Friday-
It's winter in DC again, the special kind of cold that makes you feel like your bones are freezing from the inside out. Good day to curl up at home with a four disc Blu-ray and food that, even with practically being the human version of Babelfish, you still can't pronounce. It is not, however, the kind of day when you want to be on the Bus, jostled around by businessmen in paper suits, the annoying chorus to a song you've heard too many times blasting from an Ipod on deaf ears, getting looks from too tall fifth graders who think pointing at your marshmallow-certified Mr. Lube-gave-me-this parka makes them look like regular playboys. To be honest, I wouldn't have minded, if they were older maybe, and at least the jacket truly did make me look good.
I get off three blocks away, checking the time on the watch I got from Abby last year for my birthday.
It's black (or course) with genuine bullets worked into the leather band. I rub my freezing fingers together and think about Abby while I wait at a crossing. Since I was four years old, she's been teaching me the ins and outs of forensics, or unintentionally at least, babbling on about mass spectrometer this, and luminol that, whenever Mom and Dad left me in her lab to go out in the field. I must say, it worked.
I am top of the class in science, after all.
This brings me to Mom and Dad as I dodge between two large women carrying shopping bags twice their size. Mom used to be an officer of the Mossad, the Israeli version of Men in Black with guns and
enough issues between them to get even a shrink running to the nearest pharmacy. I guess something must have happened along the way, because she quit and has been in America at NCIS ever since. Whenever I ask, she gets all quiet and Dad gets all quiet and we're doomed to spend the rest of the day in quiet ended only when they're both on the couch and crying while watching some move with a Quentin Tarintino level of violence. That calms her down enough to point out the unrealistic blood spatter patterns at least. The last time I asked, I was eight and Dad told me something about Somalia and terrorists and Mom getting hurt, so I took the World Atlas off the shelf and crossed off Somalia from the map, thinking it would make her feel better. I forget if it did, and now I just don't ask.
Dad, on the other hand, has been NCIS forever. He's team leader now, with a slew of what the other agents I've met (or at least brushed by) at Agency mixers call "unorthodox" methods. Apparently, they think "the campfires" are some kind of secret ritual. Well, if you call the entire team coming to our house for the express purpose of going over the case and afterwards getting drunk, then it is very, very secret. Dad's also a cornball, the kind I carefully steer away from my school friends. The friends I've made at his office however, will do the steering for me.
I push past a group of boys breakdancing around a brand-new radio, and chuckle at a man out for late lunch fighting to get his sandwich away from the last few pigeons left in the city at this time. He's beating them away with a copy of McGee-sorry, Thom E. Gemcity's latest book, in which I- sorry
Ellery Taylee (read- Avery Talia, thank you very much Mom and Dad), has a nice part where she- I -Oh what's the point- kicks some butt when some stalker goes after Abby, I mean- Oh, you get it!
McGee (and any variations of) is basically "Whatever happened to the geek in the Back Row?" He's pretty sweet. He used to give me candy out of this jar on this desk until Mom threatened to kill him with a mousepad for getting me sugar high. Thankfully, I have her trust, otherwise she would have thrown out the bag of Blue Whale Gummies under my mattress.
I get my visitor pass from a door guard who waves and asks me how everyone is doing. I nod and say good, and smile. Same ritual, every day. The elevator doors have just about closed, but I edge in between court-appointed counsel and a couple of interns. They look at me strangely, the "What's a kid doing in a government building all alone?" look. I wonder how I could use my bootlaces against one of the lawyers until the elevator dings and I get off.
The bullpen, as usual is in a state of semi-calm and -chaos at the same time. Dad is barking on the phone, Mom is punching her (new, second time it was replaced this month) keyboard, swearing in Hebrew and Spanish, McGee and Abby are sitting around his desk, previewing a new program they've written. My younger brother Andrew is leaning back in an extra swivel chair, watching an episode of some crime drama we own all the DVD's to on Dad's computer. I glare at him. Andrew must have cut last period and then called Gibbs for a ride and neglected to mention me while I froze outside. He gives me a smug grin, a patented DiNozzo trait which I didn't inherit. Thankfully.
Gibbs, the man and the legend, is sipping on a coffee from the catwalk, surveying his team from above.
He nods at me and starts down the newly carpeted stairs. It was tough to get him off the field and into the big chair, I'd heard, but he'd been doing a good job since. Dad had told me something about the old director getting sacked (he said sacked because we were watching Harry Potter on cable) when he was telling me about Mom, but I've never figured out what. Mom looks up from the computer to me.
"Where were you? Andrew had Gibbs pick him up but you were not with him. Did you get out of school late?", she asks, a small shade of worry in her voice.
"No. I have a thing about being a law-abiding citizen.",I roll my eyes and shrug my NCIS backpack off beside McGee's.
"Yeah right. You were probably making out with your creepy Russian boyfriend Vladimir Baby I drink Bloooood in the science lab." Now Andrew is glaring at me.
There is a boy I like. A geeky type like McGee. I know I can do better. I like him, we do not date, and I do not like to be reminded. Before I know it, I grab Andrew's arm and shake him angrily.
"Hey. Hey. Not in my damn building!", Gibbs says.
The smell of a dank old basement clings to Andrew's jacket and I feel something shift in his pocket. I let him go and bite my lip to keep from shouting. The DVD player is shut off and he stalks off to go talk to Palmer in Autopsy, leaving me in the bullpen, sounds rising around me, angry, but with a small feeling that perhaps I have just missed something...
A/N- I know it kinda read like a primer on the where everyone is now, but I promise next chapter I will get into just what is wrong with Andrew! Review if you want more!