of the Hoobs. When she wakes up…"
"She gets to see the new episode as a reward, and we've got a quiet twenty minutes to get the living room tidied up."
Breena nods. "That's the plan."
"Okay, good. I can do that." Jimmy waits for a beat, sees Breena's done with that, and shifts gears from dad and back to lover. "However, the point I was making… comforting someone you love when they're hurting shouldn't get you a medal."
"Yeah. It's… I don't know, kind of related to that, but not that. It's not you taking care of him, though that's good, too. It's… Okay, if wherever we go next involves sex, it'd be a lot easier if you and Tim are physically comfortable with each other. I know you don't want to fuck each other. And, I'm not talking about that, or you guys ever going there, but if you can be close and touch without freaking out, that makes everything easier."
Jimmy hadn't thought about that. In fact, any of the physical mechanics of the four of them that involve him with Tim, he hasn't been thinking about. "And that's why you and Abby think me snoozing next to him is cool?"
"You haven't seen the picture, have you?"
"I was there."
"Uh huh." Breena knows how Jimmy wakes up from naps. He's usually out of it enough he doesn't know his name. She pulls out her phone, opens the shot and shows it to Jimmy. It's exactly what he's expecting. He drifted off reading, sitting against the headboard, but apparently he slumped down, so he's back on the bed, in his usual arms and legs akimbo sleeping position, one hand on Tim's neck.
He looks up at her. "Uh, yeah. He was having a hard time." Jimmy sighs. "Look, I'm the fucking moron who put him in the morgue to take x-rays. Understandably enough, that freaked him out. We spent some time with him in his office working, once he got tired, I got him home for a nap, he was still a little freaked out so I sat next to him, and, I can't put my hand on his shoulder. He's got it in a cast, and the damn thing still hurts, so yes, I'm holding his neck."
Breena smiles. "It's sweet."
He rolls his eyes again. "It's not a big deal."
"Yes and no. No, comforting a friend isn't a big deal. Allowing yourself to be comforted by a friend isn't a big deal. It's normal. People do it all the time. But, come on, could you touch Tony like that, in his bed?"
Jimmy shrugs. "Not right now." They're better, but there's also still an edge between them from the Jeanne thing. "I like to think that if he needed it, I could, but I'm fairly sure he'd never let me see that he needed it."
"What'd you do when things were going bad with Ziva? I know you were willing to hug her." Because last summer Ziva had stayed with them when she and Tony were in the weeds, and Jimmy had been willing and able to listen and offer hugs as needed, they both were.
Jimmy sighs, remembering. "Hand on his shoulder, or holding his hand. We were getting along as well as we ever had, and he was hurting worse than he ever had, and I didn't hug him."
Breena looks at him, smiles a little, and he nods. "Thinking about that some when Tim was sleeping. You're right, we're not friends. Tony's my friend, and I couldn't offer him that sort of comfort."
Breena nods.
"But I don't know what Tim and I are. I've got words for you and me. And, whatever happens with Abby, between us, or you two, there are words for that, too. Lover, girlfriend, wife, mistress, whatever. But I don't have words for Tim. I love him more than anyone who isn't you or the girls, but…I don't want to have sex with him. If it'd have been Abby or Ziva, or any other reasonably in shape woman in bed with me, that little lizard part of the brain would have thought about it. Wouldn't have done anything, but I would have at least fantasized about it."
Breena smiles at that, too. She knows Jimmy inside and out, and they are long past pretending they only find each other sexually interesting.
"So, what were you thinking about, if not hot Tim fantasies?"
"First off, I do not have hot Tim fantasies. Ever. I have hot you fantasies. And I have hot Abby fantasies. And I have scorching hot you and Abby and me fantasies. And when you tell me your foursome fantasies, I like them just fine, and I think they're hot, but if we're just in my head, and I'm thinking about sex, Tim more or less ceases to exist."
Breena laughs while shaking her head. "So, what were you thinking about?"
"How you kissing him didn't freak me out." She nods; she knows that. "And how I do think you're amazing because you can love so deep and sweet. And because you are who you are, you can kiss him, and I still feel secure and adored because I know you've got more than enough love for all of us. Because it's not an either or thing. Because we went home after, and you're still my wife." He's smiling gently at her. "You're my world, and because it's you, I get the chance of a bigger, grander, richer world, but no matter what, you're the center of it."
She leans over and kisses him deep and slow.
"I love you so much."
She cups his face in her hands. "Love you, too."
He smiles at her, eyes sparkling, and then says, "Also, I was thinking that Tim really knows how to put up mirrors, and when he can stand without a crutch, I'm getting him up to our room, and we're doing a little redecorating."
Breena laughs at that. "Uh huh. Got something in our room you want to see more of?"
His hand drops lightly to her breast and his eyes follow, then jump back up to hers. "Oh yeah!"
Next
Showing posts with label NCIS. Show all posts
Showing posts with label NCIS. Show all posts
Sunday, January 25, 2015
Shards To A Whole: Chapter 403: Not Friends
McGee-centric character study/romance. Want to start at the beginning? Click here.
Chapter 403: Not Friends
There are moments when Jimmy is sure there is something wrong with him. Usually these moments are the result of his tongue getting away from him and some god-awful embarrassing thing spouting out of his mouth.
He has this filed under "No Foresight", and has routinely cussed himself out for not having the foresight God gave a turnip, let alone a fairly intelligent grown man.
And he is, as he's holding Tim, rubbing his back, and gently saying things like, "You're okay. I've got you. You're safe," cussing himself out inside his own head with a virtuoso performance of profane invective.
Because he's the moron who couldn't figure out that taking his dearest friend, who was almost beaten to death less than a month ago, to a FUCKING MORGUE, and then laying him down on one of the tables that they use for the corpses to get chest x-rays, might be a bad plan.
He's the moron standing there, shifting the camera a bit, making sure he's got the markers on Tim's chest so he can see where all the breaks are, telling him to stay still, (once again, in the FUCKING MORGUE on one of the tables where they autopsy the bodies) and completely missing the fact that at some point during this endeavor Tim went from talking to him about possible therapy exercises for his back, chest, and abs, and then quietly turned white, started sweating and shaking.
It wasn't until he was done with the x-rays, and had taken off the lead shield, and rolled the portable x-ray scanner away, and was in the process of reaching toward Tim to help him get sitting up that Jimmy realized Tim was in the middle of a massive panic attack and that wherever his mind was, it wasn't safe and sound at the Navy Yard.
So, he's got Tim sitting up, and is sitting next to him on the table, holding him as he shakes and sobs, petting his back. "You're okay, Tim. I've got you. Come on back to me, okay? You're here at the Navy Yard, and you're safe. Come on, come on back…" He keeps up a soothing mantra of statements like that, hoping his voice is lulling and that it'll help pull Tim back to him.
It takes a few minutes, but eventually Tim seems to pull out of himself, comes back to where he is, and who he's with, and afraid slips into angry and embarrassed. He pulls away from Jimmy, or tries, Jimmy keeps a hand on his back.
"Shit." Tim finally says, as he wipes his eyes and reaches for his shirt.
"You're okay." Jimmy's not rubbing his back anymore, but his hand is gently cupping the back of Tim's neck, keeping contact, keeping him grounded in the here and now.
Tim snorts at that. "That makes it worse. I'm flipping out over nothing."
"Did you think it was nothing when, for months after Jon died, everything set me off?"
"No."
Jimmy gently squeezes the back of Tim's neck. "Back at ya. Come on, let's get you up."
Jimmy helps him get his shirt back on, staying close, being calm. Once he's completely dressed, Jimmy's thinking that now is probably not a fantastic time to leave Tim sitting alone on one of the tables while he does the work necessary to turn those images into the digital scans they started using two months ago.
So he helps Tim up, heading toward his desk, and asks, "You seen our new toy?"
One of the first thing Tim did when he got a hold of his budget was make a list of the software they were currently paying licensing fees for, and figure out which of them could be outsourced to shareware to free up some of his funding.
Jimmy, when he got a hold of his budget, decided that he was going to make a pretty big expenditure outlay, that would, in the course of the next two years pay for itself, and from there on out, save him about fifteen thousand dollars a year.
He upgraded autopsy to a digital x-ray. No more films, no more waiting for image processing, no more light bulbs for the light board (which are stupidly expensive), no more constantly having to buy new plates, and best of all, less radiation. Granted, his patients don't care much about the radiation, but he's still pleased to be zapping himself and Dr. Allan with fewer rads.
Tim shakes his head; he hasn't seen the new x-ray in action. Jimmy takes him over to the computers, so his back is to the tables and drawers. "Check this out." He's got a new plasma screen over the area that used to just be his and Ducky's desk. His and Dr. Allan's desk now. He pulls out the keyboard that sits on a small shelf under the writing surface of the desk and begins messing around with it, and after a few seconds… "There they are, your ribs." Jimmy's looking and nodding. "Looking pretty good." He points out the fractures and how they're healing up. "Let's say you've got another week of just resting before messing around with any sort of exercise, but come Friday, when you get out of that cast, you can start working with your ribs, too."
Tim nods.
"They really are looking good," Jimmy says, flipping off the plasma.
"How can a bone look good?" Tim's less impressed by this, because the answer he wants is, 'Let's get working out right now.'
"Nice straight healing. No deformities. Nothing's been pulled out of shape."
"Small blessings."
"Large blessings. Bones that heal up wrong hurt for basically ever, so let's put this in the win column."
"Okay." Tim sighs.
Jimmy squeezes his hand. "You want to head over to your office? I'll keep you company."
"Don't you have to study?"
"Book's on my phone. I can read in your office as well as I can anywhere else, and probably a lot better than I can at home."
"Sure, then. Might as well take a moment to see what's going on."
Jimmy stands up, handing Tim his crutch, and Tim stands up, too. "Let's go."
Tim relaxes a little as they get out of Autopsy and to the elevator, but Jimmy can see he's squaring his shoulders and putting himself into Boss mode as they descend to the basement.
"You really good on this?"
Tim nods. "Good to get back into the larger world, even if all I'm doing is reading emails."
Jimmy nods.
Tim flips off the elevator. "Actually… Okay, this is stupid and kind of embarrassing, but… Leon won't let me back on the job, for real, working cases until I can pass a piss test for narcotics."
Jimmy thinks about that for a moment and says, "Not unreasonable."
That is also not an answer Tim wants to hear. "According to Abby it can take a few days for them to work their way out of your system."
Jimmy nods at Tim. That's true. Tim stares at him, eyebrows high, asking something without saying anything. It takes a second, but Jimmy suddenly gets what Tim isn't asking.
"No."
"Jimmy!"
"No! You taking two or three more days to really heal up and get clear is a good thing. Besides, even if I didn't agree with that, you can't use my pee to pass the test because if anyone double checks, the fact that you aren't diabetic, and the pee will show screwed up insulin levels will be a dead giveaway that you aren't the guy it came from."
"Oh."
"Yeah." Jimmy flips the elevator back on. "And don't ask Tony, either. Just take the time off. It's like being drunk, you think you're okay, but you really aren't, and you do not want to hit the wrong button when you're putting in an account number or something. Don't blow a case because you can't type."
That makes a distressing amount of sense and that's loud and clear in Tim's disappointed expression.
"I know. Two-three extra days isn't the end of the world. Hell, shift down to over the counter meds on Thursday and back to work you'll go on Monday."
Tim nods at that, too. That's a fairly decent plan. Assuming his body cooperates with it. With his luck, he'll feel ready to shift over on a Monday and miss and entire extra week.
The elevator doors open, and Tim heads over to his computer, feeling, actually, really normal for a moment. Okay, maybe not normal but a hell of a lot closer to it than he's been in weeks.
Work is work, it looks the same, sounds the same, smells the same. He sees one Minion crashed out on the sofa, and glances around a bit, noticing that Ngyn's working, which is just about right. When they went onto 24/7 with the whole world-wide crew, night and weekend shifts became less of a big deal. It's much less effort to keep five people on at any given time when they're spread all over the globe.
He sits down, and rapidly drops out of normal when he starts trying to log in. Why people like Tony (horrible typist) have EASY passwords is immediately becoming clear as he's having trouble coping with the fact that his password is fifteen character long collection of randomly generated letters, upper and lowercase, numbers, and symbols.
Fortunately, as he's on his third try, Ngyn notices he's back, and heads in, distracting him from the Sisyphean task of logging on. "You're back!"
"Hi, Ngyn."
"How are you feeling?" His eyes flick to Jimmy who's out of Ngyn's direct line of view. Car accident he mouths to Tim.
"Like I got hit by a truck."
She winces at that, looking at his arm in the sling and the crutch that's propped against his desk; her eyes linger on the bisected eyebrow, and for a moment Tim's feeling very battered.
Then he sees her move in further, looking at Jimmy, and shut the door. "Howard and I know you weren't hit by a car."
Tim nods, not shocked. They were the two he pegged as most likely to find out what really happened. "Okay. Don't spread what happened around, please."
"No problem."
"How'd you find out?"
"Vance asked me to clean a rifle. Told us you were war gaming. Next thing we know you've been 'hit by a car.' But we can't find a police report. Howard had the idea of hacking everyone's email. She and I split it up so we wouldn't use the same techniques. That way…"
"If anyone checked it wouldn't all come back on just one of you."
"Yeah. It was in Agent DiNozzo's inbox, from there, what happened wasn't hard to track. Look, I wanted you to know that rifle is clean. It doesn't exist. It's never existed."
"Thanks, Ngyn." He nods, and glances to Jimmy, who looks pleased to hear that.
"So, are you back?" He's in jeans and a t-shirt. Normally that's his just stopping in for a minute look. It's true that he scaled back the dress code, but that's a bit more dressed down than he usually is. Most of the time he wears what he did as Agent McGee, nice jeans, button down, jacket. Beyond the occasional nail polish (and when he's sometimes dressing for the purpose of producing a certain image) he pretty much looks like the poster boy for office casual computer guy.
"Hoping to be in and out the next two weeks. Can't really work, but I can sit here and look like I'm not totally useless."
She smiles at him. "Really working or not, it's good to see you back."
"Thanks."
She nods at him and heads off, and Tim returns his attention to his computer. A minute later Jimmy notices Tim glaring at his computer.
"What?"
Tim looks at him, tired, frustrated, angry. "Can't get in."
"They change your password?" Jimmy wouldn't put it past Leon, but last he heard Tim was allowed to do administrative stuff.
Tim shakes his head. "Can't type well enough to get in."
"Oh." Jimmy thinks about it. "But once you're in, you can do stuff right?"
Tim rolls his eyes. "I thought I could. If I can't get my password in, I'm not going to do well with anything else."
Jimmy doesn't know what to do with that. He thinks for a few more seconds, knowing what sort of stuff he does on admin, and pretty much all it takes is a pulse and the ability to click on things. He looks around Tim's office and finally finds a pen and a pad of memo paper.
"Write down your password. You're up and talking, so I'm sure that means you can respond to emails, so let me get you in, and you can take over."
Tim glares at his right hand, and then takes the pen from Jimmy, writing quickly as Jimmy holds the paper in place.
Jimmy stares at the password in front of him. "No wonder you can't get in! I don't know if I can get that in there." Tim's chair is on wheels, so Jimmy just pulls him over to the side, and begins to type, slowly, one character at a time, hunt and peck style, hits enter, and Tim would have to admit that he's satisfied to see Jimmy can't get in on the first try.
Jimmy glares at the password, starts deleting, and says, "You don't have some sort of whammy in here where if you get it wrong too many times the system dies or something like that?"
"Not on this level."
"Great. Well, we're not doing anything where I've got to get this right on the first run. Is this a one, an l or an uppercase I?"
"Uppercase I, and that one's a zero."
Jimmy rolls his eyes. "Trust you to come up with a password that's impossible."
"Yeah, well, I didn't expect to need to have someone else put it in."
"Where'd you even get this monster, anyway?"
"Random character generator. Pretty much programming 101. I wrote a quick script, told it how long I wanted the password, what characters it could pick from, and what characters I wanted in the password, and two seconds later it spit out fifteen of them."
"And then what…" Jimmy hits enter, and this time Tim's computer decides to play ball, and logs on, "you memorized it?"
"Memorized four of them. I've got a laptop, a computer, a netbook, and a computer at home with secure stuff on it."
"Lord." Jimmy shakes his head. His own password Dr.Grelmin (yes, he intentionally misspelled it so Tony wouldn't crack it) is looking like child's play right now. "Well, you're on. Have fun. I'm going to get some coffee. You want your regular?"
"Yeah. No caffeine."
Jimmy smiles at him. "Trust me, I'm not going to forget SJ's in the works, which means both of you are off caffeine. Abby make her doctor's appointment yet?"
"Tuesday."
"Good," Jimmy's at the door to the office. "Can't wait to see the image of your new little guy."
Tim smiles, a real smile, untouched by anything but joy and love. "Me, too."
Tim spends about two hours, mostly just going through email, and by going through email, what he's doing is deleting the stuff that's either too old to do anything about or useless, and shuffling the rest into his 'do something about once I get Dragon uploaded on this computer folder.' (It's downloading in the background as he's going through his email.)
By the end of that, he's achy and pretty beat. He takes his Tylenol 3 with the last sip of his coffee, leans back in his chair, winces when the top of the seat hits him right in one of the broken ribs, and straightens up.
Jimmy looks up from his phone. He wasn't kidding about being able to read wherever. Once he came back with the coffees, he pulled one of Tim's chairs closer to the desk, propped his feet up on the corner and got to it. Occasionally Tim would hear the very soft sound of Jimmy repeating what he was reading, but it wasn't loud enough to make him lose his place in the stream of emails.
"You done?"
Tim nods. "Yeah. Got through the first two hundred emails. Only…" he sighs, wishing he was exaggerating, "five hundred more to go."
Jimmy nods, knowing how that works.
"How long until I can drive?" Tim asks as Jimmy shifts his car into reverse, pulling out of his spot in the Navy Yard parking lot.
"Same with work, once you're off the narcotics, you can drive again."
Tim give him his I'm not completely stupid look. "A manual."
"Oh, right. Forgot that the roadster's a manual." Jimmy thinks. "New Year's? I don't know Tim. Your right arm's a mess and it will take time to heal up. For things where you don't need split second timing, or really delicate fine motor control, your arm'll be ready before Halloween. Probably before the end of the summer. Beyond that… How hard you work on rehabbing, how much scar tissue is in there, if there's any lasting nerve damage, how solid the joints are when they heal up, that's all going to come into play. But you will drive a manual again. You'll get it all back.
"We've got bootcamp tomorrow, I'll have Ziva start showing me what she wants to do with how to use a knife, and I can use that to figure out how to get you rehabbing in that direction faster, but…" Jimmy kind of half smiles at him.
"But it won't be fast."
"No." Jimmy shakes his head. "It won't. What's the rush?"
"I want to be me again."
Jimmy takes his hand off the wheel and gives Tim's hand a squeeze.
Jimmy notices that Abby's car is missing from the McGees' driveway as they pull in.
"Abby out and about?"
Tim nods. "She was talking about heading over to Gibbs' with Kelly."
"You mind if I hang out here? Breena was expecting me to be with Gibbs today, so she's got the MOPs group at our place today, and…"
Tim nods again. He's got no problem at all figuring out that the weekly meeting of the Mothers of Preschoolers is not going to be a quiet environment for studying. "Sure, I was going to get a nap, so feel free to get comfy."
Jimmy nods back, getting out of the car, crossing over to Tim's side, grabbing the crutch out of the backseat and getting the door for him. As Tim gets out he says, "At least when I can drive again, I can open my own door." Between the broken right arm and the broken ribs, twisting and shifting enough to open the door on the passenger side is an issue.
Jimmy shuts the door behind him, and waits to see where Tim's going to go. They're closer to the sliding glass doors in the back of the house, but the porch is elevated over the backyard, and that means going up four steps. The front door is father away, but that requires two steps, and while Tim can do steps, they're slow and annoying.
Jimmy sees him start off toward the back, and follows along with him. As they get closer, he heads to the back door, opens it, and sees Tim propping the crutch against the steps. Jimmy shakes his head. He knows that to get up steps on his own, Tim's got to sit down on them and push himself up. With one crutch and one working arm, both on the same side, he doesn't have the balance, or ability to catch himself, to get up steps standing up.
"Come on, I've got you. Arm over my shoulders," Jimmy says, standing next to Tim. Tim wraps his arm over Jimmy, and Jimmy gets a good hold on his waist. "Okay, first one." And up they get.
"You want your crutch back, or is this okay?" Jimmy asks when they get to the top of the steps.
By that point the pain meds are really hitting Tim, and he's starting to feel a little woozy, so holding onto the rail with one hand, balanced on one foot while Jimmy grabs his crutch isn't sounding too appealing.
"This is okay." So they make their way inside.
Tim's figuring he'll head for the futon and sack out there. Jimmy's not in on this plan and assumes that naptime means bed, and is steering them toward the steps.
"Door's back there," Tim says as they step past it.
"You want to sleep in there?"
"It's close and easy."
"Oh. If that's what you want. But I can get you upstairs pretty easy. What's more comfortable?"
Tim thinks, and yeah, laying all the way out on his bed sounds good. "Bed."
"Okay, then up we go." Takes a few more minutes. They aren't getting near setting any speed records, but eventually Tim and Jimmy get up the steps, and Tim's sitting on the side of his bed, pulling his shoe off. "Let me get your crutch," Jimmy says, heading down to the porch to grab it.
It started raining again while they were heading up, so his next step is to grab some paper towels and get it dried off in the kitchen before taking it up.
Jimmy thinks Tim's asleep (he's on his side, eyes closed, under the blanket, breathing easy) when he gets up there and quietly puts the crutch so it's resting against Tim's bedside table. He catches his reflection out of the corner of his eye as he's straightening up, and suddenly gets Tim's bit about knowing where to put the mirrors in his room.
Jimmy's been in Tim's room before, but only twice, and he wasn't thinking about the room as a room, either time. He didn't bother to really look.
Today he's looking. The mirrors are set so you can see anywhere on or near the bed really well. Really well. And there is a very faint whiff of sex in the air. Mostly all he smells is the scented candles and the perfumes/colognes that Abby's got out on top of her dresser, along with the scent of clean laundry. Jimmy assumes his room smells like this to anyone who doesn't spend half their life in it. (He can't smell his own room.)
