She was in denial, isolating herself from reality and creating a world that existed only in the lithe movements of her body. He watched her move that world from a distance and through glass, keeping his eyes on the languid but intentionally arched motions she made. He didn't know much about dance, couldn't tell too many kinds from another. Looked like ballet but... not. There was more energy to it but still some kind of arching grace that made him think she should have been on a stage somewhere instead of mucking around in blood and photographing dead bodies and what the hell had she been thinkin'? Joining the Secret Service? Getting caught up with Kerry and then ending up stuck with him and his and sitting across from DiNozzo's spit balls?

She coulda been... should have been...

He was in denial as he watched her, his hand firmly grasped around a disposable cup as he ignored the other dancers, silently sipping and following the grace of her movements through the window. Lying to himself when he told his conscience that he was just looking out for one of his most efficient, most adept, most prized agents.

It hadn't been an easy case for her – not that any of them were especially easy. They were the major case team for a reason. Major sort of implied that very little would be minor, easy, or ultimately emotionally acceptable. She usually handled it better than this, though. She was usually stoic and professional and he often proudly adored the fact that she could disassociate and detach long enough to get the job done. She usually operated cleanly, confidently, without second guessing herself.

But then, the job didn't generally involve a small child being strangled by an electrical cord.

(Of all the simplest little things... a thin string of plastic and fibers to choke out such a miraculously intricate little body. The gratuitous complexities of science sometimes made no sense to him, as Abby would be quick to point out. The ability of something so innocuous to remove something so fantastical from the world would never settle well within the confines of his brain - nor would it in hers.)

She was out of her brain at the moment, though. Out of her head and letting her body sweep through movements that seemed happily relaxed, regardless of how difficult they probably were to actually complete.

And he usually handled his surreptitious watching a little better than this.

It didn't generally involve parking across from the dance studio she'd tried to keep secret from all of them and especially from DiNozzo, maybe doubly especially from him (though he wasn't sure why).

He watched the other watchers for awhile as she repeated steps, could nearly smile at gaping children as they stumbled after their mother's tugging hands because they were entranced by the dancers on the other side of the glass. He watched some women avert their heads while others smiled entirely. He noted how many men intentionally kept themselves from openly staring at the window as they walked by (probably to completely avoid being labeled as perverts).

He realized he looked a bit like a pervert himself.

Didn't honestly give two shits in the woods, though.

He was primarily only watching her – and not because he wanted to cache the ghosting gracefulness of her movements for later recollection.

(Well, not only... because he knew this vision was something that would haunt him. How winsomely long she seemed as she stretched into arches and curves. How strong her tight and toned body actually was as most of her weight went to one foot and tipped in a way that should have thrown her off balance but just graced her angling steeply. How gently flexible she was even as her body seemed sturdy and silk at once. Sweet Christ, he wasn't gonna get away from any of it any time soon.)

But, all in all, he was watching her because she'd been extraordinarily deep in eyes-open-heart-shut denial since he'd placed her by the body of a six year old boy and asked her to be just as stone a wall as he was.

(Right?)

Kate wasn't like him.

At least she wasn't at all like him when she wasn't being exactly like him.

But Kate, in her secret escape, didn't even necessarily seem like Kate.

She seemed so much more relaxed and peaceful and paced and warm.

(He would have felt guilty for upturning the rocks she kept pressed down on her secrets if it weren't for the fact that he kept telling himself that he needed to make sure she was processing, accepting, that he needed to guard her mental health just as well as he did her physical. That it was his goddamn job to protect the whole and not just what she allowed him to protect. He would have felt guilty if he hadn't already silently accepted that watching sentry over her was his only emotionally viable way of really, really, loving her.)

His reverie rattled when he turned away from watching a little girl stare open mouthed at the window, the chuckle trickling dry in his throat as he realized she was sharply watching him back through the glass. Those lithe and bending movements had gone entirely still and she had one palm pressing the glass as she interestedly studied him back.

He'd expected, in the event that he ever did get caught, that she'd be furious. Or somehow, in her Kate way of things, upset. Maybe shaken by the fact that he'd seen something of her that she'd obviously kept to herself, like her drawings had been at first. But she just angled her head at him, allowing him to really see how delicately girlish she looked when her hair was piled up into a messy knot.

And he flinched when she bent away from the spot a moment, turning back to it with a familiar bag, her hands swift as she stayed leaned near the window and scribbled something onto her sketchpad.

Little tease...

She damn well knew he couldn't look away if he was waiting for anything she had to say that seemed pertinent (despite how ridiculous he suddenly felt in the middle of the street).

The sketchpad was lifted lightly against the glass and he squinted hard to read it, ignoring the flash of a grin that brightened her lips when she caught the movement.

'Girls need coffee too, Gibbs.'

He willfully gave up the irrepressible grin that tended to surface whenever she caught him loving her from a distance and stretched his left hand through the open driver's side window. The sign stayed in place and her head tipped to the right of it, a smile flashing on her again when he simply lifted the second cup into her line of vision. She lifted her right hand in acceptance of the gift, a motion for him to stay and wait and still be there when she stepped out of her self-made state of delusion.

