a/n: hi, pretty self-explanatory! Gibbs starts getting his memory back in short little snippets (mentioning key Jibbs places!).
Marseilles
The Baja sun blistered, and he struggled with the lethargy that accompanied humidity. He'd come out on the roof to work, to fix the shoddy shingles and pretend he was somehow fixing himself, but the beating of the sun's blaze only sucked at his energy, tried to convince him it was better to lay the hammer and nails down and bask in misery.
He sat on the slanted, weathered old wood, vaguely unsure if it was sturdy enough to hold him up, and he stared tiredly at the glittering ocean waves as they slapped lazily on the sandy shore.
Why he had ever thought leaving work, leaving a daily routine that kept him occupied and his mind focused on – on anything but them – was a good idea, he didn't know, but he'd been wrong.
Memories returned erratically, slowly, aggressively – he pieced them together in the relevant years of his life that wearily came back to him, overwhelmingly made him remember how long it had been sine Kuwait, since Pendleton, since them.
He leaned back, ran his hands over the splintered, rough wood, and winced in the sun, trying to fathom some world beyond the sea's horizon where his life hadn't turned out like this –
-and he was struck, hard, by one of those elusive memories, quick flashes, then an immersion in a moment, and he knew it was one of those he'd been searching for, to make-up the lost years in between nineteen ninety-one, and the day he'd woken up –
—he climbed down off the roof of the old, abandoned house, a blouse and a bra clutched in his hand. He barreled through the open glass window and was greeted by amused laughter; she lunged forward and took her things from him, holding them to her cheek.
"It worked," she muttered, grasping a thin, tattered sheet closer to her chest.
He rolled his eyes.
"You throw anything in the blisterin' sun for an hour, it gets dry," he retorted. "Can't fix the smell."
She buried her face in the clothing – stained a rich, dark coffee colour now – and shrugged, breathing in.
"Coffee," she murmured. "I might start spilling it on all my clothes, if it makes them this aromatic."
"Aromatic?"
She ignored his sneer, and he crawled across the floor from the window, re-situation himself behind her on the bed. The quarters were cramped and humid; the edge of the rickety, four-poster bed was barely a foot from the only window – the window they used for surveillance – and it was hardly a surprise that after two days, they'd ended up in that bed together.
He leaned against the uncomfortable, metal bars of the headboard and slid his legs around her, pulling her back against his chest. She rested her head against his shoulder and lifted the binoculars, glaring lazily into the lenses and watching the Lebanese ship they had their eye on.
He lowered his lips to her shoulder, his hands running under her bare skin under the thin sheet, and she laughed quietly.
"How many more days of this?" she murmured, eyes on the target.
"Which this?" he asked smartly.
The stakeout, or the unbelievable sex?
"Hmmm," she murmured lightly, shrugging her shoulders.
"Stakeout ends in six days," he muttered, his lips, teeth, and tongue marking her collarbone, his hands moving between her legs under the sheet.
She sighed and leaned back against him heavily. He didn't say anything about the second part, and she bit her lip, her eyes still on the target, her heart racing a little.
"Don't stop," she murmured pointedly, her knuckles turning white as she gripped the binoculars.
He smirked, his lips moving to her ear.
"You satisfied yet?" he teased, feigning exasperation.
She grinned, taking a moment away from the binoculars to tilt her head up, and meet his blue eyes. She licked her lips.
"Every time the sweat dries, it cools off a little in here," she whispered huskily.
He arched a brow at her.
"I'm hot again," she said, her lips pursed fetchingly.
He ran a hand through her hair, his hand moving under the blanket, and he bent to kiss her lips, embracing the suffocating heat of the August attic –
-he sat forward, and rubbed his face with his hands, wiping sweat and dirt and sand off his brow, sitting up, shaking his head.
He kept remembering her, among everything else; she came back more strongly, more often, than any of his ex-wives – and he believed her now, that he'd had more wives, because now he could recall their names: Rebecca, Diane, Stephanie.
He knew her name, because she'd told him in the hospital – but she hadn't told him all this, she hadn't told him who she used to be to him, and he was trying to figure it out, trying to understand – what had happened –
"Probie!" groused Franks, glaring up from the deck. "You fixin' my goddamn roof, or you writin' a romance novel? I ain't heard a hammer in an hour!"
Gibbs shook himself, and reached for the tools.
What had happened, where had they been?
The place came to him, like a cold rush, a snap of memory –
Marseilles.
Marseilles
-alexandra
story #224