Like Swimming

They always say that it's like riding a bicycle: you never forget. Like learning to swim. He thinks that the second description is more apt, because whenever he thinks about them, it feels like drowning.

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"Do you want to hold her, Dad?"

The nurse was looking at him expectantly, and he froze, terrified. Boot Camp was a walk in the park by comparison. "Go on, Jethro," Shannon urged from the bed. After seventeen hours of labor, she was exhausted, red hair plastered sweaty around her face. But she still had enough energy left to laugh at him. "You're not going to break her, you know."

Leroy Jethro Gibbs accepted the bundle that was his infant daughter, remembering to support her floppy head. Her rage at being dragged into this cold, bright reality had abated; now, she was mostly preoccupied with blinking. The nurse had said that she weighed seven pounds, nine ounces, but she felt like nothing in his arms. She regarded him with disinterest.

"Hey, kid," he said, feeling like an idiot for talking to a human being who was forty-seven minutes old. Kelly opened and closed her mouth by way of response.

He shifted her to his chest, where she instinctively curled into a lima bean. Through the receiving blanket, he felt her heart beating a thousand times a minute. It felt like his own heart was beating equally fast. He lowered his lips to her tiny ear. "I'll keep you safe."

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Yoon Dawson is upset, and understandably so, with two bodies in her living room. Gibbs feels only a moderate amount of sympathy for her, not being a people person, but the baby is another matter. He guesses she's about eight or nine months old, probably crawling, maybe starting to pull herself up on the furniture.

Kelly walked when she was eleven months old.

Gibbs relieves Yoon of her baby and goes to mix the formula, unconsciously swaying to calm the little girl perched on his hip. It's funny how familiar it feels.