A/N: This was written because* I found that if you stand in library archives looking for something long enough, you end up just wanting to make-out with the Prince of Denmark. Or wait-have we all seen that movie? Is that just me? (see: the Prince & Me).
He asked himself—if he were a redhead with wounded pride, where would he go to sulk?
And he found her exactly where he'd told her to go an hour ago; it seemed even a pissed off Jenny Shepard couldn't really blow off work.
She was hiding in the case archives, leaning against a wall in the back, a file in front of her face. Her leg was propped up behind her; she held the file with one hand and used the other to cushion her tailbone against the concrete wall. The position displayed an incredible amount of balance and grace.
He had asked her to go get boxes of cold case files to go through and update into the computer system. When she failed to return after more than an hour, he'd ordered the team to go looking for her. He stood at the edge of the shelf silently, waiting for her to look up at him. To her credit, she didn't—she hardly even blinked to acknowledge that she'd seen him at all, though he knew she had.
He cleared his throat.
"What the hell are you doin', Jen?" he asked mildly.
She took her time finishing a sentence, her eyes moving slowly, and then she looked at him coolly over the edge of the file. He didn't miss the slight redness in the whites of her eyes and the just barely smudged black mascara around the corners. She let silence hang between them for a pointed moment before she turned a page in the file and went back to reading it.
"I am familiarizing myself with infamous NCIS cold cases," she responded bluntly, throwing back in his face the words he'd snapped at her when he'd been berating what he found to be her unnecessary use of three-dollar words—whatever that meant.
He arched a brow skeptically.
"That concrete wall comfortable?"
"I enjoy the peace and quiet the archives afford me," she answered with cool sarcasm.
Gibbs snorted derisively.
"You're pouting," he accused arrogantly.
"I do not pout," she retorted, her eyes still on the file in front of her.
"You been cryin', Jen," he pointed out, goading her lightly, his eyes narrowing.
She stiffened somewhat, her shoulders going back and her mouth flinching as her jaw tightened. Her lashes fluttered and she violently flipped another page in the document she was reading, her lips forming a harsh, compressed line.
"Prove it," she challenged dangerously, still refusing to look at him.
He opened his mouth to list all the ways he could tell she had definitely shed a few—if not many—frustrated, pissed off tears down here, but then ended up deciding it was best if he kept his mouth shut on that point.
"Come back to the squad room, Jen."
She answered with practiced nonchalance: "No, thank you. I'm much more content keeping my opinion to myself down here."
He rolled his eyes, giving her an annoyed look.
"Jesus," he muttered, stepping forward. "You aren't still pissed about the Annandale thing?"
This morning in the interview room, there had been a bit of a tense altercation between himself, Jenny, and the Annandale Chief of Police—an argument during which he'd shot Jenny down, and after which she had stormed away to brood in the shadows of this dusty building. It was chilly, dimly lit, and eerily silent down here and he knew she wasn't enjoying herself.
She was just being typical, stubborn, snotty Shepard.
Evidently, though, asking her irreverently if she was still pissed was not the correct thing to do, as she smacked the file in her hands shut violently—and rather impressively loudly, considering it was just a thin manila envelope with six or seven sheets of paper in it.
"Am I still—?" she began, and then slammed the file into its box on the table next to her. Her hand flew to her hip, and he wouldn't have been surprised in that moment if she had stomped her foot down from the wall—in fact, he was suddenly a little uneasy, because he stance reminded him exactly of how his last wife used to stand before she ripped him a new one.
"Am I still pissed at you?" she repeated threateningly.
He stared at her, suddenly deciding he had to stop provoking her and proceed carefully. He silently weighed his options, attempting to figure out if she was seriously expecting him to answer that, or if she were simply asking rhetorically, as a means to make him feel incredibly ignorant, for dramatic effect.
She opened her mouth, and he immediately figured out that it was the latter.
"You bet your ass I'm still pissed at you, Special Agent Gibbs," she spat forcefully, her knuckles turning white with the firmness of her grip on her own waist. Her green eyes flashed violently. "There was no reason for you to reprimand me the way you did in front of the Annandale police!"
He made the mistake of scoffing and lifting his shoulders uncaringly.
"Get over it, Jen, you're not above being wrong," he fired back bluntly.
Her foot slid off the wall behind her and she took a step forward, flinging her hand out roughly, her palm open and raised towards the ceiling.
"It has nothing to do with my being wrong, Gibbs—I can handle being wrong! This has everything to do with the way you treated me in that conference room!" she lashed out fiercely.
