Procrastination, Part 1
Author: B. Cavis
Rating: NC-17
Category: Angst, Romance
Spoilers: Season 1
Disclaimer: These characters belong to DPB, CBS, Paramount, et al. No infringement is intended.
I will make her more, he thinks, repeating it over and over again, and it becomes his new mantra without a
conscious decision.
All in all, it works well for him. It spills off his tongue with ease and strength, and he has learned to trust in it to catch him when he stumbles and nearly falls. He relies on it to save him from himself and her, and no matter how many times he uses it, how many times he whispers those words to himself and God as his witness... It always does.
I will make her more. Simple. Powerful. Truthful.
A vast improvement over his last mantra--Redheads Are Evil.
He repeats it under his breath at weak moments; at periods of doubt and distress (which are two emotions that he is so not allowed to feel). It has become the unconscious grumble of his throat when he sits at rest, the calm hum of his breathing when he thinks through a case and examines the blood that may or may not be on his hands. It has kept him moving, kept his sorry ass going when the days come (and they do come) that all he wants to do is roll back over in bed and not come out until they come and get him.
It's a powerful desire. And the mantra beats its ugly ass down every time.
I will make her more. It keeps his hands off of where they shouldn't be and his mind on what's important according to the rules he's tried to live his post ex-wife number three life by.
Whenever she looks at him with the barely restrained tears of exhaustion lurking in the corners of her eyes, he hardens his spine and slaughters the weakness within him. He whispers his private reassurance to himself and crushes the foolish,
sentimental part of him that wants nothing more than to take her and make her not sad anymore. No matter what the means, he aches to make her not sad anymore.
Instead, he'll work on turning her into the woman that he knows she can be. The agent that he knows she can be.
He'll look at her, kill his male impulse, and push forward with her next lesson.
Never let them see you cry.
Never let the demons catch up to you.
Never try and catch up to the demons.
She'll look at him like she needs to be held--held by him--and he'll tap those five words against his side with his fingers, while he teaches her what she needs to know.
And he promises himself--just a few more years.
Self-denial is painful. Self-denial... burns.
So... just a few more years. And then he can let his mantra evaporate. Let it fail him and fail her with its simplicity. Its black and white definition of the world he lives in will go colorblind, and he'll be free to say "Basta."
Basta.
In a few more years, she'll carry four weapons on her person at all times. A knife in her boot (which will have replaced her heels as everyday shoes a long time ago), a gun in the small of her back, a gun in the holster wrapped like tefillin around her well-defined calf, and brass knuckles with a switchblade in her inner pocket, pressed against her heart. She will be a walking killing machine, and know how to do so in three moves or less.
He won't be able to make her jump any more, and he won't try to. Her nerves will have settled in by then, and every time he comes up behind her, he runs the risk of being thrown over her shoulder.
In a few more years, a few more lessons, she will take her coffee any way she can get it, and that means black. She'll live on the stuff, and everyone around her will make sure she gets it on time every morning. Every day.
She will be a presence. A force that everyone recognizes instantly. And he will have the pride in himself that comes from knowing he's the one who made her that way.
In a few more years, she won't need anyone to tell her how good she's doing. Because she'll know, in her own heart and in her stomach, that she is one of the best. The best. She won't look up at him, searching his face for guidance and approval--she'll have it in her own hands, and she'll be able to dip into it at will.
When Gibbs is through teaching Kate how to be what she needs to be, she will understand who signs the checks, but she'll know who runs things.
He can help her come into her own; he can make her into a player and a half, and he will.
With the right amount of time, with the right amount of dedication--Gibbs can make people whisper her name with just the right mix of reverence, fear, and awe.
And in a few more years, he promises himself, he won't have to keep his hands by his side anymore. He won't have to go to bed alone each night, when he sleeps at all, and he won't wake up the next morning with damp sheets. He'll be able to put his arm around her shoulders, his hand in her back pocket, his mouth against hers.
Just a few more years.
