Procrastination, Part 2
Disclaimer and other info in part 1.
They've been driving for close to an hour and a half when she hears him clear his throat. She looks away from a (painfully familiar) tree, sighs, and straightens her shoulders.
Squares herself for battle.
"Are you going to tell me why we're driving in circles now? Or should I practice being 'quiet and still' some more?"
He doesn't meet her eyes, and he doesn't soften his voice the way he usually does when they're alone. She looks over to watch his face, but he gives no sign of sensing her.
"Stop seeing Tony."
The world tilts off its axis, and she thinks she just fell off into space. The heartbeat in her ears that she can hear when it's really quiet is now suddenly pounding all over her body in time with the red flush of anger that colors her gaze.
Stop seeing Tony.
He can't get up the balls to look her in the face when he tells her. He just can't. It's wrong to tell her this, even wronger to do it in his car on a deserted piece of scenic back road, but this is all he has.
An image of her wrapped up in the younger man's arms and legs and lap comes to him unbidden and uninvited and loud. She's crying out to God and the Devil while the fool owns her and her body. Her eyes are closed (seeing someone else?), her throat tilted back, and she's pleading for release as he pushes the cock that's known one too many women in and out of her. She's sobbing and panting and her face is twisted up in pleasure, because it feels too damn good to keep it straight and calm.
Gibbs hates her for it. Hates himself more. Goddamned self-imposed rules. Goddamned self-imposed order.
Just a few more years, echoes in his head, but the mantra has lost its strength right now.
Fuck years. If he doesn't do something now, she won't be around with him in a few more years.
"It's not appropriate," he mutters, and his voice isn't quite steady enough for his liking, but it'll do. "It's starting to interfere--"
"What did you just tell me to do?" she asks, and her voice is so quiet that he looks over at her in shock. Her shoulders and chin are up, her eyes focused on the road ahead, her teeth working her tongue in her mouth. There's no emotion on her face. No doubt, no anger--nothing. She is slick and cool as glass, and the emotions slide off her no matter how hard he tries to pin them on her in his mind.
She puts the syllables together quietly and calmly and firmly, because she needs him to understand that he has just crossed a line by involving himself. A line in the sand that he himself drew. He just pushed himself over the edge of what was defined as appropriate, professional--he just inserted himself into her personal life.
There's no going back. There's no closing this door.
"I said stop seeing Tony," he repeats, steady now, fueled by the image of Kate alone in bed as opposed to with Tony. He feels an insane rush of pleasure at the idea that she won't be in the younger agent's bed.
Never again. No more.
He glances over at her, looking for the quiet pout, the disappointed glint in her eyes or the bow of the shoulders that acknowledges her own wrongdoing and his authority.
And sees none of it.
Her knuckles are white on her knees. He can hear her swallowing repeatedly--breathing heavy and thick beside him. Is she going to cry? he wonders desperately. God, he hopes she doesn't cry--crying females make him feel helpless and stupid. Like he can't--
"Stop the car right now," her voice shakes, "or I'm going to punch you in the face and break your nose."
He pulls over. Quickly.
She opens the door up, but doesn't get out. He can see her chest moving rapidly up and down in his peripheral
vision--like she's trying not to hyperventilate, and he wonders if he has anything in the back seat as helpful as a brown paper bag.
She takes a deep breath in the seat next to him, her whole body shaking, and her hand comes down hard enough to make a lesser man wince on his cheek, grabbing him around the nose and under his eyes in one hand and jerking his head around to force him to look her in the face.
Her nose is shaking. Her lips are bent back in a snarl and her eyes are narrowed. He can see the murder in them, and it shocks him. Crying he expected, even the silent treatment.
But anger?
"Listen to me, Jethro Gibbs, and hear me now. HEAR ME." Her eyes narrow, and she takes her hand off his face because the pressure is increasing to a point that she really might break something on him.
"I am not fucking Dinozzo," she whispers, and the words are breaths of salvation against his face. The image of her and his other young agent suddenly evaporates into the nightmare of a terrified, desperately in love man.
"What?"
Her face is twisted up tight and angry, and her nails are biting into her palms. "I AM NOT FUCKING TONY!" she screams. He winces and looks away. "I am not fucking Tony. I am not fucking anyone anymore, and even if I was, it is so far beyond the scope of your business that I could have your badge on my desk within the hour for even asking."
He swallows, not at the threat, but at the indignation behind it. That doesn't look faked. "You look at him--"
"Like I look at a friend," she seethes. "Like I look at a guy who I know and appreciate as a person." Her boots press indents into the floor of the car, marking the mat with the designer's name. "How dare you?" She feels the urge to break him come back and she knows she has to get out now.
He sits behind the front seat and watches her as she walks back and forth in front of the car, panting and growling at the sky, nails tearing at her skirt, pulling at her dark denim coated thighs in fury.
The woods that surround them watch quietly as she sits on the hood of the car, her back to his gently shocked face. Her knees are too weak to keep her up anymore, her back is spineless and thin, and she sits there with her anger pooling in her hands and the shock sour in her cheeks.
He thought I was fucking Tony, she tells the pavement without moving her lips. All that time I thought he had an interest in me as a person--that he loved me--and all it was was his invested interest in the team.
His team. His work. His life.
The bastard was trying to keep her from fucking up team dynamics, she moans, and her head drops down to her knees as she breaths deep to try and soothe the agony of the flame in her chest.
She feels the car lift under his exit, and hunches up her shoulders protectively. His feet make soft scuffing nosies on the road as he walks up to her. She can feel his warmth by her side, and she hates him for being warm.