But he can smell Tim's, and he can remember what happened the last time he was up here, Breena kissing all three of them, and the time before, getting dressed up to go clubbing, watching Tim and Abby touch Breena. He can remember what he heard coming out of this room while he and Breena were in the guestroom, and he's thinking of talking with Breena about the four of them taking the next step.
Except, they don't actually know what the next step is, or might be.
"Jimmy?" Tim's eyes don't open, but apparently he's awake enough to have noticed that Jimmy hasn't left the room.
"Yeah?"
"You need something?"
"Uh no. Just thinking."
"Okay, well, either talk to me or head out. You just watching me sleep is creepy."
Jimmy laughs at that, and then, feeling kind of bold, he sits on the side of Tim's bed. He can't remember the last time he sat/laid down on a bed that belonged to someone else, let alone with someone else in it. It comes to him, girlfriend before Breena. Long time. "You weren't kidding about the mirrors, were you?"
"That's what you're thinking about?" Tim sounds... Jimmy's not sure. He sounds like he's trying to be amused, rather than actually is amused.
"One of the things." Tim nods a bit, eyes still closed. Jimmy's fairly sure he's not entirely awake. "I should get out of here, let you sleep."
"What else are you thinking about?"
"You want to talk?"
Tim opens his eyes, looking scared, and Jimmy suddenly gets what trying to be amused is. "I keep feeling that table under my back." He smiles a little, licking his lips, biting the bottom one, trying to shrug it off. "It… um… reminded me what would have happened if Jarvis had shown up a few minutes later."
"Shit. I'm sorry. I should have known better than to take you to Autopsy."
"I should have known better than to go." Tim shakes his head, closing his eyes again. "I'm alive. I know it. I can feel it. But…" he exhales…"Sometimes the fear of the fight hops up, you know?"
"I know." Maybe it's not exactly the same, but the fear of losing Jon would hit Jimmy for no good reason for months after they lost him. Still does, every now and again. He can look at his girls and just feel his heart stop when he thinks about how easily he could lose them. "You're home."
"I know. And when I was fighting, I knew Jarvis was coming. That was the plan. He was coming for me. But… Um… I fought as long and as hard as I could, but… when they got my arm, I felt it, and heard it…" He doesn't mention seeing it, but as he says it, he remembers how it looked, and why when he saw his hand palm up, but his wrist down, he threw up. Tim swallows hard, and feels the pressure of Jimmy's hand on his shoulder increase just a little, pulling him back to his room, back to now. "And I dropped. Couldn't keep standing or fighting, and no idea if I'd still be breathing when he got there." Tim curls in on himself a bit more. "Anyway, distraction is good. At least, until I drift off. Might not be listening that close, or make a lot of sense if I answer, but another voice is good."
"Okay." Jimmy stands up and heads over to Abby's side of the bed, kicking off his shoes, sitting down, back against the headboard, and rests his hand, very gently on the back of Tim's neck. He sighs a little, thinking how, bizarre, for lack of a better word, this whole situation is. "I was thinking about Breena kissing you."
Tim smiles. "That was nice."
"Nice?" Jimmy's not sure if he should be thankful for that or insulted by it. It looked like a really good kiss to him, and he knows the one he got right after was really good.
Tim shrugs a little. "Really nice? I don't remember it that well. I wish I did. I know it happened. But, tired, drugs… It's like something I read about."
"Oh."
"I remember feeling safe and appreciated and loved. That was good. That was really good."
Jimmy nods. "Was thinking about that, and… not being pissed off by it. Should have been, right?"
"Mmm."
Jimmy's not sure if that's Tim being non-committal, or just not really tuned in, so he keeps talking, "I watched her do it, and then she kissed Abby, and she kissed me, and… It wasn't just hot."
"Hmm?" That it might have been hot is nothing that hit Tim. But he's not really thinking too much about this, just hearing it really. And making words seems pretty difficult right now, but he wants to hear more from Jimmy.
"I don't know. Like part of me liked watching it. Mostly it was just that warm and love, but, remember, I hadn't seen her for a week."
Slow nod from Tim, deep slow breath as well.
"She kissed you and she kissed Abby and she kissed me and… And it didn't take anything away from us. It didn't make us… less…" Jimmy's not sure what he's trying to say here, but Tim's not really responding, so either he's following along or out of it. Jimmy can feel the tension in Tim's neck lessening, so he's probably slipping further into sleep. "We went home and put our girls to bed and made love and held each other and… And nothing about us changed.
"Don't remember what day it was. Time goes wonky in a hospital. You were hurt and out of it. Abby was napping. And we were talking. Breena was so scared…" He very gently strokes Tim's hair. "We both were. By then we knew you'd be okay, but we didn't, not at first. Long flight. Really long, and all we knew was you were hurt, bad enough that Leon had gotten a clean rifle for Gibbs.
"You got on that damn ship and you got hurt. And if Jarvis had been a little later… that would have been it. End of the story.
"So, we're dancing around it. I'm telling her what's wrong, and that you're going to get better, and how bad your arm is, and how angry I am, and how… How everything was just fucked sideways, and how I couldn't fix it.
"Abby's hurting, too. And I'm dying for her, because I can imagine it. I know how wrecked I'd be if it was Breena in that bed, beaten to shit.
"I'm telling Breena about that, too, and she's listening, also scared and angry and hurting. We were hurting for you and Abby, hurting bad.
"Finally Breena says to me, 'We aren't just friends with them. We're more than friends. Maybe not lovers, maybe never lovers, but… We're not friends. And when you get home, we're all going to talk about it and figure it out, okay?'
"And I said, 'Okay.'" He gently squeezes the back of Tim's neck. "And she kissed you when we got home, and it was okay, and I wasn't pissed because we're not friends, and because it didn't take anything away from us, and because it was right."
Tim doesn't say anything to that. From everything Jimmy can tell he's gone. So he settles back, pulls his phone out of his pocket, and gets back to doing his reading, keeping his hand on the back of Tim's neck, making sure he feels secure.
Next
Chapter 403: Not Friends
There are moments when Jimmy is sure there is something wrong with him. Usually these moments are the result of his tongue getting away from him and some god-awful embarrassing thing spouting out of his mouth.
He has this filed under "No Foresight", and has routinely cussed himself out for not having the foresight God gave a turnip, let alone a fairly intelligent grown man.
And he is, as he's holding Tim, rubbing his back, and gently saying things like, "You're okay. I've got you. You're safe," cussing himself out inside his own head with a virtuoso performance of profane invective.
Because he's the moron who couldn't figure out that taking his dearest friend, who was almost beaten to death less than a month ago, to a FUCKING MORGUE, and then laying him down on one of the tables that they use for the corpses to get chest x-rays, might be a bad plan.
He's the moron standing there, shifting the camera a bit, making sure he's got the markers on Tim's chest so he can see where all the breaks are, telling him to stay still, (once again, in the FUCKING MORGUE on one of the tables where they autopsy the bodies) and completely missing the fact that at some point during this endeavor Tim went from talking to him about possible therapy exercises for his back, chest, and abs, and then quietly turned white, started sweating and shaking.
It wasn't until he was done with the x-rays, and had taken off the lead shield, and rolled the portable x-ray scanner away, and was in the process of reaching toward Tim to help him get sitting up that Jimmy realized Tim was in the middle of a massive panic attack and that wherever his mind was, it wasn't safe and sound at the Navy Yard.
So, he's got Tim sitting up, and is sitting next to him on the table, holding him as he shakes and sobs, petting his back. "You're okay, Tim. I've got you. Come on back to me, okay? You're here at the Navy Yard, and you're safe. Come on, come on back…" He keeps up a soothing mantra of statements like that, hoping his voice is lulling and that it'll help pull Tim back to him.
It takes a few minutes, but eventually Tim seems to pull out of himself, comes back to where he is, and who he's with, and afraid slips into angry and embarrassed. He pulls away from Jimmy, or tries, Jimmy keeps a hand on his back.
"Shit." Tim finally says, as he wipes his eyes and reaches for his shirt.
"You're okay." Jimmy's not rubbing his back anymore, but his hand is gently cupping the back of Tim's neck, keeping contact, keeping him grounded in the here and now.
Tim snorts at that. "That makes it worse. I'm flipping out over nothing."
"Did you think it was nothing when, for months after Jon died, everything set me off?"
"No."
Jimmy gently squeezes the back of Tim's neck. "Back at ya. Come on, let's get you up."
Jimmy helps him get his shirt back on, staying close, being calm. Once he's completely dressed, Jimmy's thinking that now is probably not a fantastic time to leave Tim sitting alone on one of the tables while he does the work necessary to turn those images into the digital scans they started using two months ago.
So he helps Tim up, heading toward his desk, and asks, "You seen our new toy?"
One of the first thing Tim did when he got a hold of his budget was make a list of the software they were currently paying licensing fees for, and figure out which of them could be outsourced to shareware to free up some of his funding.
Jimmy, when he got a hold of his budget, decided that he was going to make a pretty big expenditure outlay, that would, in the course of the next two years pay for itself, and from there on out, save him about fifteen thousand dollars a year.
He upgraded autopsy to a digital x-ray. No more films, no more waiting for image processing, no more light bulbs for the light board (which are stupidly expensive), no more constantly having to buy new plates, and best of all, less radiation. Granted, his patients don't care much about the radiation, but he's still pleased to be zapping himself and Dr. Allan with fewer rads.
Tim shakes his head; he hasn't seen the new x-ray in action. Jimmy takes him over to the computers, so his back is to the tables and drawers. "Check this out." He's got a new plasma screen over the area that used to just be his and Ducky's desk. His and Dr. Allan's desk now. He pulls out the keyboard that sits on a small shelf under the writing surface of the desk and begins messing around with it, and after a few seconds… "There they are, your ribs." Jimmy's looking and nodding. "Looking pretty good." He points out the fractures and how they're healing up. "Let's say you've got another week of just resting before messing around with any sort of exercise, but come Friday, when you get out of that cast, you can start working with your ribs, too."
Tim nods.
"They really are looking good," Jimmy says, flipping off the plasma.
"How can a bone look good?" Tim's less impressed by this, because the answer he wants is, 'Let's get working out right now.'
"Nice straight healing. No deformities. Nothing's been pulled out of shape."
"Small blessings."
"Large blessings. Bones that heal up wrong hurt for basically ever, so let's put this in the win column."
"Okay." Tim sighs.
Jimmy squeezes his hand. "You want to head over to your office? I'll keep you company."
"Don't you have to study?"
"Book's on my phone. I can read in your office as well as I can anywhere else, and probably a lot better than I can at home."
"Sure, then. Might as well take a moment to see what's going on."
Jimmy stands up, handing Tim his crutch, and Tim stands up, too. "Let's go."
Tim relaxes a little as they get out of Autopsy and to the elevator, but Jimmy can see he's squaring his shoulders and putting himself into Boss mode as they descend to the basement.
"You really good on this?"
Tim nods. "Good to get back into the larger world, even if all I'm doing is reading emails."
Jimmy nods.
Tim flips off the elevator. "Actually… Okay, this is stupid and kind of embarrassing, but… Leon won't let me back on the job, for real, working cases until I can pass a piss test for narcotics."
Jimmy thinks about that for a moment and says, "Not unreasonable."
That is also not an answer Tim wants to hear. "According to Abby it can take a few days for them to work their way out of your system."
Jimmy nods at Tim. That's true. Tim stares at him, eyebrows high, asking something without saying anything. It takes a second, but Jimmy suddenly gets what Tim isn't asking.
"No."
"Jimmy!"
"No! You taking two or three more days to really heal up and get clear is a good thing. Besides, even if I didn't agree with that, you can't use my pee to pass the test because if anyone double checks, the fact that you aren't diabetic, and the pee will show screwed up insulin levels will be a dead giveaway that you aren't the guy it came from."
"Oh."
"Yeah." Jimmy flips the elevator back on. "And don't ask Tony, either. Just take the time off. It's like being drunk, you think you're okay, but you really aren't, and you do not want to hit the wrong button when you're putting in an account number or something. Don't blow a case because you can't type."
That makes a distressing amount of sense and that's loud and clear in Tim's disappointed expression.
"I know. Two-three extra days isn't the end of the world. Hell, shift down to over the counter meds on Thursday and back to work you'll go on Monday."
Tim nods at that, too. That's a fairly decent plan. Assuming his body cooperates with it. With his luck, he'll feel ready to shift over on a Monday and miss and entire extra week.
The elevator doors open, and Tim heads over to his computer, feeling, actually, really normal for a moment. Okay, maybe not normal but a hell of a lot closer to it than he's been in weeks.
Work is work, it looks the same, sounds the same, smells the same. He sees one Minion crashed out on the sofa, and glances around a bit, noticing that Ngyn's working, which is just about right. When they went onto 24/7 with the whole world-wide crew, night and weekend shifts became less of a big deal. It's much less effort to keep five people on at any given time when they're spread all over the globe.
He sits down, and rapidly drops out of normal when he starts trying to log in. Why people like Tony (horrible typist) have EASY passwords is immediately becoming clear as he's having trouble coping with the fact that his password is fifteen character long collection of randomly generated letters, upper and lowercase, numbers, and symbols.
Fortunately, as he's on his third try, Ngyn notices he's back, and heads in, distracting him from the Sisyphean task of logging on. "You're back!"
"Hi, Ngyn."
"How are you feeling?" His eyes flick to Jimmy who's out of Ngyn's direct line of view. Car accident he mouths to Tim.
"Like I got hit by a truck."
She winces at that, looking at his arm in the sling and the crutch that's propped against his desk; her eyes linger on the bisected eyebrow, and for a moment Tim's feeling very battered.
Then he sees her move in further, looking at Jimmy, and shut the door. "Howard and I know you weren't hit by a car."
Tim nods, not shocked. They were the two he pegged as most likely to find out what really happened. "Okay. Don't spread what happened around, please."
"No problem."
"How'd you find out?"
"Vance asked me to clean a rifle. Told us you were war gaming. Next thing we know you've been 'hit by a car.' But we can't find a police report. Howard had the idea of hacking everyone's email. She and I split it up so we wouldn't use the same techniques. That way…"
"If anyone checked it wouldn't all come back on just one of you."
"Yeah. It was in Agent DiNozzo's inbox, from there, what happened wasn't hard to track. Look, I wanted you to know that rifle is clean. It doesn't exist. It's never existed."
"Thanks, Ngyn." He nods, and glances to Jimmy, who looks pleased to hear that.
"So, are you back?" He's in jeans and a t-shirt. Normally that's his just stopping in for a minute look. It's true that he scaled back the dress code, but that's a bit more dressed down than he usually is. Most of the time he wears what he did as Agent McGee, nice jeans, button down, jacket. Beyond the occasional nail polish (and when he's sometimes dressing for the purpose of producing a certain image) he pretty much looks like the poster boy for office casual computer guy.
"Hoping to be in and out the next two weeks. Can't really work, but I can sit here and look like I'm not totally useless."
She smiles at him. "Really working or not, it's good to see you back."
"Thanks."
She nods at him and heads off, and Tim returns his attention to his computer. A minute later Jimmy notices Tim glaring at his computer.
"What?"
Tim looks at him, tired, frustrated, angry. "Can't get in."
"They change your password?" Jimmy wouldn't put it past Leon, but last he heard Tim was allowed to do administrative stuff.
Tim shakes his head. "Can't type well enough to get in."
"Oh." Jimmy thinks about it. "But once you're in, you can do stuff right?"
Tim rolls his eyes. "I thought I could. If I can't get my password in, I'm not going to do well with anything else."
Jimmy doesn't know what to do with that. He thinks for a few more seconds, knowing what sort of stuff he does on admin, and pretty much all it takes is a pulse and the ability to click on things. He looks around Tim's office and finally finds a pen and a pad of memo paper.
"Write down your password. You're up and talking, so I'm sure that means you can respond to emails, so let me get you in, and you can take over."
Tim glares at his right hand, and then takes the pen from Jimmy, writing quickly as Jimmy holds the paper in place.
Jimmy stares at the password in front of him. "No wonder you can't get in! I don't know if I can get that in there." Tim's chair is on wheels, so Jimmy just pulls him over to the side, and begins to type, slowly, one character at a time, hunt and peck style, hits enter, and Tim would have to admit that he's satisfied to see Jimmy can't get in on the first try.
Jimmy glares at the password, starts deleting, and says, "You don't have some sort of whammy in here where if you get it wrong too many times the system dies or something like that?"
"Not on this level."
"Great. Well, we're not doing anything where I've got to get this right on the first run. Is this a one, an l or an uppercase I?"
"Uppercase I, and that one's a zero."
Jimmy rolls his eyes. "Trust you to come up with a password that's impossible."
"Yeah, well, I didn't expect to need to have someone else put it in."
"Where'd you even get this monster, anyway?"
"Random character generator. Pretty much programming 101. I wrote a quick script, told it how long I wanted the password, what characters it could pick from, and what characters I wanted in the password, and two seconds later it spit out fifteen of them."
"And then what…" Jimmy hits enter, and this time Tim's computer decides to play ball, and logs on, "you memorized it?"
"Memorized four of them. I've got a laptop, a computer, a netbook, and a computer at home with secure stuff on it."
"Lord." Jimmy shakes his head. His own password Dr.Grelmin (yes, he intentionally misspelled it so Tony wouldn't crack it) is looking like child's play right now. "Well, you're on. Have fun. I'm going to get some coffee. You want your regular?"
"Yeah. No caffeine."
Jimmy smiles at him. "Trust me, I'm not going to forget SJ's in the works, which means both of you are off caffeine. Abby make her doctor's appointment yet?"
"Tuesday."
"Good," Jimmy's at the door to the office. "Can't wait to see the image of your new little guy."
Tim smiles, a real smile, untouched by anything but joy and love. "Me, too."
Tim spends about two hours, mostly just going through email, and by going through email, what he's doing is deleting the stuff that's either too old to do anything about or useless, and shuffling the rest into his 'do something about once I get Dragon uploaded on this computer folder.' (It's downloading in the background as he's going through his email.)
By the end of that, he's achy and pretty beat. He takes his Tylenol 3 with the last sip of his coffee, leans back in his chair, winces when the top of the seat hits him right in one of the broken ribs, and straightens up.
Jimmy looks up from his phone. He wasn't kidding about being able to read wherever. Once he came back with the coffees, he pulled one of Tim's chairs closer to the desk, propped his feet up on the corner and got to it. Occasionally Tim would hear the very soft sound of Jimmy repeating what he was reading, but it wasn't loud enough to make him lose his place in the stream of emails.
"You done?"
Tim nods. "Yeah. Got through the first two hundred emails. Only…" he sighs, wishing he was exaggerating, "five hundred more to go."
Jimmy nods, knowing how that works.
"How long until I can drive?" Tim asks as Jimmy shifts his car into reverse, pulling out of his spot in the Navy Yard parking lot.
"Same with work, once you're off the narcotics, you can drive again."
Tim give him his I'm not completely stupid look. "A manual."
"Oh, right. Forgot that the roadster's a manual." Jimmy thinks. "New Year's? I don't know Tim. Your right arm's a mess and it will take time to heal up. For things where you don't need split second timing, or really delicate fine motor control, your arm'll be ready before Halloween. Probably before the end of the summer. Beyond that… How hard you work on rehabbing, how much scar tissue is in there, if there's any lasting nerve damage, how solid the joints are when they heal up, that's all going to come into play. But you will drive a manual again. You'll get it all back.
"We've got bootcamp tomorrow, I'll have Ziva start showing me what she wants to do with how to use a knife, and I can use that to figure out how to get you rehabbing in that direction faster, but…" Jimmy kind of half smiles at him.
"But it won't be fast."
"No." Jimmy shakes his head. "It won't. What's the rush?"
"I want to be me again."
Jimmy takes his hand off the wheel and gives Tim's hand a squeeze.
Jimmy notices that Abby's car is missing from the McGees' driveway as they pull in.
"Abby out and about?"
Tim nods. "She was talking about heading over to Gibbs' with Kelly."
"You mind if I hang out here? Breena was expecting me to be with Gibbs today, so she's got the MOPs group at our place today, and…"
Tim nods again. He's got no problem at all figuring out that the weekly meeting of the Mothers of Preschoolers is not going to be a quiet environment for studying. "Sure, I was going to get a nap, so feel free to get comfy."
Jimmy nods back, getting out of the car, crossing over to Tim's side, grabbing the crutch out of the backseat and getting the door for him. As Tim gets out he says, "At least when I can drive again, I can open my own door." Between the broken right arm and the broken ribs, twisting and shifting enough to open the door on the passenger side is an issue.
Jimmy shuts the door behind him, and waits to see where Tim's going to go. They're closer to the sliding glass doors in the back of the house, but the porch is elevated over the backyard, and that means going up four steps. The front door is father away, but that requires two steps, and while Tim can do steps, they're slow and annoying.
Jimmy sees him start off toward the back, and follows along with him. As they get closer, he heads to the back door, opens it, and sees Tim propping the crutch against the steps. Jimmy shakes his head. He knows that to get up steps on his own, Tim's got to sit down on them and push himself up. With one crutch and one working arm, both on the same side, he doesn't have the balance, or ability to catch himself, to get up steps standing up.
"Come on, I've got you. Arm over my shoulders," Jimmy says, standing next to Tim. Tim wraps his arm over Jimmy, and Jimmy gets a good hold on his waist. "Okay, first one." And up they get.
"You want your crutch back, or is this okay?" Jimmy asks when they get to the top of the steps.
By that point the pain meds are really hitting Tim, and he's starting to feel a little woozy, so holding onto the rail with one hand, balanced on one foot while Jimmy grabs his crutch isn't sounding too appealing.
"This is okay." So they make their way inside.
Tim's figuring he'll head for the futon and sack out there. Jimmy's not in on this plan and assumes that naptime means bed, and is steering them toward the steps.
"Door's back there," Tim says as they step past it.
"You want to sleep in there?"
"It's close and easy."
"Oh. If that's what you want. But I can get you upstairs pretty easy. What's more comfortable?"
Tim thinks, and yeah, laying all the way out on his bed sounds good. "Bed."
"Okay, then up we go." Takes a few more minutes. They aren't getting near setting any speed records, but eventually Tim and Jimmy get up the steps, and Tim's sitting on the side of his bed, pulling his shoe off. "Let me get your crutch," Jimmy says, heading down to the porch to grab it.