"The way I treated you?" he quoted, staring at her dubiously. She gave him a warning look, and he started to attempt to placate her anyway. "Ah, hell, Jen—"
"Call me Jen," she interrupted icily, "one more time," she dared him.
He fell into silence, and she held his glare for a sharp, charged pause before going on. She balled up her fist and pointed towards the ground, her bright, unwavering eyes fixed on his, and no longer so red with the drying tears she's shed earlier out of anger and annoyance.
"You berated me in front of the Chief of Police as if I were some insubordinate intern," she growled. "You treated me not as if I were a part of your team but as if I were an unruly pest—you made it impossible for that man to see me with any modicum of respect! It doesn't matter that I was wrong, it matters that you corrected me harshly, berated me for a mistake, and then had the nerve to mock me in front of a team whose only concept of my work ethic is what you said in that room!" her cheeks flushed with the heat of nearly shouting at him, and then she lifted her hand to her hip again. "There is a difference between being constructive and being mean, Jethro, and you—"
She broke off, momentarily flustered that she'd called him by his Christian name, and trying to find some eloquent way of conveying what she wanted him to get through his stupid, thick chauvinistic skull, but instead, in a rush of girlish hurt feelings that made her cringe, she burst out:
"And you were mean, Jethro! You were just downright mean to me!"
He had the good sense to look appropriately chastised and a bit sheepish in the wake of her words, and he said nothing, slipping his hands into his pockets and balling them into fists. He figured he remembered it a little differently than her, but then again, reflecting on the situation now—he supposed he had been a little, er—
Jenny pointed to her chest.
"I'm an army brat," she said coolly. "I know that the military teaches 'praise in public, reprimand in private'. I'm not asking you to coddle me and stroke my vanity in front of other agencies, but at the very least I expect you to afford me the same respect you'd afford any other member of your team, regardless of my relative experience," she was quieting her voice now, but her eyes were still flickering with flames of rage.
He set his jaw and then reached up to rub the back of his neck, looking at her a little resentfully for putting him in such an unfavorable light. He gave a stiff frown and lifted his shoulders in an apologetic, uncertain shrug.
"Don't take it so personal, Je—," he broke off. "Shepard," he corrected in a mollified mutter.
She shrugged harshly and shook her head, her mouth set in a tight line.
"How? How am I supposed to take it impersonally?" she demanded. She folded her arms across her chest. Her eyes widened with serious earnest. "I've never seen you be cruel to Stan, and he's as green as I am. Pacci's never treated Yates rudely in front of others, even when she annoys him," she lifted her shoulders curtly. "I do take it personally because I know—you're so goddamn busy trying to convince the agency you aren't giving me special treatment because I'm a woman, and a woman with red hair at that—yeah," she changed tunes sharply, catching the protest in his eyes. "Yeah, I've heard about your little penchant. You're determined to convince them all you don't like me, and you need to learn how to do it without being an asshole," she lost a little of her fire at the end, and trailed into silence.
She stared at him, her pretty eyes narrowing suspiciously, and tilted her head to the side. He looked back at her, somehow sheepish and defiant at the same time, and her lips parted and her brows furrowed in disbelief. She had seen an odd sort of look in his eyes when she mentioned his penchant for redheads.
"You like me!" she accused, throwing her hand out at him confidently. An outraged look darted across her face. She blinked once, rapidly, her lashes dancing, and then she looked up at the ceiling, and blew strands of hair out of her face forcefully.
She glared at him.
"You're unbelievable!" she shrieked.
He arched an eyebrow. He found himself in the position often referred to as 'busted!' and he wasn't exactly sure what to do. She took a step forward, presumably to get more aggressively close to him, in order to intimidate him, but he chose that exact moment to smirk, and she was disarmed, stopping abruptly. Her eyes narrowed uncertainly, and he studied her intently, and she hadn't even realized he'd moved forward until she suddenly had to tilt her head up to meet his gaze.
She swallowed, and parted her lips, a short breath escaping her.
"Jen," he said pointedly, daring to call her that again, not so scared at her now that she'd calmed down a bit.
The ferocity flared in her eyes again, but he didn't let it scare him off; instead, he lowered his lips to hers in a move of brazen confidence. To his (mild) surprise and triumphant delight, he wasn't rebuffed.
At least—not right away. He had the sense she was just shocked and caught off guard, but she kissed back so he didn't pull back. In the blissful moment in time his mouth was on hers in the archive basement, he discovered two things about her: one being that she wasn't an arms-around-the-neck-kisser—her hands went straight to his hips and his belt—and two being that she wasn't a hesitant kisser—she was tongue or nothing.