He figured as she stepped out the door that she didn't consciously understand that he always was still there. That she hadn't yet realized that he made sure to be just outside the border of her denial, her anger, her detachment from their day-to-day disappointments. That he made sure he was there should she stumble while crossing the (street) line between the comfort of denial and the sharpness of their combined reality.

And that was fine with him, really. Especially when she jogged across the street in clothing that barely covered her and her hair so messily tied back that sweat was pasting strands of it in spirals against her neck and throat. He could lick those curving lines and never end the tracing of his tongue, up and down and around them over and over again. The smile she gave him said she knew exactly that. In the long run... he was fine with that too. Because she never actually dared make him admit to it, so it never really bore any proper weight between them.

"What are you doing here?" She accepted the coffee into both hands, skepticism in her eyes even as she sniffed at it and smiled into the sweet scent of cream. "Following me?"

"Just checking in." It was the truth, in some way. "Doin' okay?"

"Mostly." She sipped at the coffee like it had traitorously shared some secret of his affection with her and she spread its leftover across her lips with her tongue, letting him watch the movement. Whatever secrets she shared with her cup were the same as the ones that she kept when she danced, when she dropped every-armored-thing that she put on over her skin and clothes in the morning just to get through whatever possible horror he could show her.

And he wanted them, those secrets, all of them. Maybe he wanted the ease of that ability to deny reality for an hour. And wasn't that a strange(ly terrifying) realization to have when she couldn't seem to stop so smugly smiling at him.

She wasn't a proper match for him when he was motivated by such a specific desire, though.

"Water too." He offered it softly, nodding toward the open window without letting her eyes move away from his. "In the truck. If you need it."

She wasn't armed for anything when she was still near humming a fantasy from her throat and fresh bared skin and he could hear more of it than she possibly knew.

"How'd you know?" Kate perked at him quietly, head jerking back toward the brick and glass building before taking another sip from her cup. "About this place?"

"I know you, Kate."

She squinted at him briefly, as though simultaneously amused and confused by how softly he'd said it. "Bullshit."

He coughed a laugh between them and dropped a glance down the front of himself, avoiding staring down the front of her when she was so skillfully and meticulously trained in her watching. "Hardware store's a block up. Saw your car a couple months ago. Found you in the window."

As though it had been hard to find her at all. The form of her was something he could track through walls and glass and farther across streets than she could imagine. Farther than he'd ever let on.

"I'm okay, Gibbs." She nodded it softly as she gave him a more mellowed glance, letting it blanch toward sincerity and seriousness rather than any accusation or teasing. "Getting there anyhow. You?"

His feigned shrug matched how hard she was trying to pretend that reality was okay with her (failure on both their parts). "Getting there."

"What are you doing here?"

"I told you." He lowered his voice and avoided watching her kiss her lips along the cup again, already annoyed that she was so sweet to his gift and still so cautious of him giving it to her. "Checking in."

"On me."

Of course, yes, on her. He'd known DiNozzo's trajectory was home for the comfort of beloved cinema and equally adored sleep. McGee was probably alcoved in front of his home computer, making sweet technological love to binaries and codes and whatever the hell else it was he rambled about.

"Yup." Of course on her.

Because he'd had to be sure that her form of emotional aversion was a healthy one, one that would help and not hinder. One that would bring her back to him.

Her face mingled a coquette of a smile with the tease in her voice. "Voyeur."

"I was watching your eyes, not your..." Gibbs set his now empty cup to the hood of the truck as an intentional distraction, noting the way her nose wrinkled into a smile as she noticed his awkward shifting. "How do you know the movements if you keep them closed? You can't see the instructor."

Her eyes narrowed as though she was trying to discern why he could possibly be so interested, as though watching her dance hadn't balled heat in his stomach and made his hands flex tight. "She calls them out. I don't need to see her."

Gibbs nodded briefly, not removing the brightness of his eyes from the glossy questioning of her darker ones.

"So close 'em." He shrugged it over her, caught how her fingers tensed around the cup he'd brought her before she just reflexively did as told.

Her smile flushed more whimsical than he'd expected as she let her lashes dip closed, her body slacking relaxed into his order and the utterly familiar tone he'd leaned over her. "What are you doing?"

"Instructing." He studied the close and flushed prettiness of her face, noted how sweat had sheened on her. "Relax. Head up."

"Gibbs."

It was sweetest and softest (and least him) way he could think of to bring her out of that solo fantasy world she'd been intentionally drowning herself in – kissing her coffee traced lips and letting a fingertip turn the sweated rounding of one loose tendril of her hair.

There was a millisecond of a moment wherein he questioned the decision to draw her out of it at all.

(And why not let her stay there? Where children weren't gruesomely murdered and she wasn't the single woman standing beside a tortured little body wondering if she really, really, actually wanted to be a mother someday?)

At least until she pulled him jerking closer and breathed her tongue against his, gasping a moaned relief into his mouth as he finally kissed her like he goddamn meant it.

Maybe... maybe he wasn't pulling her out of denial – maybe she was just sinking him in.