It started raining again while they were heading up, so his next step is to grab some paper towels and get it dried off in the kitchen before taking it up.
Jimmy thinks Tim's asleep (he's on his side, eyes closed, under the blanket, breathing easy) when he gets up there and quietly puts the crutch so it's resting against Tim's bedside table. He catches his reflection out of the corner of his eye as he's straightening up, and suddenly gets Tim's bit about knowing where to put the mirrors in his room.
Jimmy's been in Tim's room before, but only twice, and he wasn't thinking about the room as a room, either time. He didn't bother to really look.
Today he's looking. The mirrors are set so you can see anywhere on or near the bed really well. Really well. And there is a very faint whiff of sex in the air. Mostly all he smells is the scented candles and the perfumes/colognes that Abby's got out on top of her dresser, along with the scent of clean laundry. Jimmy assumes his room smells like this to anyone who doesn't spend half their life in it. (He can't smell his own room.)
But he can smell Tim's, and he can remember what happened the last time he was up here, Breena kissing all three of them, and the time before, getting dressed up to go clubbing, watching Tim and Abby touch Breena. He can remember what he heard coming out of this room while he and Breena were in the guestroom, and he's thinking of talking with Breena about the four of them taking the next step.
Except, they don't actually know what the next step is, or might be.
"Jimmy?" Tim's eyes don't open, but apparently he's awake enough to have noticed that Jimmy hasn't left the room.
"Yeah?"
"You need something?"
"Uh no. Just thinking."
"Okay, well, either talk to me or head out. You just watching me sleep is creepy."
Jimmy laughs at that, and then, feeling kind of bold, he sits on the side of Tim's bed. He can't remember the last time he sat/laid down on a bed that belonged to someone else, let alone with someone else in it. It comes to him, girlfriend before Breena. Long time. "You weren't kidding about the mirrors, were you?"
"That's what you're thinking about?" Tim sounds... Jimmy's not sure. He sounds like he's trying to be amused, rather than actually is amused.
"One of the things." Tim nods a bit, eyes still closed. Jimmy's fairly sure he's not entirely awake. "I should get out of here, let you sleep."
"What else are you thinking about?"
"You want to talk?"
Tim opens his eyes, looking scared, and Jimmy suddenly gets what trying to be amused is. "I keep feeling that table under my back." He smiles a little, licking his lips, biting the bottom one, trying to shrug it off. "It… um… reminded me what would have happened if Jarvis had shown up a few minutes later."
"Shit. I'm sorry. I should have known better than to take you to Autopsy."
"I should have known better than to go." Tim shakes his head, closing his eyes again. "I'm alive. I know it. I can feel it. But…" he exhales…"Sometimes the fear of the fight hops up, you know?"
"I know." Maybe it's not exactly the same, but the fear of losing Jon would hit Jimmy for no good reason for months after they lost him. Still does, every now and again. He can look at his girls and just feel his heart stop when he thinks about how easily he could lose them. "You're home."
"I know. And when I was fighting, I knew Jarvis was coming. That was the plan. He was coming for me. But… Um… I fought as long and as hard as I could, but… when they got my arm, I felt it, and heard it…" He doesn't mention seeing it, but as he says it, he remembers how it looked, and why when he saw his hand palm up, but his wrist down, he threw up. Tim swallows hard, and feels the pressure of Jimmy's hand on his shoulder increase just a little, pulling him back to his room, back to now. "And I dropped. Couldn't keep standing or fighting, and no idea if I'd still be breathing when he got there." Tim curls in on himself a bit more. "Anyway, distraction is good. At least, until I drift off. Might not be listening that close, or make a lot of sense if I answer, but another voice is good."
"Okay." Jimmy stands up and heads over to Abby's side of the bed, kicking off his shoes, sitting down, back against the headboard, and rests his hand, very gently on the back of Tim's neck. He sighs a little, thinking how, bizarre, for lack of a better word, this whole situation is. "I was thinking about Breena kissing you."
Tim smiles. "That was nice."
"Nice?" Jimmy's not sure if he should be thankful for that or insulted by it. It looked like a really good kiss to him, and he knows the one he got right after was really good.
Tim shrugs a little. "Really nice? I don't remember it that well. I wish I did. I know it happened. But, tired, drugs… It's like something I read about."
"Oh."
"I remember feeling safe and appreciated and loved. That was good. That was really good."
Jimmy nods. "Was thinking about that, and… not being pissed off by it. Should have been, right?"
"Mmm."
Jimmy's not sure if that's Tim being non-committal, or just not really tuned in, so he keeps talking, "I watched her do it, and then she kissed Abby, and she kissed me, and… It wasn't just hot."
"Hmm?" That it might have been hot is nothing that hit Tim. But he's not really thinking too much about this, just hearing it really. And making words seems pretty difficult right now, but he wants to hear more from Jimmy.
"I don't know. Like part of me liked watching it. Mostly it was just that warm and love, but, remember, I hadn't seen her for a week."
Slow nod from Tim, deep slow breath as well.
"She kissed you and she kissed Abby and she kissed me and… And it didn't take anything away from us. It didn't make us… less…" Jimmy's not sure what he's trying to say here, but Tim's not really responding, so either he's following along or out of it. Jimmy can feel the tension in Tim's neck lessening, so he's probably slipping further into sleep. "We went home and put our girls to bed and made love and held each other and… And nothing about us changed.
"Don't remember what day it was. Time goes wonky in a hospital. You were hurt and out of it. Abby was napping. And we were talking. Breena was so scared…" He very gently strokes Tim's hair. "We both were. By then we knew you'd be okay, but we didn't, not at first. Long flight. Really long, and all we knew was you were hurt, bad enough that Leon had gotten a clean rifle for Gibbs.
"You got on that damn ship and you got hurt. And if Jarvis had been a little later… that would have been it. End of the story.
"So, we're dancing around it. I'm telling her what's wrong, and that you're going to get better, and how bad your arm is, and how angry I am, and how… How everything was just fucked sideways, and how I couldn't fix it.
"Abby's hurting, too. And I'm dying for her, because I can imagine it. I know how wrecked I'd be if it was Breena in that bed, beaten to shit.
"I'm telling Breena about that, too, and she's listening, also scared and angry and hurting. We were hurting for you and Abby, hurting bad.
"Finally Breena says to me, 'We aren't just friends with them. We're more than friends. Maybe not lovers, maybe never lovers, but… We're not friends. And when you get home, we're all going to talk about it and figure it out, okay?'
"And I said, 'Okay.'" He gently squeezes the back of Tim's neck. "And she kissed you when we got home, and it was okay, and I wasn't pissed because we're not friends, and because it didn't take anything away from us, and because it was right."
Tim doesn't say anything to that. From everything Jimmy can tell he's gone. So he settles back, pulls his phone out of his pocket, and gets back to doing his reading, keeping his hand on the back of Tim's neck, making sure he feels secure.
Next
Thursday, January 22, 2015
Shards To A Whole: Chapter 402: Another Friday
McGee-centric character study/romance. Want to start at the beginning? Click here.
402: Another Friday
At any other time, six-week-pregnant Abby would have no trouble at all settling down for a nap with her snoozing husband. In fact, at any other time, simply being horizontal and six-weeks-pregnant would mean instant asleep for Abby.
But, it's not just another day, and Tim's not just catching a few zs over the course of a lazy afternoon. Hell, this isn't even healing up napping.
She's taken to thinking of it as defensive sleeping. After enough mental trauma, Tim checks out. The little switch in his head says, "Okay, you're done, sleeping now," and off to sleep he goes.
She's not sure if dreaming gives him better processing time, or if he really does just need some blank space to get himself right again, but she's seen a lot of this over the last three weeks. Abby supposes this is good. Jimmy and Wolf have both said it's a lot healthier than other things he could be doing to cope, so there's definitely that, but he doesn't rest easy when this happens. He certainly dreams, and from what she can see, they don't appear to be good dreams, though he doesn't seem to remember them unless he gets woken up mid-dream.
She's been doing everything in her power to not wake him up mid-dream.
She's trying to not think about the stories he told, because right now if she goes off on a rage, that will not mean sleeping Tim.
She's been doing that a lot, stuffing her own anger down, trying to cope with it quietly, trying to be solid and calm for Tim. She's honestly not sure how much more of this she can do without some sort of release valve for herself.
Seems like everyone else has one. Breena and Jimmy are both moving forward (with her) on the four of them becoming more. That's a good, positive step, life affirming, love affirming. That's about healing and making things whole and right. And it helps.
Jimmy and Gibbs are working on death. On teaching and learning how to destroy John, and that's good, too. That's something Abby wishes she could be part of, but right now she knows they won't let her shoot, and her own preferred methods involve working with chemicals she really shouldn't be messing with for another year (at least, probably two, breastfeeding and neurotoxins are not a good combination).
Tony and Ziva have been offering 'help' to Burley on the cold cases, and keeping a "discrete" eye on John. (In the sense that all of his credit card transactions, bank transactions, and email and text communications are being monitored.) They've dug into the cases along with Burley, spending any spare time they have on them, and chatting with people who are related to those cases who are within a hundred miles of DC. No slam dunks yet, but they're working it.
She's run and rerun every bit of trace on those cases, checked and double-checked all of the physical evidence, but, and she never thought she'd be disappointed by this, the people who ran those cases the first time knew what they were doing. She's found nothing new, nothing that points toward John, which means that work isn't a release for her. It's not a way to channel anger and get it out. It's just more anger, because by now she's certain, based on nothing beyond her gut, that John's personally responsible for all three of those sailors who went "missing" from the ships he was on, and she can't prove it.
Tim's writing and talking and writing more. He's thinking and sleeping and healing.
But she feels like she's got nothing on this. Nowhere safe to rage.
And each word out of his mouth, each sentence of those stories…
There were pictures of Tim as a child at Tori and Ben's place, and Abby snuck shots of several that Tim doesn't know about, so she's got an idea of what he looked like at six, adorable, big green eyes, insanely long eyelashes, that cute pouty lower lip, buzz cut gold-blonde hair, little plump, but more puppyish, getting ready for a growth spurt than really overweight. (Penny confirms that Tim didn't really have much in the way of weight issues until he started having problems with asthma around the age of nine, and they began treating it with inhaled steroids.)
Her beautiful Tim, young, innocent, hopeful. He's grinning, wide and happy in the shot she's got, no fear or nervousness in his eyes. Not a lot of shots like that after that one. The shots after that, even the happy ones, show the marks of what happened. There's always that ghost of nervous. Her Tim sad, scared, sick, crying. Her Tim, six, eight, nine, ten, and it just kept going and got worse until it (pretty much) ended at seventeen. At least, that's when the stories ended. Though she knows there's at least two more because Tim stopped talking to John at seventeen, and again at twenty-five, and there was the time after the case with Penny, when he called John up, and then didn't talk to him again until he got on that ship and saw him standing there, annoyed that a dead man was messing up his schedule.
And she has to stop thinking about this, because she's shaking with anger, and if she keeps vibrating, she's going to wake him up.
Abby's too keyed up to sleep. So she nestles into Tim, snuggling him, looking at his body in front of hers, feeling his skin, warm and finally, (mostly, right over the breaks is still green-yellow) unbruised, next to hers.
She knows from his comment to Jimmy about gaining weight that he didn't notice, but almost a week on pretty much all liquids, plus pain killers making him sleep all the time means Tim missed a lot of meals.
He lost weight those first ten days. It was hard to tell the first week, but as the swelling receded, it became pretty obvious. Clavicle, carpals on his left wrist, hip bones, all of them were too visible beneath his skin.
He's pretty close to back where he was, little softer, which'll probably bug him when he notices, but hopefully he won't notice anytime soon. Nothing he needs to be doing about that anytime soon.
She notices that the cast on his right arm is starting to get a bit too big again. One more week with this, then another new cast, maybe he'll start to get to use his shoulder again. He'd like that. Supposedly that'll be the end of the cast on his foot, still have a brace and use the crutch until he can put weight on it easily, but it'll be another step closer to looking like himself again.
Abby takes a deep breath, letting it out slow. He's healing. He's alive and here and healing, and eventually they'll be okay. But like his eyebrow, which her finger ghosts over, he'll be marked by this for the rest of his life, they both will.
Since she took the afternoon off, Shabbos is at their house today. Nothing horribly complicated for dinner, chicken on the grill, and the veggie co-op sent a box of mostly greens, so they're getting cooked up New Orleans style along with a big pot of baked beans, and they're subbing out challah for a huge cast iron skillet full of cornbread.
Tim's sitting at the kitchen table, one hand holding Kelly's as she wobbles on her feet working on standing by herself, while Abby mixes up the corn bread batter.
"I need to make an appointment with the OB."
Tim nods. He's fairly sure when they made Sean, so he thinks of Abby as being six weeks pregnant, which is about when you're supposed to go check in, except that they don't figure out how pregnant you are based on when you conceived, but when your last period was supposed to be.
"You're supposed to be what, eight weeks along?"
"Something like that. I'll give them a call on Tuesday."
He nods at that. "Except for Friday morning, my calendar is open."
She smiles at him.
"Actually, I was thinking of heading in on Monday or Tuesday."
Abby's eyebrows shoot up as she cracks eggs into the mix.
"Nothing strenuous. Can't work on anything for real until I'm off the Tylenol 3…" A thought hits Tim there. "How long does it take narcotics to get out of your system?"
"Two to four days."
"Okay, there is no way I'm waiting four extra days after I'm done with Tylenol 3 to go back to work. Do you think Leon knows it takes that long to come up with a clean test?"
Abby shrugs. "Maybe he's making sure you've got time to really heal."
"Maybe. Don't suppose you'd fake a test for me."
Abby just stares at him.
"You'd be the one running the test, right?"
She nods.
"Well?"
She looks up him and down carefully, looking extremely doubtful as to this being a good idea, but not completely opposed to it. "We'll see how you're doing. If you're actually up for it, it'll be your job to find someone to donate clean pee."
Tim sighs at that, but Jimmy or Tony would probably do it.
"So, what are you hoping to do by going back?"
"Just, get back in, make sure the place didn't burn down, take a few hours to remind Manner I'm still his Boss. Brand's supposed to be starting up soon, probably be a good idea to actually be there her first day. Just, I don't know, a normal Monday, ish."
"Monday's Fourth of July, so not Monday."
Tim's eyes narrow. "June's gone?"
Abby nods. "As of today."
Kelly tries to take a step and overbalances, falling on her bum and squawking indignantly. Tim leans over a bit to help her up, and his ribs ache as he does it, so he adds his own growl of frustration to the mix. But she grabs his hand, and he helps her stand, and he straightens up into a more comfortable position.
"You think Jimmy's going to add some sort of physical therapy for my ribs?"
Abby shakes her head. "You're breathing. That's probably all they need."
He shifts a little more, trying a very tentative side bend, and whimpering slightly. "Nope." Another slight whimper as he straightens up. "That's not all they need."
"Once you get standing on that foot, you can probably start adding bends and twists back in."
That sounds logical, but he's feeling this sudden need to be really working on getting his body back to where it needs to be. Probably the same need to get working again. He need to be himself again, and this limbo healing space isn't it.
Besides, he can do twists sitting down. In fact he often does them sitting down, so… He makes a mental note to ask Jimmy about that when they get there for dinner.
"No weights?" Tim asks as he shows Jimmy that he's got (almost) full range of motion in his ankle.
Jimmy shakes his head definitively. "No! You've still got four healing metatarsals and your ankle's not solid, yet. Right now we're just getting those muscles used to moving around again. Let's see what you're doing with your shoulder."
So Tim shows him. He can, once again, shrug with both shoulders. It's not smooth, by any stretch of the imagination, but he can move his shoulder joint in pretty much any direction, as long as the motion's coming from his traps, pecs, or lats.
"How's that feel?"
"Sore, achy, not as bad as last week. I was wondering about my ribs, thinking about adding some bends or stretches."
Jimmy stares at Tim, wondering what exactly this is, but he nods a little, and says, "Gotta check with Gibbs, make sure we're not getting an early start at the house tomorrow…" They're in the living room, and Gibbs is in the dining room, helping Penny set the table, so he can hear what Jimmy just said.
He shakes his head. "Raining all weekend. Bootcamp on Sunday. No carpentry. Maybe cookout at the house on Monday if the weather cooperates."
Jimmy nods. "Study time, then. Yay. You wouldn't believe how much reading I've got to get done. Tomorrow morning, I'll take a break, swing by here, grab you, and we'll get some x-rays in Autopsy. If your ribs look good, then sure, we'll work on adding some twists and bends and get your back and abs working again."
Tim nods at that.
Tim decided to go to bed early on Friday night, while the Shabbos gathering was still on. No one's surprised by that, he'd been drooping for most of dinner, and they all knew that he had another meeting with Wolf, and it's really obvious that Abby's not her normal self. They're both trying to be cheerful, and having everyone over helps, but it's obvious they're hurting.
As they're breaking up, Tony nods to Ziva, and she catches a ride home with Ducky and Penny. He helps Abby get the last of the dishes dried off and put away, and then heads off to the TV, searching around for something.
"Where's McGee keep the games?"
"Tony?" Abby's not sure what's going on or why Tony wants to sit at her place and play games, but… "Pull up the main menu, then go to games, then—"
"Okay, I got it." He searches around for a bit, and then decides that Call of Duty should do the job. He picks up a controller for Abby, too and sits next to her on the sofa, facing her. "So… you know there was that time between taking care of…" Tony's eyes fill in the name Bodnar, because they still don't speak of him, "and Ziva and I really dating."
Abby nods, starting to get an idea of why Tony might still be here.
"And, uh, part of that time was her telling me about what happened in Somalia, about the scars she still had, about…" He shakes his head, some confidences he won't tell, no matter what. Telling what she came home with is up to Ziva, and he's not going to say a word about it without her express permission and her present, neither of which are true right now. He smiles, but not happy, "And," he bites his lip and shakes his head, "And there's just hearing it, and not being able to do anything. 'Cause she had to live it, and I couldn't flip out on her by just hearing it. But I wanted to. Wanted to catch a plane and hunt them all down and kill every one of them we didn't get. Wanted to do more than kill them. But they're fucking ghosts, you know? A lot of them are literal ghosts, now, and the rest, not like they properly introduced themselves before..." He shakes his head again, still biting his lip. "And there's nothing you can do but listen, and you can't make it right, or better, or fix any of it. All you can do is sit there and take it.
"And until she almost died in that bomb last summer, sitting there, listening, making myself be calm and let her fall apart was the hardest thing I'd ever done. I beat the shit out of the next two perps who tried to run, and that didn't help much. Because nothing does, not really. It's still your person and they're still hurt and there's nothing you can do about it." He sighs and flashes her something vaguely smile-like. "But, it does get better. Slowly. As he gets to being himself again, it'll get easier. When we bury John," Tony's eyes are cold, and Abby's awfully sure that he does not mean bury John in any sort of metaphorical sense, "that'll help, a lot.
"You know I'm not really happy about the counseling stuff, but… It's useful, and when you get back to work, checking in with Wolf, spending some time talking to him one on one's probably a good plan."
Abby nods. "I know." She blinks, starting to cry. "God, it's so hard! And I feel horrible saying it because all I have to do is listen. He had to live it."
Tony nods while Abby burrows into his arms, crying.
He kisses the top of her head. "I know, Abbs, I know." And after a while, ten maybe fifteen minutes, she starts to calm down, and when she does, he hands her the controller. "And until it gets better, or until you've got a way to get it out, we can utterly destroy some Nazis."
Abby wipes her eyes and smiles a little. "Little ultra-violence to soothe the pain?"
Tony nods and kisses her forehead again. "That's the idea."
Next
402: Another Friday
At any other time, six-week-pregnant Abby would have no trouble at all settling down for a nap with her snoozing husband. In fact, at any other time, simply being horizontal and six-weeks-pregnant would mean instant asleep for Abby.
But, it's not just another day, and Tim's not just catching a few zs over the course of a lazy afternoon. Hell, this isn't even healing up napping.
She's taken to thinking of it as defensive sleeping. After enough mental trauma, Tim checks out. The little switch in his head says, "Okay, you're done, sleeping now," and off to sleep he goes.
She's not sure if dreaming gives him better processing time, or if he really does just need some blank space to get himself right again, but she's seen a lot of this over the last three weeks. Abby supposes this is good. Jimmy and Wolf have both said it's a lot healthier than other things he could be doing to cope, so there's definitely that, but he doesn't rest easy when this happens. He certainly dreams, and from what she can see, they don't appear to be good dreams, though he doesn't seem to remember them unless he gets woken up mid-dream.
She's been doing everything in her power to not wake him up mid-dream.
She's trying to not think about the stories he told, because right now if she goes off on a rage, that will not mean sleeping Tim.
She's been doing that a lot, stuffing her own anger down, trying to cope with it quietly, trying to be solid and calm for Tim. She's honestly not sure how much more of this she can do without some sort of release valve for herself.
Seems like everyone else has one. Breena and Jimmy are both moving forward (with her) on the four of them becoming more. That's a good, positive step, life affirming, love affirming. That's about healing and making things whole and right. And it helps.
Jimmy and Gibbs are working on death. On teaching and learning how to destroy John, and that's good, too. That's something Abby wishes she could be part of, but right now she knows they won't let her shoot, and her own preferred methods involve working with chemicals she really shouldn't be messing with for another year (at least, probably two, breastfeeding and neurotoxins are not a good combination).
Tony and Ziva have been offering 'help' to Burley on the cold cases, and keeping a "discrete" eye on John. (In the sense that all of his credit card transactions, bank transactions, and email and text communications are being monitored.) They've dug into the cases along with Burley, spending any spare time they have on them, and chatting with people who are related to those cases who are within a hundred miles of DC. No slam dunks yet, but they're working it.
She's run and rerun every bit of trace on those cases, checked and double-checked all of the physical evidence, but, and she never thought she'd be disappointed by this, the people who ran those cases the first time knew what they were doing. She's found nothing new, nothing that points toward John, which means that work isn't a release for her. It's not a way to channel anger and get it out. It's just more anger, because by now she's certain, based on nothing beyond her gut, that John's personally responsible for all three of those sailors who went "missing" from the ships he was on, and she can't prove it.
Tim's writing and talking and writing more. He's thinking and sleeping and healing.
But she feels like she's got nothing on this. Nowhere safe to rage.