Until then, however, he clings to the mantra. He clings to his image of her; to the raw potential that he saw in her from day one. The woman who had his focus, who had glowed quietly and brightly--who had made him say "please," for Christ's sake--remains lurking in the forefront of his mind. A "BEFORE" photo of sorts.
Periodically, he'll take that photo out of its box and examine it in relation to what he sees now. And he likes what he finds. A lot.
Kate has ability. She did then, and now that he's set out to make her a perfect influence on the game, it shines out with even more luster.
She will be great, he promises himself, and until she is--hands off.
Hands off.
And he knows it's necessary--knows it's only sensible and certainly only right. An older man, divorced three times, dependent on his work, and gruff till the end does not a good match make with his younger, beautiful, charming, just as dependent (but still in denial) co-worker. In his current position, at this current time, all he can offer her is damaged goods and a severely injured career.
He won't do that to her--he refuses to do that to her. When he comes, he'll bring dedication, and warmth, and maybe just a hint of that emotion that always eluded him when he was with his exes, but not the ruin. Not this tainted thing that follows him around from relationship to relationship like a mangy dog begging for scraps of love and meat. He won't make
her number four. He refuses.
So he waits. He will sit and look forward to the day when the little kid in her eyes is grown up and the naivete in her smile is killed by soft happiness and the worn kindness that this job can instill upon the best of them. He looks in her eyes every day, and the day that he sees the new woman he's looking for is the day that he goes to her and asks her to have some Chinese with him.
The woman who she is becoming will be in her eyes someday. And until that day, he won't touch her. He won't be with (court, marry, love) a woman who still has the emotional marks of a pigtailed little girl on her skin.
Let her learn, he reasons. Let her learn and grow and strengthen; and let me be the lucky sonavabitch to teach her some of what she needs to know.
I will make her more.
And Gibbs waits.
****
Kate doesn't get it.
She doesn't understand, she doesn't comprehend--she just doesn't get it.
She thinks of herself as a reasonably intelligent woman, and a marginally less attractive woman (her self-image could use a little work, though, she acknowledges). She knows that when she bends over, there are those who look long and hard at her. She has the knowledge that she can and has seduced men on more than one occasion, and that gives her a little more sway to her step than those who have never had that experience.
She knows that she is desirable. And she knows that often, the men she desires want her right back. Which usually, always, leads to consummation. Kate was raised a good little doubting, questioning Catholic girl by parents who had money enough to give her the best education possible, and brains enough to teach her not to feel bad about anything that could make her smile.
Why would anyone turn down pleasure? she wonders. If it makes you happy, then why would anyone say no?
Or, more importantly, why would Gibbs say no?
It's been three years since he pulled her from her career as a Secret Service agent and gave her purpose in the form of an eclectic group of agents who all want justice and good to be done. Three long years of training, of working, of proving herself a worthy addition to their little family. No one calls her agent anymore. No one looks at her like she's a foolish little girl who has been put in this job because of her legs and her eyes.
The Director knows her by name. When she's on the phone for him, he takes her calls. She never sits on hold, and she's never been told that he's too busy to talk to her right now.
She gets what she wants because she's a force. A power. And everyone knows it. Everyone has felt it and given her the proper acknowledgment for it.
Except the one person she wants it from most of all.
I will never understand Gibbs, she tells the ceiling tile she's currently staring up at. Never.
For all her smarts, for all the inches of her legs, she is currently in a worse off position, personally, than she was before she started this job. She has just enough in the bank to go shopping once every other week for a cloth indulgence. She has no man in her bed that she will ever admit to. And she has a guy in her life who looks at her like he wants to swallow her whole with a champagne chaser, while never actually moving to do anything about it.
Gibbs wants her, and she knows it, and she has absolutely nothing to show for it.
Very frustrating. Very... frustrating.
Some things remain the same, of course. The redhead still picks him up and plants the same platonic kisses on him, and Kate still feels the little green ball of envy bounce around her ribcage. She still looks at that woman in that car and wants her dead for some reason she can't put her finger on.