She's crying with her soul, not her eyes, and though there are no tears on her face, she can feel them dripping down the inside of her body in pain.
"I'm sorry," he says, and she can hear the tight regret in his voice. She doesn't pick her head up off her knee.
"Why would you think that?" she asks. "Why would you even consider it?" Her throat clogs tightly, but she clears it resolutely. "Why didn't you ask--"
"Because I thought I knew," he tells her softly. He's angry now--angry and himself and no longer at two of the people in his life that he would kill, die, and lie for. "I was sure of it."
"Why?" She picks her head up, and the little child that he can see in his mental BEFORE photo has been completely buried now. He wonders how long ago that happened.
When did she grow up without him noticing?
He swallows, and finds that he can't look away from her face. "It was the way you looked at him. I was sure of how you looked at him." He kicks the ground and they both watch the piece of torn-up blacktop go skidding across the road.
"That's how I look at men," she says, and he hunches up the shoulder nearest to her in defense. "It is, Gibbs."
He looks over at her, a little bit of a blue desperate fear in his eyes. "You never look at me that way," he whispers, and her forehead smooths. "You never look at me the way you do Tony, and I'm a--"
"You're not Tony to me," she whispers back. "You're not like him, and I treat you differently because you are different." She reaches over to touch the marks her her nails on his temples. "You mean different things to me, Gibbs."
He closes his eyes under her touch, bows his head down to her level, and she takes the silently begged-for opportunity to touch him. His skin is soft and powdered, and she can feel where time has been good to him and where it hasn't. Her cool fingers trace the line of his mouth, his eyes. She touches his forehead with her thumb and all the anger goes out of them both in one large "whoosh" of air.
They sit and stare at the road. No one goes by.
Slowly, stubbornly, time reasserts itself. He thinks back on what has been said, picks apart the pieces to find the gold, and looks up at her with new eyes.
The image of her in Tony's lap has long since dissipated.
"You said that you looked at me differently than Tony. Differently than you do other men."
She closes her eyes, puts a finger to her mouth, and sighs.
"Yes."
"How do you look at me, Katie?"
She wishes a car would go by. Wishes her life wasn't like this.
Wishes she was grown up enough to let him go.
"I look at you like someone special, Gibbs. I look at you the way I thought you looked at me." She hunches her shoulders dismissively. "It doesn't matter anymore, Gibbs. I misread your signals." She laughs in what she hopes is a dismissive, calm manner, feeling his eyes on her and not wanting to look.
"The way I look at you?"
"The way I thought you looked at me," she clarifies, and he nods.
"I see." He swallows down the bile that's lurking in the back of his throat, having piggybacked its way up to his mouth with his heart. He puts his hand on the back of her neck and she turns to look at him, her own fear lurking in every inch of the eyes that have changed so much in all the time he's known her.
"I look at you like I love you, Katie."
The shock comes up to claim her. She can feel her eyes going wide and her throat closing up in amazement. The disbelief is pooling in the crevices of her mouth, and she swallows thickly, quickly to try and keep from drowning in doubt.
"Okay," she tells him, and his eyes drop away from her face.
"Okay?"
"Yeah. It's... It's nice to know we look at each other the same way." And his head would jerk back up except it hasn't got a chance, because a second after this is said, a very warm and very firm body is pressed up against his as a pair of lips that taste like peach lip gloss are pressed up against his own and suddenly his head has exploded.
Oh. Dear. God.
Her eyes are closed, her lips are parted, and there is a soft look about her that he never thought he'd get to witness. He can feel her pressed against his side, soft against his firm bicep, and he thinks that he will never forget this as long as he lives, because if he does, then he is a moron.
A very stupid, very lucky moron.
"Katie," he grunts, and she pulls back, her eyes dark and soft. "I... Jesus, I can't believe I'm here."
She laughs in a tone that he's sure her lovers knew meant sex, and his own cock knows it now. "Gibbs, I love you dearly, but stop talking now."
"You don't like to hear me?" he asks, getting into the joking mood.
"Oh," she responds, "I love to hear you. I love to hear you say my name. Beg for mercy. Tell me you're going to fuck me..."
"I don't have a chance," he asks aloud, not really to her, "do I?"
"Absolutely not."
He grins and grabs her around the waist, pulling her off the car to stand in between his parted legs. "Okay then." She's smiling and soft and sweet, and he presses his lips against hers with more than a little restless lust. The image of Tony is disappearing, but the idea is still there--the idea that someone else had her before he did.
Gibbs is never logical in his desires. It's what led him to his current thrice-divorced status.
"I want you," he whispers against her throat, and she laughs softly.
"Good."
"Good?"
Her lips part again as she presses forward to kiss him long and hard. His tongue rubs her, traces the teeth he can find, and makes a mental inventory of every taste he can find. Her nipples are getting hard against his chest, and her breath is coming out in little gasping pants for air and salvation. He grabs one and swears he'll never let go.
He has Kate Todd in between his legs, her tongue in his mouth, her moans on his lips, and her breasts in his hands. It doesn't get any better than this, and even if it does, he doesn't want it.
She breaks away first, panting and whimpering, and he pinches her nipple again, grinning. "You know, Kate, I'm thinking 'good' too." He laves a tongue up her neck and she starts grinding against him.
"After all," he intones in just about the sexiest voice he can make, "It was going to be difficult to tie you to my bed and fuck you without permission. Gets messy."
And she pulls back, grins, and laughs right into his face with those dark eyes that scream of chocolate-covered sex.
"Can I still have the tied to the bed part?"