And each word out of his mouth, each sentence of those stories…
There were pictures of Tim as a child at Tori and Ben's place, and Abby snuck shots of several that Tim doesn't know about, so she's got an idea of what he looked like at six, adorable, big green eyes, insanely long eyelashes, that cute pouty lower lip, buzz cut gold-blonde hair, little plump, but more puppyish, getting ready for a growth spurt than really overweight. (Penny confirms that Tim didn't really have much in the way of weight issues until he started having problems with asthma around the age of nine, and they began treating it with inhaled steroids.)
 |
| "Tim" (Sean Murray) |
And she has to stop thinking about this, because she's shaking with anger, and if she keeps vibrating, she's going to wake him up.
Abby's too keyed up to sleep. So she nestles into Tim, snuggling him, looking at his body in front of hers, feeling his skin, warm and finally, (mostly, right over the breaks is still green-yellow) unbruised, next to hers.
She knows from his comment to Jimmy about gaining weight that he didn't notice, but almost a week on pretty much all liquids, plus pain killers making him sleep all the time means Tim missed a lot of meals.
He lost weight those first ten days. It was hard to tell the first week, but as the swelling receded, it became pretty obvious. Clavicle, carpals on his left wrist, hip bones, all of them were too visible beneath his skin.
He's pretty close to back where he was, little softer, which'll probably bug him when he notices, but hopefully he won't notice anytime soon. Nothing he needs to be doing about that anytime soon.
She notices that the cast on his right arm is starting to get a bit too big again. One more week with this, then another new cast, maybe he'll start to get to use his shoulder again. He'd like that. Supposedly that'll be the end of the cast on his foot, still have a brace and use the crutch until he can put weight on it easily, but it'll be another step closer to looking like himself again.
Abby takes a deep breath, letting it out slow. He's healing. He's alive and here and healing, and eventually they'll be okay. But like his eyebrow, which her finger ghosts over, he'll be marked by this for the rest of his life, they both will.
Since she took the afternoon off, Shabbos is at their house today. Nothing horribly complicated for dinner, chicken on the grill, and the veggie co-op sent a box of mostly greens, so they're getting cooked up New Orleans style along with a big pot of baked beans, and they're subbing out challah for a huge cast iron skillet full of cornbread.
Tim's sitting at the kitchen table, one hand holding Kelly's as she wobbles on her feet working on standing by herself, while Abby mixes up the corn bread batter.
"I need to make an appointment with the OB."
Tim nods. He's fairly sure when they made Sean, so he thinks of Abby as being six weeks pregnant, which is about when you're supposed to go check in, except that they don't figure out how pregnant you are based on when you conceived, but when your last period was supposed to be.
"You're supposed to be what, eight weeks along?"
"Something like that. I'll give them a call on Tuesday."
He nods at that. "Except for Friday morning, my calendar is open."
She smiles at him.
"Actually, I was thinking of heading in on Monday or Tuesday."
Abby's eyebrows shoot up as she cracks eggs into the mix.
"Nothing strenuous. Can't work on anything for real until I'm off the Tylenol 3…" A thought hits Tim there. "How long does it take narcotics to get out of your system?"
"Two to four days."
"Okay, there is no way I'm waiting four extra days after I'm done with Tylenol 3 to go back to work. Do you think Leon knows it takes that long to come up with a clean test?"
Abby shrugs. "Maybe he's making sure you've got time to really heal."
"Maybe. Don't suppose you'd fake a test for me."
Abby just stares at him.
"You'd be the one running the test, right?"
She nods.
"Well?"
She looks up him and down carefully, looking extremely doubtful as to this being a good idea, but not completely opposed to it. "We'll see how you're doing. If you're actually up for it, it'll be your job to find someone to donate clean pee."
Tim sighs at that, but Jimmy or Tony would probably do it.
"So, what are you hoping to do by going back?"
"Just, get back in, make sure the place didn't burn down, take a few hours to remind Manner I'm still his Boss. Brand's supposed to be starting up soon, probably be a good idea to actually be there her first day. Just, I don't know, a normal Monday, ish."
"Monday's Fourth of July, so not Monday."
Tim's eyes narrow. "June's gone?"
Abby nods. "As of today."
Kelly tries to take a step and overbalances, falling on her bum and squawking indignantly. Tim leans over a bit to help her up, and his ribs ache as he does it, so he adds his own growl of frustration to the mix. But she grabs his hand, and he helps her stand, and he straightens up into a more comfortable position.
"You think Jimmy's going to add some sort of physical therapy for my ribs?"
Abby shakes her head. "You're breathing. That's probably all they need."
He shifts a little more, trying a very tentative side bend, and whimpering slightly. "Nope." Another slight whimper as he straightens up. "That's not all they need."
"Once you get standing on that foot, you can probably start adding bends and twists back in."
That sounds logical, but he's feeling this sudden need to be really working on getting his body back to where it needs to be. Probably the same need to get working again. He need to be himself again, and this limbo healing space isn't it.
Besides, he can do twists sitting down. In fact he often does them sitting down, so… He makes a mental note to ask Jimmy about that when they get there for dinner.
"No weights?" Tim asks as he shows Jimmy that he's got (almost) full range of motion in his ankle.
Jimmy shakes his head definitively. "No! You've still got four healing metatarsals and your ankle's not solid, yet. Right now we're just getting those muscles used to moving around again. Let's see what you're doing with your shoulder."
So Tim shows him. He can, once again, shrug with both shoulders. It's not smooth, by any stretch of the imagination, but he can move his shoulder joint in pretty much any direction, as long as the motion's coming from his traps, pecs, or lats.
"How's that feel?"
"Sore, achy, not as bad as last week. I was wondering about my ribs, thinking about adding some bends or stretches."
Jimmy stares at Tim, wondering what exactly this is, but he nods a little, and says, "Gotta check with Gibbs, make sure we're not getting an early start at the house tomorrow…" They're in the living room, and Gibbs is in the dining room, helping Penny set the table, so he can hear what Jimmy just said.
He shakes his head. "Raining all weekend. Bootcamp on Sunday. No carpentry. Maybe cookout at the house on Monday if the weather cooperates."
Jimmy nods. "Study time, then. Yay. You wouldn't believe how much reading I've got to get done. Tomorrow morning, I'll take a break, swing by here, grab you, and we'll get some x-rays in Autopsy. If your ribs look good, then sure, we'll work on adding some twists and bends and get your back and abs working again."
Tim nods at that.
Tim decided to go to bed early on Friday night, while the Shabbos gathering was still on. No one's surprised by that, he'd been drooping for most of dinner, and they all knew that he had another meeting with Wolf, and it's really obvious that Abby's not her normal self. They're both trying to be cheerful, and having everyone over helps, but it's obvious they're hurting.
As they're breaking up, Tony nods to Ziva, and she catches a ride home with Ducky and Penny. He helps Abby get the last of the dishes dried off and put away, and then heads off to the TV, searching around for something.
"Where's McGee keep the games?"
"Tony?" Abby's not sure what's going on or why Tony wants to sit at her place and play games, but… "Pull up the main menu, then go to games, then—"
"Okay, I got it." He searches around for a bit, and then decides that Call of Duty should do the job. He picks up a controller for Abby, too and sits next to her on the sofa, facing her. "So… you know there was that time between taking care of…" Tony's eyes fill in the name Bodnar, because they still don't speak of him, "and Ziva and I really dating."
Abby nods, starting to get an idea of why Tony might still be here.
"And, uh, part of that time was her telling me about what happened in Somalia, about the scars she still had, about…" He shakes his head, some confidences he won't tell, no matter what. Telling what she came home with is up to Ziva, and he's not going to say a word about it without her express permission and her present, neither of which are true right now. He smiles, but not happy, "And," he bites his lip and shakes his head, "And there's just hearing it, and not being able to do anything. 'Cause she had to live it, and I couldn't flip out on her by just hearing it. But I wanted to. Wanted to catch a plane and hunt them all down and kill every one of them we didn't get. Wanted to do more than kill them. But they're fucking ghosts, you know? A lot of them are literal ghosts, now, and the rest, not like they properly introduced themselves before..." He shakes his head again, still biting his lip. "And there's nothing you can do but listen, and you can't make it right, or better, or fix any of it. All you can do is sit there and take it.
"And until she almost died in that bomb last summer, sitting there, listening, making myself be calm and let her fall apart was the hardest thing I'd ever done. I beat the shit out of the next two perps who tried to run, and that didn't help much. Because nothing does, not really. It's still your person and they're still hurt and there's nothing you can do about it." He sighs and flashes her something vaguely smile-like. "But, it does get better. Slowly. As he gets to being himself again, it'll get easier. When we bury John," Tony's eyes are cold, and Abby's awfully sure that he does not mean bury John in any sort of metaphorical sense, "that'll help, a lot.
"You know I'm not really happy about the counseling stuff, but… It's useful, and when you get back to work, checking in with Wolf, spending some time talking to him one on one's probably a good plan."
Abby nods. "I know." She blinks, starting to cry. "God, it's so hard! And I feel horrible saying it because all I have to do is listen. He had to live it."
Tony nods while Abby burrows into his arms, crying.
He kisses the top of her head. "I know, Abbs, I know." And after a while, ten maybe fifteen minutes, she starts to calm down, and when she does, he hands her the controller. "And until it gets better, or until you've got a way to get it out, we can utterly destroy some Nazis."
Abby wipes her eyes and smiles a little. "Little ultra-violence to soothe the pain?"
Tony nods and kisses her forehead again. "That's the idea."
Next
Monday, January 12, 2015
Shards To A Whole: Chapter 401: Writing
McGee-centric character study/romance. Want to start at the beginning? Click here.
Chapter 401: Writing
Dragon is a godsend. Being able to write again is making Tim's life about ten million times better. Sure, he's still loopy, so he's fairly doubtful that any of this is going to make the final draft, but he's plot dumping away, and, because he can write, he can deal with "dad-stuff" as he's been calling it, with the shield of his character, Gabe, in place.
It's a lot easier, safer, to handle it that way. It's also clear that whatever this story ends up being, father-son relationship stuff is definitely going to be a major theme.
It's also clear that he needs Lorcan (Gibbs) in the place of step-dad/adopted-dad/mentor-dad/chosen-dad whatever, but not in the place of birth-dad. And that for as much as this is about dealing with Fairrge (John) in this story, it's also about creating something that honors Gibbs and who he's been for him these last few years.
He's not sure what he's doing with Fairrge in this, beyond killing him/shaming him/destroying him in numerous exceptionally messy and violent ways.
That's not entirely true. He knows that he wants them, him, Daegan (Jimmy), Brigit (Breena) and Lorcan to be shape-shifter dragons. He knows that as he's setting up the stories the Dragon Knights are a thing mostly of the past, few and far between. Thought to be legend by the common people. Even in family lines, like the M'Gy (Earliest spelling of his family line that Ducky found when he was looking up the tartan for his clan, and eerily similar to how Gibbs pronounces his name.) the Dragons are going to be rare.
He's thinking that Gabe'll be a dragon, but Fairrge won't. That'll be tension line number one. Fairrge will be a loyal knight in whichever King's army. Gabe won't. Said King, (Tim doesn't have a name for him, yet) will be at war with some other guy, and Lady Skye (Abby) will be working for that side. Eventually, he'll run into Skye over the course of the fight, they'll hook up, and break away from both sides, setting up a third line. End there, Fairrge dead, Skye free from her overlord, and the M'Gys setting off for some new land of their own, and that sounds like a good first book to him.
Those are "working" thoughts. The part of his brain that's in charge when the painkillers are fading away. When he's got plotting and longer arc functions going.
The more drugs in him though, the more violence comes out.
He's gotten to the point in his life where he's not ashamed to be writing really horribly violent graphic murders of his father. He's fairly sure that five years ago, he couldn't have done this. He could have thought about it, but not written it out. Now he can. After all, he's made the deal to have the man killed for real, compared to that, this is just… just letting the dark out. Letting him play with it and then let it go. He does notice that as the days pass, the first few scenes got more and more violent, but he's getting less interested in them.
By the time he's written four versions of it, he's done. He doesn't need to do that again. It's getting boring.
He knows he's not done with writing about his dad, but he's done ending him.
And from there, writing can turn to more pleasurable things. And, as Friday turns into Saturday into Sunday and onto Monday and on… It also becomes clear that whatever else is true about this project, it's also a massive smut-fest.
Smutty, smutty, smutty, smut! All over the place. As of right now, he's got at least a hundred pages of smut, which means this is either going to be an awfully long novel, or it's going on the paranormal erotica shelf. He's got some suspicions as to why this is true, beyond the fact that he likes sex. After all, he was just as fond of sex as he wrote all of the Tibbs books, and none of them contain even one explicit scene.
First and foremost, there's that golden three or four minutes where he's close to getting off, getting off, or just gotten off where he's not hurting. At all. Yes, he's on pain meds, a lot of them, and they are keeping him "comfortable." They are not keeping him pain-free. They're not keeping him in the range where he can just forget he's hurting either. What they are doing is making sure he can function, more or less.
So, if he can't be in those moments, he can be writing about them.
Part of it is that sex is how his body knows it's alive. On a really basic, biological level, fucking keeps him centered on the fact he didn't die. And unlike all the other times where he almost died, he healed up pretty quickly. Pretty quickly isn't on the menu for him, not this time. It's getting onto two weeks later, and every time he moves, every step, every time the habit part of his brain tries to reach for something with his right hand, all of it is a constant reminder of almost dying. (And all of it hurts, which just goes back to point A about chasing time where he's not hurting.)
But, though he's been exceptionally affectionate whenever she's home, Abby does still have a job, so, if he can't be fucking with her, he's writing about it. (And sending what he's writing to her, which means she's usually in an awfully frisky mood by the time she gets home.)
Part of it is wanting to fuck. Pretty much, right now, they've got cowgirl, and reverse cowgirl, soft and gentle and slow, and that's nice and all, but he really wants to fuck. He wants to pick Abby up and rock her world. Wants the feel of his body moving fast and hard, sweat and lube slick skin, breathing hard, flushed, hot, aching full-on, fucking sex.
And that's not happening anytime soon.
So… he's writing about it. In explicit detail. On a pure neurochemistry level, his brain can't tell the difference between real sex and sex on the page. (Sure, it knows the difference between arousal and climax, but chemically porn, fantasy, sex, all of it triggers the same pleasure centers of the brain.) Likewise, he knows it's imaginary, but his dick's a bit fuzzy on that idea, and the only message it's getting is get hard, stay hard, and pounce (in a very slow, gentle, being easy on a whole mess of broken bones sort of way) on Abby when she gets home.
Part of it isn't sexual so much in an erotic sense as in a post-traumatic experience sense. In a very real way Abby, and to a lesser degree Jethro, Jimmy, and Breena all signal safety to Tim. When she's home, and he's awake and can stand to be near people (because he's still having porcupine days, too) he wants to be within touch range. He wants to have Abby holding his hand or a warm arm around his shoulders. And touch feels good, and sex feels better, so hugs turn into stroking which turns to kissing and merges into sex and from there more cuddling and sleep.
He's very, very glad that Abby doesn't mind ending the evening or starting the morning with sex, and then getting some very hot notes during the day to go with it. He thinks the last time they had this much sex, they were on their honeymoon.
And he's also very glad that she's putting up with his mood swings as well, which is another reason to keep writing about sex, because it keeps him on the perky side of things. When he's not focused on sex, he can go from doing okay to crying in less than a minute, and he hates that.
So, at least for the time being, the only downside of the vast wodges of smut he's producing is that occasionally, when he gets a chunk of "writing" done (because after all, he has to speak to his computer to "write"), he'll hobble out of his office, and Heather will just stare at him, which is making him wonder exactly how bad the sound-proofing in their house is.
Another Wednesday, another day home, but today, he's noticing something. There's only one Percocet left, and he's not feeling any sense of panic from that. He can go the full six hours between doses now, and shifting down to Tylenol 3 seems like a good plan.
Seems like it will work.
He knows Tylenol 3 is also a narcotic, but it's a much less strong one than the Percocet, and he's really, really hoping that he can take this last one, let it meander out of his system, start up on the new stuff, and get some more control back.
He swallows it down, and tosses the bottle toward his trash can. He misses and sighs. Time to move the vibrational head to the next break, then more ankle flexing and shoulder lifts.
That's also getting less painful, but he knows that as soon as he's got full range of motion on his ankle, Jimmy's going to want him to start working it with weights, and that'll just drop him right back to square one on the pain level.
The Tylenol 3 is mostly getting the job done. He's back down to a five hour pain pill cycle, but he feels a lot more like himself. He hasn't broken down crying for (what he considers) no good reason for two days.
Heather graciously accepted his apology for being such a bear the last few weeks. Told him he didn't need to apologize for it, but he knew he did. Even if only to make himself feel better.
No Percocet means his one-handed typing is getting better, and Dragon means that mostly all he's doing with a keyboard is fixing spelling and formatting.
No Percocet also means that today, he's got a job to do.
It's time to start writing up that report.
It's slow. Partially because he still has to get fairly frequent naps. Partly because he can't work on the report without thinking about what was going on, and as Wolf said, flashing back to the fight, and to the life before is normal, and working on the report triggers it. And unlike the story, there isn't the safety of Gabe here. Here he's reporting, not creating, so he can't shift and tailor the story to make himself feel safer.
But he keeps working on it. Keeps making himself put it in the past. He's home, at his desk, safe, working. He's not on a ship. His father is nowhere nearby. (He got an email from Burley about that. For the time being, The Admiral's rented a place in Hawaii. Alas, for the time being he's also not finding much in the way of anything useful in any of those missing sailor cases.) And yes, some of his work he's done with Abby right next to him, keeping him grounded in now, but he's kept working.
The great thing about drafts is that the first one can just be miles of crap spewed out on a page. You keep the good stuff, shuffle it around, and delete the embarrassing bits.
And that's what he's doing.
Tim's going over the feeds. He starts with the ships he wasn't on, viewing their data feeds, checking their techs, seeing what they did. He knows how things went on The Stennis, but that's not how things went on all the other ships. Some got communications back faster, some slower. One took a full two hours before they got their internal communications back online. One did it in fewer than two minutes. (He wrote up a separate recommendation for that tech, wanting to make sure he got some sort of a pat on the back for a very good job. Then he made a note to see about looking him up in eighteen months when his hitch with the Navy is up.)
Once communications were fully restored among the entire Carrier Group, they began working together on tracing the hack, and did, eventually, figure it out.
But Tim was on land and unconscious by the time they worked it out.
He writes up a review on how the attack worked, and a plan for how to pull a similar trick. He doesn't want whoever does this next to use his style verbatim; it's got to feel real, and it won't if the same attack keeps happening, but he can put useful parameters in place. Likewise, he dissects the response, pointing out who did well, who didn't, how standard Navy cyber-attack operating procedure worked well, how it failed.
He eyeballs the draft, sure this isn't anywhere near ready to go out, but it's a start.
Thursday. Swimming with Gibbs. That's good. He can actually walk when he's in the pool now. Yes, like with the rest of the ankle exercises, it aches when he's moving, but he is moving all the way through the correct placements and motions of walking.
When he's doing that he can also feel why he's still got the cast on his foot. Place weight on your foot and all those little bones in the arch of your foot, which on him are in various stages of healing back up again, spread apart and flex. Even with the cast they shift a bit, and that's not comfortable at all.
He's dreading putting his full weight back on that foot, but a week and a day, and this little cast comes off, and with it, even more rehabbing.
Wolf again. Sigh.
Fridays are supposed to be days of rest, right? What with the whole their family does Shabbos thing, right? It's in the rules. Ziva's told them avoiding unpleasant topics of conversation is one of the rules. And this is the mother and father of all unpleasant topics of conversation.
He is going on about that when Abby, who took off work to be here with him for this, looks at him, kisses his forehead and says, "You can cancel."
He slumps a little and shakes his head. He knows he's got to do it. Canceling just puts it off for next week or the week after, and that just pushes off him getting to actually go back to work even further. So, he doesn't want to cancel, he just wants to bitch about it and then get it done as fast as possible.
It's nothing personal against Wolf, but… he doesn't want to be talking about this stuff. Tim would much rather just ignore it.
But he can't.
And at least this time Abby's with him, holding his hand, like she promised to do back when they first started talking about this, back before Kelly was born.
They settle into his office, drinks all around, and begin.
They talk a little about how his body is doing, how healing up is going, and then get to the meat of it. Back to California and being a small child and getting on a boat for the first time.
And from there it only gets worse.
Abby hasn't heard a lot of these stories. Tim's never told most of them. Takes two hours. He's not sure what the point of this is, other than to rip his heart out again, but Wolf seems to think it's useful, and
Abby's holding onto him, so… So he keeps talking.
He's not sure if he feels any better, or different, or anything positive really, when he's done.
Tired. He feels tired. Like he's been wrung out. Like he's run fifty miles and done a million jumping jacks and infinite push-ups, and… just tired, all over, in all ways.
Abby sees Wolf to the door, and then heads back to him, snuggling in close, holding onto him as well as she can, and there's a faint spark of wanting to talk to her about it, but lulling tired wipes it out of his mind.
"You just want to rest?"
He nods.
Abby kisses him. "Then you rest."
It's two in the afternoon, and they're on the futon in his office. He's so sleepy, aching tired, all he wants to do is sleep right now, but there's one other thing he needs. "Stay with me? Guard my sleep?"
One more kiss. "Anytime."
Next
Chapter 401: Writing
It's a lot easier, safer, to handle it that way. It's also clear that whatever this story ends up being, father-son relationship stuff is definitely going to be a major theme.
It's also clear that he needs Lorcan (Gibbs) in the place of step-dad/adopted-dad/mentor-dad/chosen-dad whatever, but not in the place of birth-dad. And that for as much as this is about dealing with Fairrge (John) in this story, it's also about creating something that honors Gibbs and who he's been for him these last few years.
He's not sure what he's doing with Fairrge in this, beyond killing him/shaming him/destroying him in numerous exceptionally messy and violent ways.
That's not entirely true. He knows that he wants them, him, Daegan (Jimmy), Brigit (Breena) and Lorcan to be shape-shifter dragons. He knows that as he's setting up the stories the Dragon Knights are a thing mostly of the past, few and far between. Thought to be legend by the common people. Even in family lines, like the M'Gy (Earliest spelling of his family line that Ducky found when he was looking up the tartan for his clan, and eerily similar to how Gibbs pronounces his name.) the Dragons are going to be rare.