She still thinks he's all bark and no bite. She still looks at him as some strange mix of friend, boss, and lover. And she still hates the idea that three women she knows of got to have him before she ever will, and she still hates the uncertainty of that "will" in her own mind.
And of course, some parts of their "relationship" have evolved beyond their status just a few months ago. They would have had to--she would have quit if he continued to treat her as a slightly aloof, slightly naive woman who knows her stuff, but not nearly as well as he knew his.
If he had kept cracking silent, all-knowing jokes about her tattoo, she would have put her resignation on his desk years ago.
But things are different now.
He brings her coffee when he remembers to, and since she takes it the way he does now, he ends up taking huge gulps of whatever she brings herself.
He'll toss her something without warning, and she'll catch it without looking.
When he thinks of a lead, she's already with him, and when she drops her head to the desk to think, he makes sure everyone stays quiet.
She's grown; grown up and grown into her gun, and a lot of it has to do with him and the silent tutoring he's been giving her. He's helped her grow, and she's glad for it and for him.
But she still hates him, just a little.
Every touch, every look, every almost moment--they play in a continuing loop in the romance-deprived section of her brain that hasn't had any other kind of fodder in years. She looks over their time together, examines the looks her gives her when he's certain she's not looking, and knows that she's had successful, year-plus-long relationships based on much less.
She's forgotten Dwayne, Mark, Tom, and the eight other men who followed them. She keeps a man on the side--Dave--and they meet up every time she's feeling hot with something other than rage and fuck up against her door. Last time she did it, he groaned out a testimonial of love. She'll be dumping him, she knows, within the next few weeks. Just long enough to line
someone else up.
It would be so easy to stay with Dave--to stay with him and let him love her and let herself try and love him in return. It would be simple and pleasurable, and she would go to sleep at night with Bulgari necklaces falling out of her jewelry box carelessly.
She would sleep with hickeys on her body, her hand under her pillow, and she would never be able to look Gibbs in the eyes again.
Damn his eyes. Damn those beautiful, crystal-blue eyes that make her want to spread herself out just to be looked at by him and those calm orbs of light that glitter in his worn face.
She's grown up, and she's glad for it, but she's tired of growing now. Sick from it. Sick from the lack of him.
Him...
Kate slowly lets her head fall down and forward to her desk, head on a sweaty fist and teeth clenched under pursed lips. The bullpen gets quieter out of habit--even without Gibbs around, she's noticed, they seem to treat her as though she has his power constantly wrapped around her. The first couple of times she did this, he snapped at everyone to be quiet. Now they
just do it because she moves.
It's recognized as her "thought" posture, and everyone stays pointedly away from her. They've seen one too many "eureka" solutions drip from that posture over the past two years to interrupt what could be a possible breakthrough.
Tony, of course, doesn't adhere. She wouldn't really want him to, either--she needs the white noise of banter to focus on the important main stream of how the hell she has gotten to this place.
In love, loved, and alone.
It's like a Lifetime movie without the commercials for Monistat and Tampax.
"Sleeping on the job?" His voice is humorous and soft. He flirts, but it's the same way he flirts with everything that walks, mixed in with a little bit more care.
He would kill for her, and she would do the same for him, and that leaves marks in every action they do.
"How can I sleep with all the noise--I mean, you talking?" The fact that she can't come up with anything better lays her exhaustion open to his eyes, and he examines the curve of her back for a moment with a wry smile.
Damn Gibbs, he thinks softly. Damn him for loving this woman enough to make her suffer like this.
"You'd manage," he says. He can look at her back and know that she's not thinking--she's wallowing. "Kate..." But there's really nothing he can say to make anything any better, so he shrugs and does the next best thing. He walks around to her side of the desk, gently places his hands on her shoulders, and starts rubbing.
She lets out a little sighing moan, but doesn't protest. He uses his thumbs to battle the rocks under her flesh, and she groans eagerly.