As for her, she let his hands tentatively run up her sides and then more confidently roam over her back, stumbling backwards until her ass hit the concrete wall she'd been leaning on and he tripped over the box of files at their feat—he didn't break the kiss, though, which she found incredibly coordinated and attractive. She let herself vaguely wonder how the hell she had ended up with her tongue down his throat when she was down here to hide her angry, hurt feminine tears and to plot revenge, and she spared a weak sort of how-dare-he thought—and then she latched onto that and pushed him back with a gasp for air.
Her hand rose and she saw him flinch, expecting the slap, but it never came—because she decided at the last moment not to do it, and her palm fell against his neck instead, resting lightly. Her eyes blazed and her jaws tightened, her face dark—yes, she had to remember, how dare he—
She blinked and they were kissing again, and with a silent scream of outrage, she realized she was the one who had pulled him back to her, with her nails lightly pricking his neck and then threading into his hair.
She couldn't keep kissing him—she had a lesson to teach him! So what if he had striking, soul-searching, sexy blue eyes, and who gave a damn if she thought about him while she was in the shower—
"No," she growled, "no, no—" she pushed him away, gripping his collar tightly, her lips bruised and tingling. "No," she murmured. "I got wise to this in high school—it's infuriating, you can't be mean because you like me, we're adults! Just hit on me or—"
She bit her lip, and he took the moment to give her a pointed look, a 'that's what I'm doin'!' look, and touched his lips back to hers. She sighed softly, and then she did stamp her foot and turned her head, standing her ground.
"Stop it, Jethro," she insisted between kisses she was still partly initiating. He pulled back abruptly when he heard the word stop—which she supposed was good manners—but she was quick to yank his warm, hard body back against her. "No, don't stop this," she decided, shaking her head and indulging in a long, slow kiss that—to her delight—he groaned into. "Stop being a bastard," she amended.
He smirked and ran his hands over her, pulling her closer and tighter to him, and she moaned softly, biting her lower lip. She let her head fall back against the wall and brushed his neck with her knuckles.
"Oh, you're infuriating, Gibbs," she growled. "You're a bastard. You think I like this," she accused, but a smile crossed her lips.
"Yeah," he agreed, touching his lips to her neck. "The second 'b' is for bastard," he drawled smugly.
Her breath caught huskily, and she touched his shoulders, tilting her head and catching his eye. She parted her lips, but she was cut off.
"Boss?" yelled Stan from somewhere in the front. "You in here? Find her?"
Gibbs said nothing, and held a finger to his lips. She arched an eyebrow, and when they heard a door closing, she gave him an annoyed look.
"You think you're gonna get laid in here, hot shot?" she asked primly.
He cocked an eyebrow, and she was a little weak-kneed for a moment. Letting out a thwarted huff, she tugged at the ends of his hair playfully.
"I should've joined the goddamn FBI," she swore dramatically.
He scoffed derisively, and shook his head, smirking.
"Their B's for bastard, too."
She gave him a saccharinely, innocent look.
"You know that second 'n' in my name, the one you so conveniently leave out when you call me your Jen," she asked sweetly.
He grunted, and she pushed him back, giving him a wry look.
"Stands for nice try," she purred tauntingly, and ran her hand over his belt as she stepped up to him. His eyes met hers with a hint of annoyance and desire, and she flicked her gaze down to his lips before she stepped back and bent to pick up the cold case files.
She hoisted it onto her hip, holding it under one arm, and met his eyes firmly.
"Prove you can treat me with respect," she ordered, and then nodded her head down below his belt with a prim smile. She stepped back up to him, her lips close to his ear, and laughed, as if amused with herself, "and I'll see if I can re-arrange the alphabet to put you," she paused, and snapped her teeth in his ear like a hungry cat, "inside of me."
She tilted her head back and met his eyes, feigning confusion about the pick-up line she'd just butchered in the most arousing way possible.
"That is how it goes, yes?"
He glared at her, and arched an eyebrow.
"You re-arranging the alphabet, who goes on top?" he asked, and then pretended to correct himself. "Comes first?" he tried, and gave her a roguish grin.
She smirked demurely.
"J-E-," she began, and then fluttered her lashes. "N," she reminded him, in keeping with true alphabetizing rules.
His eyes wandered over her, and she let him look for a moment, letting it sink in that Jen would always come before Jethro.
She gave him a demure smirk, and then she warned promisingly:
"Best mind your P's and Q's, Jethro."
*Inspired in part by: The following NCIS quotes: Kate Todd: Why do you need two B's? Gibbs: The Second B's for Bastard./The pick-up line "If I could re-arrange the alphabet, I'd put U & I next to each other".
-Alexandra
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