He's thinking that Gabe'll be a dragon, but Fairrge won't. That'll be tension line number one. Fairrge will be a loyal knight in whichever King's army. Gabe won't. Said King, (Tim doesn't have a name for him, yet) will be at war with some other guy, and Lady Skye (Abby) will be working for that side. Eventually, he'll run into Skye over the course of the fight, they'll hook up, and break away from both sides, setting up a third line. End there, Fairrge dead, Skye free from her overlord, and the M'Gys setting off for some new land of their own, and that sounds like a good first book to him.
Those are "working" thoughts. The part of his brain that's in charge when the painkillers are fading away. When he's got plotting and longer arc functions going.
The more drugs in him though, the more violence comes out.
He's gotten to the point in his life where he's not ashamed to be writing really horribly violent graphic murders of his father. He's fairly sure that five years ago, he couldn't have done this. He could have thought about it, but not written it out. Now he can. After all, he's made the deal to have the man killed for real, compared to that, this is just… just letting the dark out. Letting him play with it and then let it go. He does notice that as the days pass, the first few scenes got more and more violent, but he's getting less interested in them.
By the time he's written four versions of it, he's done. He doesn't need to do that again. It's getting boring.
He knows he's not done with writing about his dad, but he's done ending him.
And from there, writing can turn to more pleasurable things. And, as Friday turns into Saturday into Sunday and onto Monday and on… It also becomes clear that whatever else is true about this project, it's also a massive smut-fest.
Smutty, smutty, smutty, smut! All over the place. As of right now, he's got at least a hundred pages of smut, which means this is either going to be an awfully long novel, or it's going on the paranormal erotica shelf. He's got some suspicions as to why this is true, beyond the fact that he likes sex. After all, he was just as fond of sex as he wrote all of the Tibbs books, and none of them contain even one explicit scene.
First and foremost, there's that golden three or four minutes where he's close to getting off, getting off, or just gotten off where he's not hurting. At all. Yes, he's on pain meds, a lot of them, and they are keeping him "comfortable." They are not keeping him pain-free. They're not keeping him in the range where he can just forget he's hurting either. What they are doing is making sure he can function, more or less.
So, if he can't be in those moments, he can be writing about them.
Part of it is that sex is how his body knows it's alive. On a really basic, biological level, fucking keeps him centered on the fact he didn't die. And unlike all the other times where he almost died, he healed up pretty quickly. Pretty quickly isn't on the menu for him, not this time. It's getting onto two weeks later, and every time he moves, every step, every time the habit part of his brain tries to reach for something with his right hand, all of it is a constant reminder of almost dying. (And all of it hurts, which just goes back to point A about chasing time where he's not hurting.)
But, though he's been exceptionally affectionate whenever she's home, Abby does still have a job, so, if he can't be fucking with her, he's writing about it. (And sending what he's writing to her, which means she's usually in an awfully frisky mood by the time she gets home.)
Part of it is wanting to fuck. Pretty much, right now, they've got cowgirl, and reverse cowgirl, soft and gentle and slow, and that's nice and all, but he really wants to fuck. He wants to pick Abby up and rock her world. Wants the feel of his body moving fast and hard, sweat and lube slick skin, breathing hard, flushed, hot, aching full-on, fucking sex.
And that's not happening anytime soon.
So… he's writing about it. In explicit detail. On a pure neurochemistry level, his brain can't tell the difference between real sex and sex on the page. (Sure, it knows the difference between arousal and climax, but chemically porn, fantasy, sex, all of it triggers the same pleasure centers of the brain.) Likewise, he knows it's imaginary, but his dick's a bit fuzzy on that idea, and the only message it's getting is get hard, stay hard, and pounce (in a very slow, gentle, being easy on a whole mess of broken bones sort of way) on Abby when she gets home.
Part of it isn't sexual so much in an erotic sense as in a post-traumatic experience sense. In a very real way Abby, and to a lesser degree Jethro, Jimmy, and Breena all signal safety to Tim. When she's home, and he's awake and can stand to be near people (because he's still having porcupine days, too) he wants to be within touch range. He wants to have Abby holding his hand or a warm arm around his shoulders. And touch feels good, and sex feels better, so hugs turn into stroking which turns to kissing and merges into sex and from there more cuddling and sleep.
He's very, very glad that Abby doesn't mind ending the evening or starting the morning with sex, and then getting some very hot notes during the day to go with it. He thinks the last time they had this much sex, they were on their honeymoon.
And he's also very glad that she's putting up with his mood swings as well, which is another reason to keep writing about sex, because it keeps him on the perky side of things. When he's not focused on sex, he can go from doing okay to crying in less than a minute, and he hates that.
So, at least for the time being, the only downside of the vast wodges of smut he's producing is that occasionally, when he gets a chunk of "writing" done (because after all, he has to speak to his computer to "write"), he'll hobble out of his office, and Heather will just stare at him, which is making him wonder exactly how bad the sound-proofing in their house is.
Another Wednesday, another day home, but today, he's noticing something. There's only one Percocet left, and he's not feeling any sense of panic from that. He can go the full six hours between doses now, and shifting down to Tylenol 3 seems like a good plan.
Seems like it will work.
He knows Tylenol 3 is also a narcotic, but it's a much less strong one than the Percocet, and he's really, really hoping that he can take this last one, let it meander out of his system, start up on the new stuff, and get some more control back.
He swallows it down, and tosses the bottle toward his trash can. He misses and sighs. Time to move the vibrational head to the next break, then more ankle flexing and shoulder lifts.
That's also getting less painful, but he knows that as soon as he's got full range of motion on his ankle, Jimmy's going to want him to start working it with weights, and that'll just drop him right back to square one on the pain level.
The Tylenol 3 is mostly getting the job done. He's back down to a five hour pain pill cycle, but he feels a lot more like himself. He hasn't broken down crying for (what he considers) no good reason for two days.
Heather graciously accepted his apology for being such a bear the last few weeks. Told him he didn't need to apologize for it, but he knew he did. Even if only to make himself feel better.
No Percocet means his one-handed typing is getting better, and Dragon means that mostly all he's doing with a keyboard is fixing spelling and formatting.
No Percocet also means that today, he's got a job to do.
It's time to start writing up that report.
It's slow. Partially because he still has to get fairly frequent naps. Partly because he can't work on the report without thinking about what was going on, and as Wolf said, flashing back to the fight, and to the life before is normal, and working on the report triggers it. And unlike the story, there isn't the safety of Gabe here. Here he's reporting, not creating, so he can't shift and tailor the story to make himself feel safer.
But he keeps working on it. Keeps making himself put it in the past. He's home, at his desk, safe, working. He's not on a ship. His father is nowhere nearby. (He got an email from Burley about that. For the time being, The Admiral's rented a place in Hawaii. Alas, for the time being he's also not finding much in the way of anything useful in any of those missing sailor cases.) And yes, some of his work he's done with Abby right next to him, keeping him grounded in now, but he's kept working.
The great thing about drafts is that the first one can just be miles of crap spewed out on a page. You keep the good stuff, shuffle it around, and delete the embarrassing bits.
And that's what he's doing.
Tim's going over the feeds. He starts with the ships he wasn't on, viewing their data feeds, checking their techs, seeing what they did. He knows how things went on The Stennis, but that's not how things went on all the other ships. Some got communications back faster, some slower. One took a full two hours before they got their internal communications back online. One did it in fewer than two minutes. (He wrote up a separate recommendation for that tech, wanting to make sure he got some sort of a pat on the back for a very good job. Then he made a note to see about looking him up in eighteen months when his hitch with the Navy is up.)
Once communications were fully restored among the entire Carrier Group, they began working together on tracing the hack, and did, eventually, figure it out.
But Tim was on land and unconscious by the time they worked it out.
He writes up a review on how the attack worked, and a plan for how to pull a similar trick. He doesn't want whoever does this next to use his style verbatim; it's got to feel real, and it won't if the same attack keeps happening, but he can put useful parameters in place. Likewise, he dissects the response, pointing out who did well, who didn't, how standard Navy cyber-attack operating procedure worked well, how it failed.
He eyeballs the draft, sure this isn't anywhere near ready to go out, but it's a start.
Thursday. Swimming with Gibbs. That's good. He can actually walk when he's in the pool now. Yes, like with the rest of the ankle exercises, it aches when he's moving, but he is moving all the way through the correct placements and motions of walking.
When he's doing that he can also feel why he's still got the cast on his foot. Place weight on your foot and all those little bones in the arch of your foot, which on him are in various stages of healing back up again, spread apart and flex. Even with the cast they shift a bit, and that's not comfortable at all.
He's dreading putting his full weight back on that foot, but a week and a day, and this little cast comes off, and with it, even more rehabbing.
Wolf again. Sigh.
Fridays are supposed to be days of rest, right? What with the whole their family does Shabbos thing, right? It's in the rules. Ziva's told them avoiding unpleasant topics of conversation is one of the rules. And this is the mother and father of all unpleasant topics of conversation.
He is going on about that when Abby, who took off work to be here with him for this, looks at him, kisses his forehead and says, "You can cancel."
He slumps a little and shakes his head. He knows he's got to do it. Canceling just puts it off for next week or the week after, and that just pushes off him getting to actually go back to work even further. So, he doesn't want to cancel, he just wants to bitch about it and then get it done as fast as possible.
It's nothing personal against Wolf, but… he doesn't want to be talking about this stuff. Tim would much rather just ignore it.
But he can't.
And at least this time Abby's with him, holding his hand, like she promised to do back when they first started talking about this, back before Kelly was born.
They settle into his office, drinks all around, and begin.
They talk a little about how his body is doing, how healing up is going, and then get to the meat of it. Back to California and being a small child and getting on a boat for the first time.
And from there it only gets worse.
Abby hasn't heard a lot of these stories. Tim's never told most of them. Takes two hours. He's not sure what the point of this is, other than to rip his heart out again, but Wolf seems to think it's useful, and
Abby's holding onto him, so… So he keeps talking.
He's not sure if he feels any better, or different, or anything positive really, when he's done.
Tired. He feels tired. Like he's been wrung out. Like he's run fifty miles and done a million jumping jacks and infinite push-ups, and… just tired, all over, in all ways.
Abby sees Wolf to the door, and then heads back to him, snuggling in close, holding onto him as well as she can, and there's a faint spark of wanting to talk to her about it, but lulling tired wipes it out of his mind.
"You just want to rest?"
He nods.
Abby kisses him. "Then you rest."
It's two in the afternoon, and they're on the futon in his office. He's so sleepy, aching tired, all he wants to do is sleep right now, but there's one other thing he needs. "Stay with me? Guard my sleep?"
One more kiss. "Anytime."
Next
Sunday, January 11, 2015
Shards To A Whole: Chapter 400: Take Aim
McGee-centric character study/romance. Want to start at the beginning? Click here.
Chapter 400: Take Aim
Jimmy is not in any way surprised to see Gibbs' truck sitting in Tim's driveway when he pulls in the next morning. They hadn't called each other or planned it out, but apparently he and Gibbs are both on the same track. Namely the check in and make sure no wires are crossed track.
He is, however, as he walks past the truck into Tim and Abby's home, a bit surprised to see three Mylar Happy Birthday balloons floating in the cab.
He guesses they're his next target.
'Practice when you can' means that Jimmy was able to do not much of anything at all involving any sort of weapon, whatsoever.
He wasn't kidding when he mentioned he wasn't going to have a lot of time for working on the house this summer because he's got Continuing Education Units he's got to get done before the end of the year. (Two of four classes just got bumped back to the fall because he was in California instead of attending them.) Monday night meant the first of his historical pathology seminars. (Okay, yeah, it's not vitally useful in terms of building skills, but it is interesting, and he's got the time for it, and, and this was a big deciding factor, only two of the seminars required him to actually go to a lecture, and the exam is open book pass/fail.)
So, school's eating up time.
Then work's eating up time. Eating up his usual time, and on top of that, he's got backlog from when he was out. Ducky handled Autopsy while he was out, like the pro he is, but once he got back, Jimmy still had to double check everything, make sure nothing got missed, and then, even with the computer spitting out the paperwork (which made this vastly faster, otherwise he'd be in the office filling out forms until July) he still had to initial and sign everything.
Plus a week away meant he wanted to spend as much time with Breena and his girls as he could get. He doesn't regret or begrudge the time he was in California… At least, not for Tim or Abby or Gibbs, for them he was fine with being there. Wasting a week of his life because John McGee's a fucking bastard who wouldn't know a good son if one walked up and kicked him in the nuts (which Jimmy would entirely approve of happening) is a different story all together. But he did miss Breena, and anything that reminds him of how fragile life and joy are makes him want to cling to her.
Which means, that while he did go through taking the rifle apart and putting it back together in his head several times, he didn't do any actual, hands on work with the paintball rifle.
Jimmy opens the door quietly, and doesn't hear anything. Or see anything for that matter. He checks Tim's office as he heads through the downstairs, but he's not napping on his futon in there, or crashed out on the sofa, which means everyone is upstairs, or in the backyard.
He heads to the kitchen and looks out through the sliding glass door, everyone's on the porch, having breakfast from the look of it. Jimmy can smell coffee perking away, so he makes a detour to fix himself a cup. A quick sip at half way full to make sure it's Tim's blend and not Gibbs' lets him know how much to pour. It's Tim's, so he fills the cup three quarters full, and tops it off with milk. Then he heads out.
No one's surprised to see him as he steps out saying, "So, we're lying to Grandma?"
"Don't ever let her hear you call her that," Tim says.
Jimmy sits down at the patio table, next to Abby, who has Kelly in her lap. Both of them get their cheeks kissed. "Yeah, because Grandma's the tricky bit."
Tim rolls his eyes at that. "Technically I am not lying and neither are you two. I am practicing mental reservation, and, assuming you're not stupid, you just won't say anything. Then, if plan A and B both fail, and The Admiral drops over dead from a bullet wound, Grandma will know that I asked you not to do anything, and she'll know that Gibbs was in the room with her when it happened, and she'll know that I'm not a sniper, and she'll know that John has a lot of enemies from his drone work, and she'll be able to pretend one of them took care of him."
Jimmy nods, curtly. He's not upset about how this is working out, but he does want to make sure everything's all in place. He doesn't want to get burned on some loose detail.
"What's the mental reservation?"
"I said I wanted to handle it. And I do. And right now, trusting you to take care of it is how I want to handle it."
Jimmy's not sure what he feels at those words, but it's something proud and intense. He smiles at Tim, and Tim smiles back.
"And look, I may change my mind, but you're still learning, so we've got time, right?"
Jimmy nods and Gibbs does, too. "We've got a lot of ground to cover. Sniper school was ten weeks for Basic and another twelve for Advanced and all we did was hide, stalk, shoot, work with our rifles, and learn how to put the shot where we wanted it."
"So, I don't have to decide for real for a while. I meant it, I want Stan to find something on him. That'd be… I want that." Tim says with a desperate smile. "But… If it doesn't happen. If it can't… There's still the deal with Jarvis, probably, in play. And in a year or two, if that hasn't happened… I don't know. You'll be ready to act. Or maybe I'll do it myself, frame him with kiddie porn or something…" Tim shakes his head. That doesn't feel right. "I want him disgraced, and I want him to do hard time, but I want it to be for something he did. I want who he really is to come out and be seen by everyone. If I can't get that, dead's a good second place." Tim takes a sip of his coffee. "But if dead's the answer…" He looks at Gibbs and Jimmy, both of whom have buried children, and he doesn't need to say any more than that, lying to Grandma, making it that little bit easier, they're on board for that.
After a minute, Jimmy says, "So, why doesn't she like Grandma?"
"Same reason she didn't go by Mrs. McGee or Mrs. Mallard. She wants to be known by the person she is and the things she's accomplished, not the relationships or men in her life."
Jimmy thinks about that for a minute, he can understand that. Then he looks at Abby. "Mrs. McGee doesn't bug you at all, does it?"
"No! I like it. But I had a choice about it. When Penny got married people, everyone started calling her Mrs. Nelson McGee. Penny Langston literally vanished. That didn't happen to me. I gained a husband and a family, I didn't get absorbed by them."
Jimmy nods, then sighs. He takes another sip of his coffee. "So, we should probably get going if we're going to get any shooting in before Penny who is not Grandma and Mr. Langston show up at the house to work on windows some more."
Gibbs nods, standing up, and Tim smiles. "Call him Mr. Langston in front of her, that'll make her day."
Jimmy chuckles at that as he and Gibbs head off.
"Where's Mona?" Jimmy asks as they get to the house and he notices that part of their party is missing.
"Decided she wanted to sleep in with Abbi."
Jimmy smiles. Gibbs grabs the balloons and hands them to him. Jimmy notices he's also got a ball of twine and a bag of the basic, blow them up yourself balloons as well.
"Late case for Abbi?"
Gibbs shakes his head. "Likes to sleep in when she gets the chance."
Jimmy smiles at that, too, as they head to the boathouse. "We need these right away?" he asks about the Mylar balloons.
Gibbs shakes his head, and Jimmy finds a block to tuck the ribbons under so they don't float away. While he snaps on his gloves and gets the paintball rifle set up, Gibbs blows up several of the regular balloons and wanders around their property tying them to different tree branches.
Not much in the way of clear shots. The bit right around the house is mowed lawn, but most of their land is woods, and Gibbs is tying the balloons in the wooded section. There are other trees, branches, bushes, scrub, leaves, vines and all sorts of stuff between Jimmy and the balloons, and on top of that, Gibbs has not secured the balloons tightly to the branches, they're dangling off, swaying in the breeze.
The only upside Jimmy can see is that they're bright yellow, pink, blue, and white. They do not blend in with the surroundings.
"Instructions?" Jimmy asks when Gibbs gets back to him.
"Shoot 'em."
"That's what I figured. Anything else?"
Gibbs shakes his head. "Right now, just track how they move, and shoot them. Find wherever you need to be to hit. Like when we were working with punching, if you've got to do it from ten feet away, do it from ten feet away, just make sure you hit."
Jimmy nods, and starts towards the closest of the balloons, a small pink one. He spends a while walking around, occasionally sighting with the rifle.
"Tell me what you're doing," Gibbs says to him.
"Looking for a good vantage point. I don't want to shoot from ten feet away, but I don't want too much stuff between me and the balloon."
Gibbs nods. "Even a paintball is traveling fast enough to go through a lot of this scrub."
"That part of why training you took six months?"
"Yeah, I can figure what sort of rifle and bullet to use to shoot through a car if need be."
Jimmy stares at him, wondering why you'd want to shoot through a car. "How can you even see where the person you're aiming for is if you're on the other side of a car."
"Shot like that, the target isn't moving."
"Do I want to know?"
Gibbs shrugs. "Do you?"
Jimmy thinks for a second, and realizes he does. Not just because he's curious, but as best as he can tell Gibbs doesn't talk about this part of his life, and talking about it might be good.
"Shot was set days in advance. Car was there intentionally. Target had security. Security checked and monitored all clear lines of sight. Half a klick behind the car, I was in the clear, no one watching or checking. I had all the time I needed. Marked the car, knew exactly where I had to hit on it, to send the bullet straight through to the Target. Spotter closer to the Target let me know when he was in place. Target got up to give a speech, he didn't finish it."
"Was he just a target?"
"To me."
"You'd just… go in and do this cold?"
"It's a lot easier when you go in cold. Two hardest shots I ever took were Hernandez and Saleem. Targets are things you can be cold about. It's a job, and you do your job well. Even if you hate someone, that someone is a person, and killing people is hard. Neutralizing a target isn't easy, but it's easier."
Jimmy nods at that. "John's a person."
Gibbs nods. "We hate him. Hate the pain he's caused. But hate means we feel for him, about him. Means we feel for the people at home in relation to him. Means Tim and Abby and Penny and Sarah are all there when you're shooting, ghosts in your head. With a target there are no ghosts. There's just time, distance, wind, and fire. God willing, you're only ever going to have to take one shot, but those ghosts'll be there, talking to you while you wait for the right second.
"We'll pick a time and place where I can get you in the right spot for the rifle we've got, so all you've got to do is shoot. You're not going to need months of math and aiming technique or which caliber does what, when, and how. But mastering the ghosts, that'll be on you."
Jimmy nods at that. He scans the woods, looking at the pink balloon swaying gently. "Were Kelly and Shannon happy when you shot Hernandez?"
Gibbs shakes his head. "No. They knew it wouldn't fix anything. But they knew I needed to do it if I was going to do anything other than self-destruct."
"Buying yourself enough time to heal."
"Something like that."
Jimmy lifts the rifle to his eye, sights the balloon, watching it move, trying to track it, trying to feel where it's going to be, and fires. He nicks it, sending it snapping into the branch, where it pops.
Gibbs nods again. "Right now, do whatever is comfortable, you're learning how to put your bullet where your target is going to be. But when you shoot for real, you probably won't be standing up. Lying on your stomach, crouching behind something, you'll be more stable, have an easier time making sure the bullet goes where you point it."
Jimmy nods at that. He can be very still for a long time, but that's not the stability you get from leaning on something. He goes looking for a different vantage for the next balloon while Gibbs takes the string and dead balloon down from the tree.
He heads over to a downed tree and uses that as a prop. He misses the next balloon he's shooting at twice, but nails it on the third shot. From the tree he can sight another of Gibbs' balloons so he goes after that one, too. Much longer shot, and this one's got a lot of small branches, leaves in the way, but the air is still, and it's just hanging there, barely swaying.
One shot and Jimmy hears it pop with a sense of satisfaction. He knows John probably won't just stand there and wait to be shot, but one pull and gone felt really good.
Five more balloons tied in the woods, and Jimmy hits all of them, eventually.
Gibbs watches, satisfied. Training won't be fast. The difference between how a paintball rifle shoots and a real one is massive, but the basic level, where is the target, where is the target going, that's the core of this, and that skill stays the same no matter what you're aiming with.
"Ziva's gonna teach you knives?" Gibbs asks as they head back to the boathouse.
"That's the idea. Want to see what's involved before okaying Tim on it."
"Not really learning for you, then?"
Jimmy shakes his head. Then he inclines it slightly. "You don't ever want to go up against me with a knife. You really don't want to go against Ducky. I mean, yeah, I don't have any defense, but one, two hits tops, and you're dead, so I probably don't need much. Spend twenty hours a week taking people apart with knives and you get a really good feel for what to hit if you ever have to."