He could have fallen in love with this woman. He knows it, and so does she. If there hadn't been the stink of a claim upon her from day one, it would have been easy and it would have been completely.
If Gibbs wasn't Gibbs, they would be sharing a bathroom right now, but that's all nothing in the face of reality.
Screw it, he thinks to himself, and presses harder on her back.
"You're tense. You're working too hard."
"Wow. Observant today, Tony."
"Yeah, well, I'm good at knowing what women want." He smirks characteristically, and knows she can see it from the little giggling shake of her shoulders underneath his hands. "You need to relax more. You're not meant to work four nights in a row without a break."
"Tell that to our suspect," she sighs tiredly. He winces sympathetically and digs particularly hard into a solid block under her left shoulder blade. Her entire body arches, head coming up off the desk in a panting moan of pleasure, and he grins.
"See?" She moans in response. She sounds like she just had a particularly good orgasm.
And the big man comes around the corner.
Gibbs takes one look at Tony's hands, at Kate's face, and the current position of Tony's legs (spread wide apart to hide the fact that touching this woman--touching any woman, has a slight effect on his cock), and his jaw clenches. Tight.
Excellent, thinks Tony, and leans down to purr in Kate's ear without letting Gibbs know he's seen him. "Told you I knew how to make you feel good."
And the big man's fists clench for a bare moment before he regains control over himself and swallows down his rage. Tony presses a brotherly kiss to the top of Kate's head. You owe me, Katie gal, he thinks cheerfully, and wonders if her neck will be sporting one of the hickeys she hasn't worn in so long the next time he sees her.
She lets out a long, shuddering gasp of breath in relief, and opens her eyes. "Thank you, Tony."
"Was it good for you, too?"
She grins slyly and raises an eyebrow that's full of enough chill to remind his body that this woman is more his sister than a potential girlfriend.
"If you could stop being snarky enough to do that on a regular basis, I would let you come and live in my closet, Tony."
"Could I go through your lingerie?"
"You mean you haven't already?"
She looks at him, smiling and happy, and the unease that would have been in her eyes years ago is gone.
Grown up, Tony thinks to himself. She's grown up.
"Tony, check up on the records from Holton's physical and his last commanding officer--check for any signs that he was showing his illness. Kate, you're with me." And just like that, the moment is gone.
Tony sighs, and moves away, and she smiles at him thankfully. Her coat comes quickly to hand and she walks out of the office with Gibbs by her side. She doesn't have to rush to keep up anymore--her stride has long since grown to mimic his, and his own has shortened to allow her to keep the pace.
Tony watches them go, smiles, and sits down at his laptop to start to work.
They get out of the elevator and she tries to ask a question, and takes the silence without complaint. It's not personal anymore--his mood swings. She's stopped treating them like a personal assault; sometimes he just gets quiet. That's all she needs to know, and she doesn't give herself the luxury of questioning why sometimes a smile is so easy to get from him, and other times he growls at the very sight of her.
Besides, she thinks sourly as her previous mindset comes back to take her over, holding herself responsible for his mood swings implies that he would ever allow himself to give a damn about her.
A gross assumption, she thinks angrily, and tosses her hair back to punctuate the turn her own thoughts have taken.
She misses the eyes that trace the wave of auburn brown as it pours over her shoulders, but she wouldn't know how to respond even if she had seen it.
She's so grown up, and she feels like pulling a temper tantrum on him, throwing herself down on the pavement and beating at the world with tightly clenched fists and feet. "Isnofayr," grumbles the child on her shoulder petulantly. And she has to agree. It's no fair, it's no fun, and it's all his Goddamned fault.
God damn him, and God damn his lessons.
"Where are we going?" she asks when they get in the car.
"Talk to a witness," he answers gruffly, and she doesn't ask again. Mood Swing Gibbs is about as fun as a root canal without the anesthesia. He jerks the emergency brake up and grates the gears, but she doesn't say anything. Let him be pissed, she thinks. As long as I don't have to deal with it, let him do whatever the hell he wants.