"How good?" Gibbs asks.
Jimmy takes two steps in front of Gibbs, and walks toward him, tapping him lightly on the upper, inner thigh and then stomach as they pass each other. "Get medical attention in the next two minutes or die from blood loss. I've just severed your femoral and aortic arteries."
Gibbs stops walking and glances at the paint gun. "Why are we doing this?"
"For the same reason I'm pulling the trigger. The Admiral gets a sudden case of extremely precise scalpel wounds, and I'm the top of the suspect list, or Ducky."
Gibbs nods, that makes sense.
"Probably be easier to stay calm if I'm far away, too. Go in hot, and it's probably easier to miss."
"It is."
"So, walking up next to him, having to touch him, not sure I can do that and not just start beating the shit out of him."
Gibbs nods, he's gets that. He's not sure he could get in touching range of John and pull off a calm, precise hit. Actually, that's not true. He could do it. He would. He's always been able to shut down and do the job, but it wouldn't be easy.
Jimmy's holding the paintball rifle already, but he can do that one handed easily. The fingers of his right hand trace over the barrel. "I figure with this I can stay far enough away to kill him and leave no trace. Stay far enough away that I won't get tempted to go for pain or fear. Just one hit, fast and done."
"Good plan."
"So, what are these for?" Jimmy asks as Gibbs grabs the Mylar balloons out of the boathouse.
"People aren't on tethers. They move all over the place."
"You're going to let them free and I'm going to shoot."
Gibbs nods again, and they head out to the end of the pier. No chance of getting the balloons tangled, at least, not at first, if they're over the water.
"Give it a five count before you aim." Then Gibbs lets the first one go.
Jimmy counts, tracking the motion with the scope, and on five he fires, and misses. He does it with the second and third one, too. He's annoyed, but Gibbs isn't.
"Get all three, and you get to start shooting people."
Jimmy looks alarmed by that.
"Get good with air and wind currents, and then you get to try to hit me."
That gets a smile.
"I'm going to snipe you?"
Gibbs nods. "When you can get me, without setting off my danger sense, then you get to start working with a real rifle and real bullets."
"And when do I get to go after John?"
"When you can take the head off of a turkey."
That makes an awful lot of sense to Jimmy.
Tony and Ziva pull up shortly after that, and find Jimmy and Gibbs working on popping the first of today's windows out of the house. It probably would be faster if they could just pop them all out and then put all the new ones in, but that's still not a good plan.
Tony peeks under the tarp covering the windows that haven't been put in yet, and says, "Five hundred down, twenty six million to go."
"It's not that bad, Tony."
"Not that good, either. You guys just get here? Doesn't look like you made any progress!" Tony calls over to Gibbs and Jimmy, grabbing yet another window and heading fifteen feet further down the side of the house from them.
Jimmy smiles to himself on that. No it doesn't look like they've made any progress, because nothing's been done on the house.
"Just got started," Jimmy says, hearing another car pulling up. Ducky and Penny this time.
They amble over to where Jimmy and Jethro are in the process of getting another window out.
"Hello. Jethro, Jimmy, I see you are hard at work."
"Getting there, Duck."
There are rhythms Ducky and Jimmy have for working together, long practiced, which, even though this is building a house and not an autopsy, both of them tend to fall into them easily.
"Good morning, Mr. Langston," Jimmy says in a perfect mirroring of his usual greeting Ducky while working routine.
Ducky arches an eyebrow, and says precisely, "That's Doctor Langston, thank you very much."
Penny smiles at that, laughing, amused by the whole thing. "I take it you had some sort of chat with Tim and Abby?"
Jimmy nods. "Tim didn't exactly dare me to do that, but he did want to know what happened if I did."
Penny laughs some more. "And what brought that up."
"I was wondering why Tim doesn't call you Grandma or something like that. He got into it. Same reason you aren't Mrs. Mallard or Mrs. McGee."
Penny smiles, warmly, realizing how much of her life Tim never saw. "I was Mrs. McGee for a long time. And even now, were I to change my name, I'd hold tight to Doctor."
Ducky appears interested by that. They've never spoken of even the possibility of her changing her name. "And would you have been Dr. Mallard?"
Penny smiles back at him, turning the tables. "Would you have been Dr. Langston?"
Ducky shrugs. "My sense is that it's easier for all involved if we do not have identical professional names."
"They're only identical when spoken," Jimmy adds, helpful, grinning.
"Which is more than enough. How many calls do we need to get for Doctor Langston or Doctor Mallard if the one title refers to both of us before it becomes unwieldy?"
Penny's nodding at that. Ducky still gets calls from colleagues, and her students all call her Doctor Langston.
Tony hands over more crowbars, eyeballing Ducky, "You know… I never did get a good nickname for you. What'd'ya think Penny, should I call him Mr. Langston?"
Penny laughs at that, and Ducky says, "Anthony, you do know that my given name is not, in fact, Ducky?"
"Of course I do, Donald, but it's not much of a nickname when you introduce yourself with 'Call me Ducky. Everyone else does.'"
Ducky smiles, remembering the first time he met Agent DiNozzo. "By all means then, especially compared to Autopsy Gremlin or McWhatever I will happily be christened Mr. Langston."
Next
Chapter 400: Take Aim
Jimmy is not in any way surprised to see Gibbs' truck sitting in Tim's driveway when he pulls in the next morning. They hadn't called each other or planned it out, but apparently he and Gibbs are both on the same track. Namely the check in and make sure no wires are crossed track.
He is, however, as he walks past the truck into Tim and Abby's home, a bit surprised to see three Mylar Happy Birthday balloons floating in the cab.
He guesses they're his next target.
'Practice when you can' means that Jimmy was able to do not much of anything at all involving any sort of weapon, whatsoever.
He wasn't kidding when he mentioned he wasn't going to have a lot of time for working on the house this summer because he's got Continuing Education Units he's got to get done before the end of the year. (Two of four classes just got bumped back to the fall because he was in California instead of attending them.) Monday night meant the first of his historical pathology seminars. (Okay, yeah, it's not vitally useful in terms of building skills, but it is interesting, and he's got the time for it, and, and this was a big deciding factor, only two of the seminars required him to actually go to a lecture, and the exam is open book pass/fail.)
So, school's eating up time.
Then work's eating up time. Eating up his usual time, and on top of that, he's got backlog from when he was out. Ducky handled Autopsy while he was out, like the pro he is, but once he got back, Jimmy still had to double check everything, make sure nothing got missed, and then, even with the computer spitting out the paperwork (which made this vastly faster, otherwise he'd be in the office filling out forms until July) he still had to initial and sign everything.
Plus a week away meant he wanted to spend as much time with Breena and his girls as he could get. He doesn't regret or begrudge the time he was in California… At least, not for Tim or Abby or Gibbs, for them he was fine with being there. Wasting a week of his life because John McGee's a fucking bastard who wouldn't know a good son if one walked up and kicked him in the nuts (which Jimmy would entirely approve of happening) is a different story all together. But he did miss Breena, and anything that reminds him of how fragile life and joy are makes him want to cling to her.
Which means, that while he did go through taking the rifle apart and putting it back together in his head several times, he didn't do any actual, hands on work with the paintball rifle.
Jimmy opens the door quietly, and doesn't hear anything. Or see anything for that matter. He checks Tim's office as he heads through the downstairs, but he's not napping on his futon in there, or crashed out on the sofa, which means everyone is upstairs, or in the backyard.
He heads to the kitchen and looks out through the sliding glass door, everyone's on the porch, having breakfast from the look of it. Jimmy can smell coffee perking away, so he makes a detour to fix himself a cup. A quick sip at half way full to make sure it's Tim's blend and not Gibbs' lets him know how much to pour. It's Tim's, so he fills the cup three quarters full, and tops it off with milk. Then he heads out.
No one's surprised to see him as he steps out saying, "So, we're lying to Grandma?"
"Don't ever let her hear you call her that," Tim says.
Jimmy sits down at the patio table, next to Abby, who has Kelly in her lap. Both of them get their cheeks kissed. "Yeah, because Grandma's the tricky bit."
Tim rolls his eyes at that. "Technically I am not lying and neither are you two. I am practicing mental reservation, and, assuming you're not stupid, you just won't say anything. Then, if plan A and B both fail, and The Admiral drops over dead from a bullet wound, Grandma will know that I asked you not to do anything, and she'll know that Gibbs was in the room with her when it happened, and she'll know that I'm not a sniper, and she'll know that John has a lot of enemies from his drone work, and she'll be able to pretend one of them took care of him."
Jimmy nods, curtly. He's not upset about how this is working out, but he does want to make sure everything's all in place. He doesn't want to get burned on some loose detail.
"What's the mental reservation?"
"I said I wanted to handle it. And I do. And right now, trusting you to take care of it is how I want to handle it."
Jimmy's not sure what he feels at those words, but it's something proud and intense. He smiles at Tim, and Tim smiles back.
"And look, I may change my mind, but you're still learning, so we've got time, right?"
Jimmy nods and Gibbs does, too. "We've got a lot of ground to cover. Sniper school was ten weeks for Basic and another twelve for Advanced and all we did was hide, stalk, shoot, work with our rifles, and learn how to put the shot where we wanted it."
"So, I don't have to decide for real for a while. I meant it, I want Stan to find something on him. That'd be… I want that." Tim says with a desperate smile. "But… If it doesn't happen. If it can't… There's still the deal with Jarvis, probably, in play. And in a year or two, if that hasn't happened… I don't know. You'll be ready to act. Or maybe I'll do it myself, frame him with kiddie porn or something…" Tim shakes his head. That doesn't feel right. "I want him disgraced, and I want him to do hard time, but I want it to be for something he did. I want who he really is to come out and be seen by everyone. If I can't get that, dead's a good second place." Tim takes a sip of his coffee. "But if dead's the answer…" He looks at Gibbs and Jimmy, both of whom have buried children, and he doesn't need to say any more than that, lying to Grandma, making it that little bit easier, they're on board for that.
After a minute, Jimmy says, "So, why doesn't she like Grandma?"
"Same reason she didn't go by Mrs. McGee or Mrs. Mallard. She wants to be known by the person she is and the things she's accomplished, not the relationships or men in her life."
Jimmy thinks about that for a minute, he can understand that. Then he looks at Abby. "Mrs. McGee doesn't bug you at all, does it?"
"No! I like it. But I had a choice about it. When Penny got married people, everyone started calling her Mrs. Nelson McGee. Penny Langston literally vanished. That didn't happen to me. I gained a husband and a family, I didn't get absorbed by them."
Jimmy nods, then sighs. He takes another sip of his coffee. "So, we should probably get going if we're going to get any shooting in before Penny who is not Grandma and Mr. Langston show up at the house to work on windows some more."
Gibbs nods, standing up, and Tim smiles. "Call him Mr. Langston in front of her, that'll make her day."
Jimmy chuckles at that as he and Gibbs head off.
"Where's Mona?" Jimmy asks as they get to the house and he notices that part of their party is missing.
"Decided she wanted to sleep in with Abbi."
Jimmy smiles. Gibbs grabs the balloons and hands them to him. Jimmy notices he's also got a ball of twine and a bag of the basic, blow them up yourself balloons as well.
"Late case for Abbi?"
Gibbs shakes his head. "Likes to sleep in when she gets the chance."
Jimmy smiles at that, too, as they head to the boathouse. "We need these right away?" he asks about the Mylar balloons.
Gibbs shakes his head, and Jimmy finds a block to tuck the ribbons under so they don't float away. While he snaps on his gloves and gets the paintball rifle set up, Gibbs blows up several of the regular balloons and wanders around their property tying them to different tree branches.
Not much in the way of clear shots. The bit right around the house is mowed lawn, but most of their land is woods, and Gibbs is tying the balloons in the wooded section. There are other trees, branches, bushes, scrub, leaves, vines and all sorts of stuff between Jimmy and the balloons, and on top of that, Gibbs has not secured the balloons tightly to the branches, they're dangling off, swaying in the breeze.
The only upside Jimmy can see is that they're bright yellow, pink, blue, and white. They do not blend in with the surroundings.
"Instructions?" Jimmy asks when Gibbs gets back to him.
"Shoot 'em."
"That's what I figured. Anything else?"
Gibbs shakes his head. "Right now, just track how they move, and shoot them. Find wherever you need to be to hit. Like when we were working with punching, if you've got to do it from ten feet away, do it from ten feet away, just make sure you hit."
Jimmy nods, and starts towards the closest of the balloons, a small pink one. He spends a while walking around, occasionally sighting with the rifle.
"Tell me what you're doing," Gibbs says to him.
"Looking for a good vantage point. I don't want to shoot from ten feet away, but I don't want too much stuff between me and the balloon."
Gibbs nods. "Even a paintball is traveling fast enough to go through a lot of this scrub."
"That part of why training you took six months?"
"Yeah, I can figure what sort of rifle and bullet to use to shoot through a car if need be."
Jimmy stares at him, wondering why you'd want to shoot through a car. "How can you even see where the person you're aiming for is if you're on the other side of a car."
"Shot like that, the target isn't moving."
"Do I want to know?"
Gibbs shrugs. "Do you?"
Jimmy thinks for a second, and realizes he does. Not just because he's curious, but as best as he can tell Gibbs doesn't talk about this part of his life, and talking about it might be good.
"Shot was set days in advance. Car was there intentionally. Target had security. Security checked and monitored all clear lines of sight. Half a klick behind the car, I was in the clear, no one watching or checking. I had all the time I needed. Marked the car, knew exactly where I had to hit on it, to send the bullet straight through to the Target. Spotter closer to the Target let me know when he was in place. Target got up to give a speech, he didn't finish it."
"Was he just a target?"
"To me."
"You'd just… go in and do this cold?"
"It's a lot easier when you go in cold. Two hardest shots I ever took were Hernandez and Saleem. Targets are things you can be cold about. It's a job, and you do your job well. Even if you hate someone, that someone is a person, and killing people is hard. Neutralizing a target isn't easy, but it's easier."
Jimmy nods at that. "John's a person."
Gibbs nods. "We hate him. Hate the pain he's caused. But hate means we feel for him, about him. Means we feel for the people at home in relation to him. Means Tim and Abby and Penny and Sarah are all there when you're shooting, ghosts in your head. With a target there are no ghosts. There's just time, distance, wind, and fire. God willing, you're only ever going to have to take one shot, but those ghosts'll be there, talking to you while you wait for the right second.
"We'll pick a time and place where I can get you in the right spot for the rifle we've got, so all you've got to do is shoot. You're not going to need months of math and aiming technique or which caliber does what, when, and how. But mastering the ghosts, that'll be on you."
Jimmy nods at that. He scans the woods, looking at the pink balloon swaying gently. "Were Kelly and Shannon happy when you shot Hernandez?"
Gibbs shakes his head. "No. They knew it wouldn't fix anything. But they knew I needed to do it if I was going to do anything other than self-destruct."
"Buying yourself enough time to heal."
"Something like that."
Jimmy lifts the rifle to his eye, sights the balloon, watching it move, trying to track it, trying to feel where it's going to be, and fires. He nicks it, sending it snapping into the branch, where it pops.
Gibbs nods again. "Right now, do whatever is comfortable, you're learning how to put your bullet where your target is going to be. But when you shoot for real, you probably won't be standing up. Lying on your stomach, crouching behind something, you'll be more stable, have an easier time making sure the bullet goes where you point it."
Jimmy nods at that. He can be very still for a long time, but that's not the stability you get from leaning on something. He goes looking for a different vantage for the next balloon while Gibbs takes the string and dead balloon down from the tree.
He heads over to a downed tree and uses that as a prop. He misses the next balloon he's shooting at twice, but nails it on the third shot. From the tree he can sight another of Gibbs' balloons so he goes after that one, too. Much longer shot, and this one's got a lot of small branches, leaves in the way, but the air is still, and it's just hanging there, barely swaying.
One shot and Jimmy hears it pop with a sense of satisfaction. He knows John probably won't just stand there and wait to be shot, but one pull and gone felt really good.
Five more balloons tied in the woods, and Jimmy hits all of them, eventually.
Gibbs watches, satisfied. Training won't be fast. The difference between how a paintball rifle shoots and a real one is massive, but the basic level, where is the target, where is the target going, that's the core of this, and that skill stays the same no matter what you're aiming with.
"Ziva's gonna teach you knives?" Gibbs asks as they head back to the boathouse.
"That's the idea. Want to see what's involved before okaying Tim on it."
"Not really learning for you, then?"
Jimmy shakes his head. Then he inclines it slightly. "You don't ever want to go up against me with a knife. You really don't want to go against Ducky. I mean, yeah, I don't have any defense, but one, two hits tops, and you're dead, so I probably don't need much. Spend twenty hours a week taking people apart with knives and you get a really good feel for what to hit if you ever have to."
"How good?" Gibbs asks.
Jimmy takes two steps in front of Gibbs, and walks toward him, tapping him lightly on the upper, inner thigh and then stomach as they pass each other. "Get medical attention in the next two minutes or die from blood loss. I've just severed your femoral and aortic arteries."
Gibbs stops walking and glances at the paint gun. "Why are we doing this?"
"For the same reason I'm pulling the trigger. The Admiral gets a sudden case of extremely precise scalpel wounds, and I'm the top of the suspect list, or Ducky."
Gibbs nods, that makes sense.
"Probably be easier to stay calm if I'm far away, too. Go in hot, and it's probably easier to miss."
"It is."
"So, walking up next to him, having to touch him, not sure I can do that and not just start beating the shit out of him."
Gibbs nods, he's gets that. He's not sure he could get in touching range of John and pull off a calm, precise hit. Actually, that's not true. He could do it. He would. He's always been able to shut down and do the job, but it wouldn't be easy.
Jimmy's holding the paintball rifle already, but he can do that one handed easily. The fingers of his right hand trace over the barrel. "I figure with this I can stay far enough away to kill him and leave no trace. Stay far enough away that I won't get tempted to go for pain or fear. Just one hit, fast and done."
"Good plan."
"So, what are these for?" Jimmy asks as Gibbs grabs the Mylar balloons out of the boathouse.
"People aren't on tethers. They move all over the place."
"You're going to let them free and I'm going to shoot."
Gibbs nods again, and they head out to the end of the pier. No chance of getting the balloons tangled, at least, not at first, if they're over the water.
"Give it a five count before you aim." Then Gibbs lets the first one go.
Jimmy counts, tracking the motion with the scope, and on five he fires, and misses. He does it with the second and third one, too. He's annoyed, but Gibbs isn't.
"Get all three, and you get to start shooting people."
Jimmy looks alarmed by that.
"Get good with air and wind currents, and then you get to try to hit me."
That gets a smile.
"I'm going to snipe you?"
Gibbs nods. "When you can get me, without setting off my danger sense, then you get to start working with a real rifle and real bullets."
"And when do I get to go after John?"
"When you can take the head off of a turkey."
That makes an awful lot of sense to Jimmy.
Tony and Ziva pull up shortly after that, and find Jimmy and Gibbs working on popping the first of today's windows out of the house. It probably would be faster if they could just pop them all out and then put all the new ones in, but that's still not a good plan.
Tony peeks under the tarp covering the windows that haven't been put in yet, and says, "Five hundred down, twenty six million to go."
"It's not that bad, Tony."
"Not that good, either. You guys just get here? Doesn't look like you made any progress!" Tony calls over to Gibbs and Jimmy, grabbing yet another window and heading fifteen feet further down the side of the house from them.
Jimmy smiles to himself on that. No it doesn't look like they've made any progress, because nothing's been done on the house.
"Just got started," Jimmy says, hearing another car pulling up. Ducky and Penny this time.
They amble over to where Jimmy and Jethro are in the process of getting another window out.
"Hello. Jethro, Jimmy, I see you are hard at work."
"Getting there, Duck."
There are rhythms Ducky and Jimmy have for working together, long practiced, which, even though this is building a house and not an autopsy, both of them tend to fall into them easily.
"Good morning, Mr. Langston," Jimmy says in a perfect mirroring of his usual greeting Ducky while working routine.
Ducky arches an eyebrow, and says precisely, "That's Doctor Langston, thank you very much."
Penny smiles at that, laughing, amused by the whole thing. "I take it you had some sort of chat with Tim and Abby?"
Jimmy nods. "Tim didn't exactly dare me to do that, but he did want to know what happened if I did."
Penny laughs some more. "And what brought that up."
"I was wondering why Tim doesn't call you Grandma or something like that. He got into it. Same reason you aren't Mrs. Mallard or Mrs. McGee."
Penny smiles, warmly, realizing how much of her life Tim never saw. "I was Mrs. McGee for a long time. And even now, were I to change my name, I'd hold tight to Doctor."
Ducky appears interested by that. They've never spoken of even the possibility of her changing her name. "And would you have been Dr. Mallard?"
Penny smiles back at him, turning the tables. "Would you have been Dr. Langston?"
Ducky shrugs. "My sense is that it's easier for all involved if we do not have identical professional names."
"They're only identical when spoken," Jimmy adds, helpful, grinning.
"Which is more than enough. How many calls do we need to get for Doctor Langston or Doctor Mallard if the one title refers to both of us before it becomes unwieldy?"
Penny's nodding at that. Ducky still gets calls from colleagues, and her students all call her Doctor Langston.
Tony hands over more crowbars, eyeballing Ducky, "You know… I never did get a good nickname for you. What'd'ya think Penny, should I call him Mr. Langston?"
Penny laughs at that, and Ducky says, "Anthony, you do know that my given name is not, in fact, Ducky?"
"Of course I do, Donald, but it's not much of a nickname when you introduce yourself with 'Call me Ducky. Everyone else does.'"
Ducky smiles, remembering the first time he met Agent DiNozzo. "By all means then, especially compared to Autopsy Gremlin or McWhatever I will happily be christened Mr. Langston."
Next
Friday, October 10, 2014
Shards To A Whole: Happy (Ish) Birthday.
McGee-centric character study/romance. Want to start at the beginning? Click here.
Chapter 395: Happy(Ish) Birthday
Abby blinks at Sarah and says, "Holy shit!"
"Indeed," Ducky adds.
Sarah shrugs a little. "Can't just let him get away with it, right?"
Everyone shakes their heads. "You think I should tell Tim when he wakes up, or hold onto it for a few days when he's a bit less groggy?"
"When he wakes up is good," Abby says. "I think he'll like hearing about it."
Penny sits down on the porch steps. "So, he's just... done?"
"According to SecNav, everything'll get wrapped up when he gets to Pearl."
Abby's looking at Gibbs, both of them wondering, what, if anything this is going to do to or for Tim's 'deal.' And it's completely clear that neither of them have any idea.
Penny's got a more immediate concern, she can see Sarah's agitated, pacing around, temper all but crackling off her skin. "Are you all right?"
Sarah's shoulders slump, and she goes to sit next to Penny. "No. No, I'm not. All of this is really hitting. He tried to kill Tim… He was more upset about me saying he had a boyfriend than what he did to Tim… Nothing about him was real." She wipes her eyes. "I couldn't see the monster under the mask. But he's still Daddy. And this is just…" Penny holds her near as Sarah starts to sob.
Given the massive shit storm of emotional trauma that just opened up on the family he's about to marry into, Glenn Holland sprang into action pretty well. He'd been… wary's probably a good word for it… when he got a text from Ducky asking him to show up at Tim and Abby's early.
The birthday party is today, but it didn't start until 6:00, so why he was heading there at 3:00 had him curious with a side of dread.
He felt ice down his spine when he saw most of the McGees on the front porch, minus Tim, with Sarah sobbing in Penny's arms.
Then he got the story. Ducky and Abby did the telling, and he's honestly not sure if what actually happened is better or worse than what he was thinking had happened when he saw most of the family outside without Tim.
What he does know is that, 'Dad and Tim don't get on,' needs a whole lot of filling out, and he's also got a lot of pointed questions about Sarah's mom that need to be answered, but not right this second.
Right this second, he's petting his wife-to-be and telling her she did the right thing.
When Glenn comes over, Abby heads back into the house. Tim's sleeping. He wasn't sleeping this much the last day at the hospital, but he also wasn't moving around, so maybe this is just a reaction to actually doing something besides laying around.
Maybe.
Or maybe this is enough emotional crap that he can only take so much, so he's checking out.
Probably a good plan. If he needs to take himself away for a while so he doesn't get swamped, then she'll do what she can to give him a space to do that.
But right now she also wants to be near him. Feel his skin on hers. Not much room on the sofa for both of them, not with him lying on his back, so she sits on the floor, and tips her head back onto the seat. The crown of her head is resting against his hip. It's not enough, but for the time being, it'll do.
She sighs gently, wondering if what Sarah did was a good move or not.
Good for her, for the sense of doing something for her brother, for trying to avenge him if she couldn't protect him, good for all of that. Abby gets that.
But she's not sure if this is good for Tim. 'Sarah was bold…' 'Sarah was brave…' 'Sarah was fearless…' That's how Tim thinks of her. Sarah's active, bright, fire-y, wild. She does whatever needs to be done, when it needs to be done, damn the consequences. He's passive, thoughtful, cautious, laying out ideas and not moving until every option's been considered.
And especially with their Dad… Where he was always smacked for being the cautious one, and she was praised for bold…
She took charge, took the active role, forced John's hand. Tim took the quiet role. Things were put in play, quiet, thought out, plans within plans that would have taken at least six months to come to a head. But they were invisible, and handed off to someone else to execute.
Sarah handled it herself, immediately.
The only thing stopping Tim from that exact same play was a boat-load of drugs and a lack of devious nature. After all the idea of just threatening to press charges, (in Virginia, there is no statute of limitations on any felony, and child abuse is a felony) to blackmail John into retirement hadn't occurred to her, and she's sure it never crossed Tim's mind. And she's sure it never would have crossed either of their minds, either.
She sits there with him and hopes this will be good news. She hopes it will be satisfying. She hopes it won't spiral him into a deep well of doubt. He's got more than enough of that coming, this on top of it?
Another sigh.
It's a bizarre sensation. He's not really asleep. He's aware of Abby nearby, but he can't talk or do anything about it.
Sleep paralysis? Maybe. But he's not hurting or panicked, so all in all, he's not in a hurry to try and shake it.
He can hear voices from outside. Bits of conversation, but he can't make out words, just sounds and rhythms. Some crying. He thinks that's Sarah.
He's idly thinking that at this point they're zero for two on happy first birthdays, and maybe it'd be nice if by the time December rolls around and Anna turns one that they could get a first birthday where no one is crying.
His brain keeps flitting about to little niggly things. Like, where's his computer? When should he go back to work? What might be for dinner? And he didn't get much of a look at the new wrist cuff, so he'd kind of like to really look at it. (His arm and eyes do not cooperate at that, so he doesn't get a view of it.) He'd gotten to pondering what happened in the episode of Twin Peaks that they missed when he slides full on into sleep.
Tim wakes up again to the sound of the stove beeping. Time for more medicine, apparently. He sits up slowly, thinking about how long it would take to get from the sofa to get his meds from the kitchen…
Oh, they're on one of those little folding tables they got as a wedding present from Fornell. Next to a glass of water. Nice.
He swallows one of the pills, and looks around. He's on his own in here, though he can hear footsteps coming in from the porch, so apparently he doesn't have to get the alarm on the stove himself.
"Hey." Sarah's voice, though she appears to be heading right into the kitchen, because he can still hear footsteps but doesn't see her. Abby heads in too, sitting on the sofa, snuggling in next to him. He starts to rest his face against her shoulder, but that aches, so he settles for just having his arm around her.
Sarah's back a few seconds after the beeping lets off. "So, I talked to The Admiral."
He slumps. He doesn't want to hear about how he didn't really mean it, or it wasn't really his fault, or anything. The Admiral always managed to make Sarah look the other way, and he just doesn't want to hear anything else about that, at all.
Sarah sees the defeated look on Tim's face and shakes her head. "Nothing like that. Remember Pop teaching us to play poker?"
Tim nods, not sure where this is going.
"You can only bluff as well as the other guy knows what you've got in your hand."
"Okay." He remembers Pop saying that. The five of them, both kids, Mom, Gran and Pop at the kitchen table, Sarah having a hard time holding all her cards because her hands were little, and Pop talking about how, with the kind of poker they were playing (seven card draw, aces or better to ante, two cards up, no wild) that the key to a good bluff was knowing what was in your hand, what you were showing, what everyone else was showing, and who anted.
"I told him that if he didn't resign immediately I'd have Abby fabricate evidence of child abuse then make a formal complaint against him to Gibbs and that by tomorrow every one of my hundreds of thousands of Twitter followers would know he was a child abuser and that by the time he hit Pearl every news organization on Earth would be waiting for him."
Tim's mouth opens, and then it closes, as he blinks. He sits there for a good minute not sure how to react or feel or anything. He's just stalled out in shock. Eventually he gets out, "What happened?"
"He called SecNav and resigned. He decided I had a hand he couldn't beat."
"If you were willing to use it."
"Yep. Apparently I can do a pretty convincing I-am-going-to-lay-waste-to-everyone-around-me rampage when I want to."
Tim nods, not sure what he's feeling about that. Good… ish? Relieved… maybe? He looks at Sarah more carefully, seeing the puffiness around her eyes.
"You've been crying?"
She nods. "Just because he deserved it doesn't mean it doesn't hurt."
"I know."
He's munching on the apple, sort of aware of the fact that he hasn't exactly been doing too hot on the whole regular meals stuff, but, without an IV you can't eat and sleep at the same time, and right now sleeping is better than eating, so, sleeping rather than eating.
People are filing into the house. Penny and Gibbs and Ducky and… Okay, Glenn's here, too. He's not sure when that happened, but… Why not? (Because he's something of a stranger and right now Tim's got no desire to try and even pretend to hold it together, but also no desire to really let go in front of this guy who will marry his sister soon.)
He looks around the room some, and notices that next to his meds are the electronics for his cast. "Anyone explain how this works?" he asks. Sarah and Penny and Ducky should find this interesting.
Ducky nods. "Jimmy called to ask what I knew about them when it was clear you were a candidate for one. I've never seen one before. Would you like a hand setting it up?"
"Yeah. Thanks." Ducky takes the vibration head, and slips it into the first of the slots, then flips the device on. It makes a quiet hum.
"How's it feel?"
"Right now, fine. Little buzz. By the time I've done it for twenty minutes on ten breaks, and that's just my arm, I may have a different opinion."
"They gave you one vibrational head?" Ducky sounds appalled at that.
"Yeah."
"For…" Ducky's counting the slots that are designed to have the head in them. "For fourteen breaks? They expect you to have this going two hundred and eighty minutes a day?"
"I guess."
Ducky stands up, pulling his phone out. "I have calls to make."
Tim's asleep again when Ducky's off the phone, an hour and a half later. Abby's sitting next to him, gently moving the vibrational head from slot to slot as time elapses, talking quietly with the rest of the family.
"News?" she asks, voice low.
"Some days I am sure the FDA is more trouble than it's worth. They have taken 'do no harm' to mean strangle innovation and glorify paralysis. There are only fifty of these devices allowed in the United States for testing purposes. And, for all my contacts and colleagues, I could not pry one free. Approval in the US is dependent on positive testing data. Timothy can only be one data point for the testing, no matter how many of the units he's using, so no one is willing to reduce the amount of testing data they can get by letting me have one."
Penny can see the anger in his eyes. "They're approved in Europe and Israel, right?"
"Precisely. Japan as well, and Canada, and Australia. Hence more trouble than it's worth. Even though there are extensive studies abroad, those studies aren't good enough for our FDA, so we have re-do the same tests, over and over until someone at FDA gets the correct pay off and allows these devices to be produced and used in the US."
"But, you've got some good news, too, right, Duck?" Gibbs asks.
Ducky smiles dryly. "A friend of a friend is sending us one from Bern. So, as of Monday, we can cut Timothy's time attached to this device down from almost five hours to two and a half. Another friend in Kyoto is hunting around to see if she can lay hands on one more, but that may be a forlorn hope."
Tim doesn't open his eyes, but he does say, "Thanks, Ducky. Any idea if they're supposed to hurt?"
"Minor pain is listed as a possible side effect. The tiny vibrations are supposed to encourage quicker bone growth by making your body think it needs to build a stronger bond. Not enough motion to move anything out of place, but enough to make your body think that it's under assault and respond accordingly."
"Okay."
"Does it hurt, Timothy?"
"First two weren't bad, but everything aches now."
He hears Abby's phone buzz, followed by no sound, so it must be a text.
"What's up?"
"Tony and Ziva want to visit."
"Sure." He opens his eyes, looking over at her. "I'm not real exciting right now, but bring 'em on. Hell, we're supposed to be having a birthday party, right? Tell 'em to pick up more cupcakes, let Jimmy and Breena know we're on, and lets have a bit of happy tonight."
"That sounds like an excellent idea," Penny says, a not entirely forced smile on her face.
Tony hates visiting sick people. He feels completely useless and helpless and just, wrong, so goddamned wrong. All the jokes in the world don't make any fucking difference at all, (Shut it, Patch Adams, if jokes could save lives, Mom would still be here. Okay, yeah, that's a touchy subject for him.) and in a sick room all he's got are jokes.
Jokes that are mostly to just keep him going.
So, he'll admit that he'd much rather go off and kill John (He's checked, John's due in Pearl in six days. Wouldn't be too hard to get over there and take a shot. Not like he doesn't have his own sniper handy. Sure, Gibbs gets all the glory for being a sniper, but Ziva's got better eyes and can hit anything within 500 meters.) but in the end, they've been told to leave it alone, and if John ends up dead ten hours after they hop a flight to Hawaii…
He sighs. They aren't above the law. They can get around it, but they still have to be subtle and clever.
However, he does have the sense that since his MCRT has been handling more terror cases, and since they travel for terror cases, that, should one of them provide him with an opportunity to get in range of John, he'll take it.
Another sigh. Fantasizing different ways to kill John isn't dealing with what's about to happen.
Work is over, and he and Ziva are in the car, with food, heading toward Tim's house, to go see him, and… And he doesn't know what. Not like showing up is going to make him feel better.
A kill shot on John might have made him feel better, but this…
"Fuck."
Ziva squeezes his hand. She knows exactly how useless he feels because she feels it herself. She'd rather be doing almost anything than trying to comfort a hurting person.
"Think I can slap him upside the head?"
Ziva looks at him curiously.
"I told him if that test went FUBAR and he got hurt, I'd slap him for being stupid. And right now, I don't care if Gibbs fines me for it."
"I don't think that's a good plan, Tony."
"Gotta do something, or…"
"It's enough to just be there."
"No it's not! Being there doesn't help."
She gently squeezes his hand. "It is. That's all he and Abby really want or need right now."
He rolls his eyes.
"That's all your mother or mine ever wanted or needed, too."
"Do you really believe that?"
"I know it. It's all I would want."
He shrugs at that. "Does it help?"
"No." Because it doesn't. Because just being there, when being there doesn't solve the problem doesn't feel like much.
It's worse than Tony thought it'd be. He didn't think that was possible, but it is. He can't even pull off a half-hearted joke. He looks at Tim and just… "Oh, God, Tim."
Tim looks back at him, face battered, and says, "Don't look at me like that, Tony, I'm not dying."
Tony can see that if he doesn't muster up some sort of cynicism on this, both he and Tim are going to start crying, so he steps closer to Tim, helps him get sitting up just a bit more, and very, very, very lightly (wincing while he does it) taps Tim on the back of the head.
"Ow." It's a token protest. Even as badly hurt as he is, barely having his hair brushed by Tony's hand doesn't result in actual pain. (At least, not right now, with lots of pain medication flowing through his system, this morning would have been a different story, but this morning air molecules bouncing against his skin hurt.)
"Don't you ever do something that stupid again."
Tim nods.
"When everyone you know tells you not to do something, don't do it. And when you heal up, you're getting the full ass-kicking for making everyone worry like this."
Tim nods at that, too. He's having a much easier time dealing with angry Tony than concerned, sad Tony.
Then Tony very carefully hugs him, for a long time. He pulls back, biting his lip. "Okay, gonna help Ducky get dinner ready," he says, pretty much sprinting out of the living room.
Ziva switches over from sitting on Tim's right side to his left, and also hugs him, gently. He gets a light kiss on the forehead, too.
"I thought dinner was take out," Tim finally says.
"It is," she says gently.
He nods again. "Can I ask you a favor?"
"Sure, McGee."
"When I'm healed up, and have my strength back, and can fight again… I had a knife, pocket knife, small thing, but it still had a blade, but I didn't know how to use it. Ended up throwing it, and that…" He pauses, fighting back the swamping sensations of anger and fear. He reaches up to wipe his eyes, and stops because his face still hurts to bad for that. "It worked…" He takes as deep and calming a breath as he can. "When I can fight, again, I want you to teach me how to fight with a knife. Probably be in better shape if I had known what to do with it."
Ziva nods. "Certainly."
"That's a grim topic for a party," Breena says, heading into the living room, kissing Ziva and Tim. "Feeling any better from yesterday?"
"Little bit," he looks over at Ziva, "Plane travel with…" he can't figure out how many there are, "that many broken bones is not fun."
"No, it is not."
"I was pretty out of it last night."
"I would imagine."
Molly comes tearing in, or at least trying to tear in, her daddy's got a pretty good hold on her hand right now, but she's trying to pull free. "Aunt Ziva! Uncle Tim!"
Ziva scoops her up into a warm hug and keeps a close hold on her while she leans in to get a kiss from Tim.
Jimmy heads over and kisses Ziva's cheek, taking Molly back while saying to her, "And what did we say about Uncle Tim?"
"Very gentle," she answers seriously, "Like Anna."
Tim nods, also serious. "Just like with your baby sister."
Molly looks at him carefully, eyeing him all over, lips pursed, signs of intense concentration on her face. "Why purple?"
"I got hurt."
"Stay that way?"
"No."
Jimmy lifts up her foot, and kisses the two bruises on her knees. "Uncle Tim's got bruises, just like you do."
"Fall down?"
Tim nods. "Something like that."
Molly nods back, and squirms forward a little, and then, very gently, barely touching his skin, kisses each of the bruises on Tim's face. "All better."
He smiles at her, feeling his eyes water. "All better."
"Okay, come on, let's go see Uncle Jethro," Jimmy says brightly, picking Molly up so her back's to Tim, knowing he doesn't want to explain why he's crying and why the kisses didn't make it all better.
It's a very low key party. Partly because pretty much no one knew it was actually going to be on, so the presents are… haphazard at best. Pop was on the job, so Kelly's got some new onesies in bigger sizes, and her very own little, stuffed black lab (Little Mona). And Breena likely picked out Kelly's birthday present back in October (plushie skull), so she had her bases covered.
But the rest of the crew either didn't have (Penny) or didn't bring with them (Sarah) presents for the birthday girl, who, in true one-year-old fashion, could not have possibly cared less.
But Mom and Dad care, and everyone together to sing Happy Birthday matters. So they do sing. And Kelly impresses everyone with her candle-blowing-out-technique. And, in the video (which they don't watch for a while) it's easy to see Gibbs coaching her, and how proud he is that she got it right.
Mom and Dad also didn't have baby presents ready. But, there was one thing Tim did have, and he's feeling really pleased that he's remembered this, and bummed that he can't just hop up and grab it himself, but he does grab Jimmy, whisper some directions to him, and in a minute Jimmy's back with the box in his hands.
Abby's sitting on the floor, moving Little Mona around, making her hop and jump between Kelly, Anna, and Molly, (Big Mona wants to play, too, so she's bounding around the girls, adding her own excitement to the mix) so Tim quickly flips open the lid, check to make sure it's looking right (it is.)
"Abby."
"Mmm…" she's bopping each girl gently on the nose with the stuffed doggie, and just did Mona who looks really confused by that.
"Abby…"
She looks up at Tim, and he sort of tilts his head to his side in a come here gesture. She hands Little Mona to Kelly, who's vigorously hugging her, and goes to sit next to Tim.
"It was a really big day for you, too." He kisses her gently. "And I wanted you to know how much I love you, and Kelly, and that…" he's crying again, and just leans over to kiss her, long and soft and deep. He feels her fingers very gently wiping away his tears, and he presses the box into her hands. "Thank you for my babies."
She kisses him back, just his lips, lightly brushing her words to him. "I love you." She pulls back a bit, and opens the box, for a second just staring and then, "Oh, Tim…" She's about to say, put it on me, but he can't, not with one hand, so she slips puts it on herself, looking down at it.
It's a blood opal pendant. A perfect round cabochon in gleaming red with flecks of purple and blue on a cast silver backing of ivy leaves.
He kisses her again, lips just below her ear, "I was planning on giving it to you when we were alone, but, I'll be asleep by then, and I didn't want to miss today."
It's a heavy moment, not bad, but intense, and Tony, who's been cracking jokes all night, doing a very good job of keeping things light, making sure they don't get bogged down in too much emotional stuff, says to Glenn, "And this is why none of us ever wins Husband of the Year. We've got to compete against this dork, who might as well be a girl for as good as he is on this whole romance thing."
Tim doesn't pull away from kissing Abby, but he does stop cupping her cheek in his hand to flip off Tony, who snorts at his response.
And Jimmy's saying, "Speak for yourself, Tony. He's taking his lessons from me," as he winks at Breena, who gently shoves him while smiling.
Tim, still smooching Abby, shifts that bird toward Jimmy.
Party wraps up early. The main guest of honor goes to bed at 7:30, and with being excited from the party and even more cake and everyone over, she was a bit frazzled by the time bedtime rolled around, so a quiet, easy, tubby followed by stories with Pop worked a treat for getting her down.
The other 'guest of honor' didn't make it to 7:45. Tim was pretty much asleep on the sofa by then, so Abby and Jimmy helped him to bed, where he crashed hard.
Since it was a 'party' no one talked about the assault or what was happening with the Admiral but there's a definite sense of curiosity about what's going on.
And another sense of tentative boundary laying. Who gets to know what, when, and how. So, toward the end its fairly clear that everyone is 'lingering' so they can get a shot to talk to each other about what's going on.
Finally it gets to 8:30, everyone is hovering, and Abby's tired. "Breena, Jimmy, Gibbs, give me a hand. All the rest of you, I love you, but I'm fried, and I want to be in bed by 9:00, so off you go."
It's not a great lie, and they can all see that the group who went to California is getting pulled in for the first level of consultations as to what happens next, but they aren't willing to fight it, either.
Hugs, kisses, plans for more visiting (but not tomorrow, Abby's got plans for tomorrow) pass between them, and then she's at home with Gibbs and the Palmers.
Gibbs explains what Sarah did. Breena looks impressed, and Jimmy whistles long and low at it.
"How's he taking it?" Jimmy asks Abby.
Abby shrugs. "Not sure if it's sunk in. That's part of no visitors tomorrow. Heather's coming over and taking Kelly, and we're spending the day in bed, just resting and talking and touching and healing."
Breena nods at that. "Probably a good plan."
"The other question is, what, if anything, does this do to Tim's deal with Jarvis?" Abby says.
That also gets all of them just looking at each other, because none of them know. However, both of the girls can see that quick non-verbal something that flickers between Gibbs and Jimmy.
"Good God, how many conspiracies can we have on this?" Breena says. "Out with it, both of you. I'm not getting blindsided by whatever you're planning."
Jimmy takes off his glasses and rubs his eyes. "Sniper training starts Saturday morning. He's got a year, and if John's still walking around after a year, then… Then he's not going to be doing it anymore."
Gibbs looks at the girls and shrugs a little. "Trust but verify, right? Jarvis does his part, great. If not, we'll be ready to handle it."
"Tim know that?" Abby asks.
"He will," Jimmy replies. "Probably a good plan to have him have a chat with Tony and Ziva about sitting on their hands for this."
"Better if it happens at Shabbos, and we're all there," Breena adds. "Penny and Ducky'll hear it, too. That matters, right? That's why we're not all chatting together about it?"
Abby and Gibbs nod.
"Penny and Sarah hate this," Abby says. "Just because someone's evil doesn't mean you didn't love them, and it doesn't mean that love just vanishes. This hurts both of them, bad. I'm thinking we don't ask for clarification on the deal. If something happens to John in the next year, we'll just never know, for sure. And not knowing'll make lying easier. And if he is still walking around a year from now, we'll handle it."
The other three nod. That's a functional plan they can all handle.
Next
Chapter 395: Happy(Ish) Birthday
Abby blinks at Sarah and says, "Holy shit!"
"Indeed," Ducky adds.
Sarah shrugs a little. "Can't just let him get away with it, right?"
Everyone shakes their heads. "You think I should tell Tim when he wakes up, or hold onto it for a few days when he's a bit less groggy?"
"When he wakes up is good," Abby says. "I think he'll like hearing about it."
Penny sits down on the porch steps. "So, he's just... done?"
"According to SecNav, everything'll get wrapped up when he gets to Pearl."
Abby's looking at Gibbs, both of them wondering, what, if anything this is going to do to or for Tim's 'deal.' And it's completely clear that neither of them have any idea.
Penny's got a more immediate concern, she can see Sarah's agitated, pacing around, temper all but crackling off her skin. "Are you all right?"
Sarah's shoulders slump, and she goes to sit next to Penny. "No. No, I'm not. All of this is really hitting. He tried to kill Tim… He was more upset about me saying he had a boyfriend than what he did to Tim… Nothing about him was real." She wipes her eyes. "I couldn't see the monster under the mask. But he's still Daddy. And this is just…" Penny holds her near as Sarah starts to sob.
Given the massive shit storm of emotional trauma that just opened up on the family he's about to marry into, Glenn Holland sprang into action pretty well. He'd been… wary's probably a good word for it… when he got a text from Ducky asking him to show up at Tim and Abby's early.
The birthday party is today, but it didn't start until 6:00, so why he was heading there at 3:00 had him curious with a side of dread.
He felt ice down his spine when he saw most of the McGees on the front porch, minus Tim, with Sarah sobbing in Penny's arms.
Then he got the story. Ducky and Abby did the telling, and he's honestly not sure if what actually happened is better or worse than what he was thinking had happened when he saw most of the family outside without Tim.
What he does know is that, 'Dad and Tim don't get on,' needs a whole lot of filling out, and he's also got a lot of pointed questions about Sarah's mom that need to be answered, but not right this second.
Right this second, he's petting his wife-to-be and telling her she did the right thing.
When Glenn comes over, Abby heads back into the house. Tim's sleeping. He wasn't sleeping this much the last day at the hospital, but he also wasn't moving around, so maybe this is just a reaction to actually doing something besides laying around.
Maybe.
Or maybe this is enough emotional crap that he can only take so much, so he's checking out.
Probably a good plan. If he needs to take himself away for a while so he doesn't get swamped, then she'll do what she can to give him a space to do that.
But right now she also wants to be near him. Feel his skin on hers. Not much room on the sofa for both of them, not with him lying on his back, so she sits on the floor, and tips her head back onto the seat. The crown of her head is resting against his hip. It's not enough, but for the time being, it'll do.
She sighs gently, wondering if what Sarah did was a good move or not.
Good for her, for the sense of doing something for her brother, for trying to avenge him if she couldn't protect him, good for all of that. Abby gets that.
But she's not sure if this is good for Tim. 'Sarah was bold…' 'Sarah was brave…' 'Sarah was fearless…' That's how Tim thinks of her. Sarah's active, bright, fire-y, wild. She does whatever needs to be done, when it needs to be done, damn the consequences. He's passive, thoughtful, cautious, laying out ideas and not moving until every option's been considered.
And especially with their Dad… Where he was always smacked for being the cautious one, and she was praised for bold…
She took charge, took the active role, forced John's hand. Tim took the quiet role. Things were put in play, quiet, thought out, plans within plans that would have taken at least six months to come to a head. But they were invisible, and handed off to someone else to execute.
Sarah handled it herself, immediately.
The only thing stopping Tim from that exact same play was a boat-load of drugs and a lack of devious nature. After all the idea of just threatening to press charges, (in Virginia, there is no statute of limitations on any felony, and child abuse is a felony) to blackmail John into retirement hadn't occurred to her, and she's sure it never crossed Tim's mind. And she's sure it never would have crossed either of their minds, either.
She sits there with him and hopes this will be good news. She hopes it will be satisfying. She hopes it won't spiral him into a deep well of doubt. He's got more than enough of that coming, this on top of it?
Another sigh.
It's a bizarre sensation. He's not really asleep. He's aware of Abby nearby, but he can't talk or do anything about it.
Sleep paralysis? Maybe. But he's not hurting or panicked, so all in all, he's not in a hurry to try and shake it.
He can hear voices from outside. Bits of conversation, but he can't make out words, just sounds and rhythms. Some crying. He thinks that's Sarah.
He's idly thinking that at this point they're zero for two on happy first birthdays, and maybe it'd be nice if by the time December rolls around and Anna turns one that they could get a first birthday where no one is crying.
His brain keeps flitting about to little niggly things. Like, where's his computer? When should he go back to work? What might be for dinner? And he didn't get much of a look at the new wrist cuff, so he'd kind of like to really look at it. (His arm and eyes do not cooperate at that, so he doesn't get a view of it.) He'd gotten to pondering what happened in the episode of Twin Peaks that they missed when he slides full on into sleep.
Tim wakes up again to the sound of the stove beeping. Time for more medicine, apparently. He sits up slowly, thinking about how long it would take to get from the sofa to get his meds from the kitchen…
Oh, they're on one of those little folding tables they got as a wedding present from Fornell. Next to a glass of water. Nice.
He swallows one of the pills, and looks around. He's on his own in here, though he can hear footsteps coming in from the porch, so apparently he doesn't have to get the alarm on the stove himself.
"Hey." Sarah's voice, though she appears to be heading right into the kitchen, because he can still hear footsteps but doesn't see her. Abby heads in too, sitting on the sofa, snuggling in next to him. He starts to rest his face against her shoulder, but that aches, so he settles for just having his arm around her.
Sarah's back a few seconds after the beeping lets off. "So, I talked to The Admiral."
He slumps. He doesn't want to hear about how he didn't really mean it, or it wasn't really his fault, or anything. The Admiral always managed to make Sarah look the other way, and he just doesn't want to hear anything else about that, at all.
Sarah sees the defeated look on Tim's face and shakes her head. "Nothing like that. Remember Pop teaching us to play poker?"
Tim nods, not sure where this is going.
"You can only bluff as well as the other guy knows what you've got in your hand."
"Okay." He remembers Pop saying that. The five of them, both kids, Mom, Gran and Pop at the kitchen table, Sarah having a hard time holding all her cards because her hands were little, and Pop talking about how, with the kind of poker they were playing (seven card draw, aces or better to ante, two cards up, no wild) that the key to a good bluff was knowing what was in your hand, what you were showing, what everyone else was showing, and who anted.
"I told him that if he didn't resign immediately I'd have Abby fabricate evidence of child abuse then make a formal complaint against him to Gibbs and that by tomorrow every one of my hundreds of thousands of Twitter followers would know he was a child abuser and that by the time he hit Pearl every news organization on Earth would be waiting for him."
Tim's mouth opens, and then it closes, as he blinks. He sits there for a good minute not sure how to react or feel or anything. He's just stalled out in shock. Eventually he gets out, "What happened?"
"He called SecNav and resigned. He decided I had a hand he couldn't beat."
"If you were willing to use it."
"Yep. Apparently I can do a pretty convincing I-am-going-to-lay-waste-to-everyone-around-me rampage when I want to."
Tim nods, not sure what he's feeling about that. Good… ish? Relieved… maybe? He looks at Sarah more carefully, seeing the puffiness around her eyes.
"You've been crying?"
She nods. "Just because he deserved it doesn't mean it doesn't hurt."
"I know."
He's munching on the apple, sort of aware of the fact that he hasn't exactly been doing too hot on the whole regular meals stuff, but, without an IV you can't eat and sleep at the same time, and right now sleeping is better than eating, so, sleeping rather than eating.
People are filing into the house. Penny and Gibbs and Ducky and… Okay, Glenn's here, too. He's not sure when that happened, but… Why not? (Because he's something of a stranger and right now Tim's got no desire to try and even pretend to hold it together, but also no desire to really let go in front of this guy who will marry his sister soon.)
He looks around the room some, and notices that next to his meds are the electronics for his cast. "Anyone explain how this works?" he asks. Sarah and Penny and Ducky should find this interesting.
Ducky nods. "Jimmy called to ask what I knew about them when it was clear you were a candidate for one. I've never seen one before. Would you like a hand setting it up?"
"Yeah. Thanks." Ducky takes the vibration head, and slips it into the first of the slots, then flips the device on. It makes a quiet hum.
"How's it feel?"
"Right now, fine. Little buzz. By the time I've done it for twenty minutes on ten breaks, and that's just my arm, I may have a different opinion."
"They gave you one vibrational head?" Ducky sounds appalled at that.
"Yeah."
"For…" Ducky's counting the slots that are designed to have the head in them. "For fourteen breaks? They expect you to have this going two hundred and eighty minutes a day?"
"I guess."
Ducky stands up, pulling his phone out. "I have calls to make."
Tim's asleep again when Ducky's off the phone, an hour and a half later. Abby's sitting next to him, gently moving the vibrational head from slot to slot as time elapses, talking quietly with the rest of the family.
"News?" she asks, voice low.
"Some days I am sure the FDA is more trouble than it's worth. They have taken 'do no harm' to mean strangle innovation and glorify paralysis. There are only fifty of these devices allowed in the United States for testing purposes. And, for all my contacts and colleagues, I could not pry one free. Approval in the US is dependent on positive testing data. Timothy can only be one data point for the testing, no matter how many of the units he's using, so no one is willing to reduce the amount of testing data they can get by letting me have one."
Penny can see the anger in his eyes. "They're approved in Europe and Israel, right?"
"Precisely. Japan as well, and Canada, and Australia. Hence more trouble than it's worth. Even though there are extensive studies abroad, those studies aren't good enough for our FDA, so we have re-do the same tests, over and over until someone at FDA gets the correct pay off and allows these devices to be produced and used in the US."
"But, you've got some good news, too, right, Duck?" Gibbs asks.
Ducky smiles dryly. "A friend of a friend is sending us one from Bern. So, as of Monday, we can cut Timothy's time attached to this device down from almost five hours to two and a half. Another friend in Kyoto is hunting around to see if she can lay hands on one more, but that may be a forlorn hope."
Tim doesn't open his eyes, but he does say, "Thanks, Ducky. Any idea if they're supposed to hurt?"
"Minor pain is listed as a possible side effect. The tiny vibrations are supposed to encourage quicker bone growth by making your body think it needs to build a stronger bond. Not enough motion to move anything out of place, but enough to make your body think that it's under assault and respond accordingly."
"Okay."
"Does it hurt, Timothy?"
"First two weren't bad, but everything aches now."
He hears Abby's phone buzz, followed by no sound, so it must be a text.
"What's up?"
"Tony and Ziva want to visit."
"Sure." He opens his eyes, looking over at her. "I'm not real exciting right now, but bring 'em on. Hell, we're supposed to be having a birthday party, right? Tell 'em to pick up more cupcakes, let Jimmy and Breena know we're on, and lets have a bit of happy tonight."
"That sounds like an excellent idea," Penny says, a not entirely forced smile on her face.
Tony hates visiting sick people. He feels completely useless and helpless and just, wrong, so goddamned wrong. All the jokes in the world don't make any fucking difference at all, (Shut it, Patch Adams, if jokes could save lives, Mom would still be here. Okay, yeah, that's a touchy subject for him.) and in a sick room all he's got are jokes.
Jokes that are mostly to just keep him going.
So, he'll admit that he'd much rather go off and kill John (He's checked, John's due in Pearl in six days. Wouldn't be too hard to get over there and take a shot. Not like he doesn't have his own sniper handy. Sure, Gibbs gets all the glory for being a sniper, but Ziva's got better eyes and can hit anything within 500 meters.) but in the end, they've been told to leave it alone, and if John ends up dead ten hours after they hop a flight to Hawaii…
He sighs. They aren't above the law. They can get around it, but they still have to be subtle and clever.
However, he does have the sense that since his MCRT has been handling more terror cases, and since they travel for terror cases, that, should one of them provide him with an opportunity to get in range of John, he'll take it.
Another sigh. Fantasizing different ways to kill John isn't dealing with what's about to happen.
Work is over, and he and Ziva are in the car, with food, heading toward Tim's house, to go see him, and… And he doesn't know what. Not like showing up is going to make him feel better.
A kill shot on John might have made him feel better, but this…
"Fuck."
Ziva squeezes his hand. She knows exactly how useless he feels because she feels it herself. She'd rather be doing almost anything than trying to comfort a hurting person.
"Think I can slap him upside the head?"
Ziva looks at him curiously.
"I told him if that test went FUBAR and he got hurt, I'd slap him for being stupid. And right now, I don't care if Gibbs fines me for it."
"I don't think that's a good plan, Tony."
"Gotta do something, or…"
"It's enough to just be there."
"No it's not! Being there doesn't help."
She gently squeezes his hand. "It is. That's all he and Abby really want or need right now."
He rolls his eyes.
"That's all your mother or mine ever wanted or needed, too."
"Do you really believe that?"
"I know it. It's all I would want."
He shrugs at that. "Does it help?"
"No." Because it doesn't. Because just being there, when being there doesn't solve the problem doesn't feel like much.
It's worse than Tony thought it'd be. He didn't think that was possible, but it is. He can't even pull off a half-hearted joke. He looks at Tim and just… "Oh, God, Tim."
Tim looks back at him, face battered, and says, "Don't look at me like that, Tony, I'm not dying."
Tony can see that if he doesn't muster up some sort of cynicism on this, both he and Tim are going to start crying, so he steps closer to Tim, helps him get sitting up just a bit more, and very, very, very lightly (wincing while he does it) taps Tim on the back of the head.
"Ow." It's a token protest. Even as badly hurt as he is, barely having his hair brushed by Tony's hand doesn't result in actual pain. (At least, not right now, with lots of pain medication flowing through his system, this morning would have been a different story, but this morning air molecules bouncing against his skin hurt.)
"Don't you ever do something that stupid again."
Tim nods.
"When everyone you know tells you not to do something, don't do it. And when you heal up, you're getting the full ass-kicking for making everyone worry like this."
Tim nods at that, too. He's having a much easier time dealing with angry Tony than concerned, sad Tony.
Then Tony very carefully hugs him, for a long time. He pulls back, biting his lip. "Okay, gonna help Ducky get dinner ready," he says, pretty much sprinting out of the living room.
Ziva switches over from sitting on Tim's right side to his left, and also hugs him, gently. He gets a light kiss on the forehead, too.
"I thought dinner was take out," Tim finally says.
"It is," she says gently.
He nods again. "Can I ask you a favor?"
"Sure, McGee."
"When I'm healed up, and have my strength back, and can fight again… I had a knife, pocket knife, small thing, but it still had a blade, but I didn't know how to use it. Ended up throwing it, and that…" He pauses, fighting back the swamping sensations of anger and fear. He reaches up to wipe his eyes, and stops because his face still hurts to bad for that. "It worked…" He takes as deep and calming a breath as he can. "When I can fight, again, I want you to teach me how to fight with a knife. Probably be in better shape if I had known what to do with it."
Ziva nods. "Certainly."
"That's a grim topic for a party," Breena says, heading into the living room, kissing Ziva and Tim. "Feeling any better from yesterday?"
"Little bit," he looks over at Ziva, "Plane travel with…" he can't figure out how many there are, "that many broken bones is not fun."
"No, it is not."
"I was pretty out of it last night."
"I would imagine."
Molly comes tearing in, or at least trying to tear in, her daddy's got a pretty good hold on her hand right now, but she's trying to pull free. "Aunt Ziva! Uncle Tim!"
Ziva scoops her up into a warm hug and keeps a close hold on her while she leans in to get a kiss from Tim.
Jimmy heads over and kisses Ziva's cheek, taking Molly back while saying to her, "And what did we say about Uncle Tim?"
"Very gentle," she answers seriously, "Like Anna."
Tim nods, also serious. "Just like with your baby sister."
Molly looks at him carefully, eyeing him all over, lips pursed, signs of intense concentration on her face. "Why purple?"
"I got hurt."
"Stay that way?"
"No."
Jimmy lifts up her foot, and kisses the two bruises on her knees. "Uncle Tim's got bruises, just like you do."
"Fall down?"
Tim nods. "Something like that."
Molly nods back, and squirms forward a little, and then, very gently, barely touching his skin, kisses each of the bruises on Tim's face. "All better."
He smiles at her, feeling his eyes water. "All better."
"Okay, come on, let's go see Uncle Jethro," Jimmy says brightly, picking Molly up so her back's to Tim, knowing he doesn't want to explain why he's crying and why the kisses didn't make it all better.
It's a very low key party. Partly because pretty much no one knew it was actually going to be on, so the presents are… haphazard at best. Pop was on the job, so Kelly's got some new onesies in bigger sizes, and her very own little, stuffed black lab (Little Mona). And Breena likely picked out Kelly's birthday present back in October (plushie skull), so she had her bases covered.
But the rest of the crew either didn't have (Penny) or didn't bring with them (Sarah) presents for the birthday girl, who, in true one-year-old fashion, could not have possibly cared less.
But Mom and Dad care, and everyone together to sing Happy Birthday matters. So they do sing. And Kelly impresses everyone with her candle-blowing-out-technique. And, in the video (which they don't watch for a while) it's easy to see Gibbs coaching her, and how proud he is that she got it right.
Mom and Dad also didn't have baby presents ready. But, there was one thing Tim did have, and he's feeling really pleased that he's remembered this, and bummed that he can't just hop up and grab it himself, but he does grab Jimmy, whisper some directions to him, and in a minute Jimmy's back with the box in his hands.
Abby's sitting on the floor, moving Little Mona around, making her hop and jump between Kelly, Anna, and Molly, (Big Mona wants to play, too, so she's bounding around the girls, adding her own excitement to the mix) so Tim quickly flips open the lid, check to make sure it's looking right (it is.)
"Abby."
"Mmm…" she's bopping each girl gently on the nose with the stuffed doggie, and just did Mona who looks really confused by that.
"Abby…"
She looks up at Tim, and he sort of tilts his head to his side in a come here gesture. She hands Little Mona to Kelly, who's vigorously hugging her, and goes to sit next to Tim.
"It was a really big day for you, too." He kisses her gently. "And I wanted you to know how much I love you, and Kelly, and that…" he's crying again, and just leans over to kiss her, long and soft and deep. He feels her fingers very gently wiping away his tears, and he presses the box into her hands. "Thank you for my babies."
She kisses him back, just his lips, lightly brushing her words to him. "I love you." She pulls back a bit, and opens the box, for a second just staring and then, "Oh, Tim…" She's about to say, put it on me, but he can't, not with one hand, so she slips puts it on herself, looking down at it.
He kisses her again, lips just below her ear, "I was planning on giving it to you when we were alone, but, I'll be asleep by then, and I didn't want to miss today."
It's a heavy moment, not bad, but intense, and Tony, who's been cracking jokes all night, doing a very good job of keeping things light, making sure they don't get bogged down in too much emotional stuff, says to Glenn, "And this is why none of us ever wins Husband of the Year. We've got to compete against this dork, who might as well be a girl for as good as he is on this whole romance thing."
Tim doesn't pull away from kissing Abby, but he does stop cupping her cheek in his hand to flip off Tony, who snorts at his response.
And Jimmy's saying, "Speak for yourself, Tony. He's taking his lessons from me," as he winks at Breena, who gently shoves him while smiling.
Tim, still smooching Abby, shifts that bird toward Jimmy.
Party wraps up early. The main guest of honor goes to bed at 7:30, and with being excited from the party and even more cake and everyone over, she was a bit frazzled by the time bedtime rolled around, so a quiet, easy, tubby followed by stories with Pop worked a treat for getting her down.
The other 'guest of honor' didn't make it to 7:45. Tim was pretty much asleep on the sofa by then, so Abby and Jimmy helped him to bed, where he crashed hard.
Since it was a 'party' no one talked about the assault or what was happening with the Admiral but there's a definite sense of curiosity about what's going on.
And another sense of tentative boundary laying. Who gets to know what, when, and how. So, toward the end its fairly clear that everyone is 'lingering' so they can get a shot to talk to each other about what's going on.
Finally it gets to 8:30, everyone is hovering, and Abby's tired. "Breena, Jimmy, Gibbs, give me a hand. All the rest of you, I love you, but I'm fried, and I want to be in bed by 9:00, so off you go."
It's not a great lie, and they can all see that the group who went to California is getting pulled in for the first level of consultations as to what happens next, but they aren't willing to fight it, either.
Hugs, kisses, plans for more visiting (but not tomorrow, Abby's got plans for tomorrow) pass between them, and then she's at home with Gibbs and the Palmers.
Gibbs explains what Sarah did. Breena looks impressed, and Jimmy whistles long and low at it.
"How's he taking it?" Jimmy asks Abby.
Abby shrugs. "Not sure if it's sunk in. That's part of no visitors tomorrow. Heather's coming over and taking Kelly, and we're spending the day in bed, just resting and talking and touching and healing."
Breena nods at that. "Probably a good plan."
"The other question is, what, if anything, does this do to Tim's deal with Jarvis?" Abby says.
That also gets all of them just looking at each other, because none of them know. However, both of the girls can see that quick non-verbal something that flickers between Gibbs and Jimmy.
"Good God, how many conspiracies can we have on this?" Breena says. "Out with it, both of you. I'm not getting blindsided by whatever you're planning."
Jimmy takes off his glasses and rubs his eyes. "Sniper training starts Saturday morning. He's got a year, and if John's still walking around after a year, then… Then he's not going to be doing it anymore."
Gibbs looks at the girls and shrugs a little. "Trust but verify, right? Jarvis does his part, great. If not, we'll be ready to handle it."
"Tim know that?" Abby asks.
"He will," Jimmy replies. "Probably a good plan to have him have a chat with Tony and Ziva about sitting on their hands for this."
"Better if it happens at Shabbos, and we're all there," Breena adds. "Penny and Ducky'll hear it, too. That matters, right? That's why we're not all chatting together about it?"
Abby and Gibbs nod.
"Penny and Sarah hate this," Abby says. "Just because someone's evil doesn't mean you didn't love them, and it doesn't mean that love just vanishes. This hurts both of them, bad. I'm thinking we don't ask for clarification on the deal. If something happens to John in the next year, we'll just never know, for sure. And not knowing'll make lying easier. And if he is still walking around a year from now, we'll handle it."
The other three nod. That's a functional plan they can all handle.
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