It wouldn't have happened if they'd just gotten out of Bumfuck, Virginia before dark. Because, God help him, if DiNozzo had just done it right the first time instead of... being DiNozzo... And it wouldn't have happened if they hadn't needed the supplies in truck. Because she always seemed to end up wedged right into him from the jump seat, smelling like vanilla tinted lavender heaven and surprisingly, sexily, gunpowder.
Why in the holy hell did she smell like the smoke of charcoal, untapped nitrate?
Because gunpowder's the other thing you just don't manhandle, Jethro. Watch your goddamn hands.
His hand lifted sharply from where he'd accidentally brushed against the warm and surprisingly soft fabric of her pants, dragged from where he'd brushed her knee as he'd tried to shift into a more comfortable position. He squinted against oncoming lights, felt her head dip a steeper angle near his shoulder with a sleepily exaggerated form of the same movement. "You at the range today?"
"Mmm hmm." Her voice was humming along the crest of his shoulder, just as quieted as his had been as he'd asked. "My evals needed to be done by tomorrow."
"You pass?"
He'd known the dryly accusatory tone and the implication she might fail at something (at anything) would lift her head up out of weariness just so that she could give him a token glaring. He felt it in the darkness, felt the shift of her head and grinned a conceptual victory dance as he grasped his hand tighter against the steering wheel. She was still looking at him and he knew it, didn't need to turn his head in the darkness of the truck cab to know that she was squinting him that pissy little feral look that said she'd make fun of his hair (or one of his marriages) later.
She's a live fire zone. And that was your warning shot, Gunny.
"Just checking." He chuckled heat through the whispered words, hand lifting lightly off the wheel before dropping back against it.
"I miss the Secret Service, Gibbs."
He winced a little at that hazed confession, even if she was pressing deeper and letting her slight weight lean hesitantly into his side. He wasn't sure if it was intentional or just the relaxation of her muscles, her sleepiness dragging her deeper into the seat and tighter toward him rather than where Tony was pressed awkwardly against the passenger window. The other man's head was pressed angled up into the glass.
"A dismembered Lance Corporal wasn't enough to pique your interest today, Agent Todd?"
"Naw," she grumbled it off, a hand waving up in front of her to brush off his implication, "s'just that we had a gun range in the gym. I could spar and shoot in the same building."
"Swanky." He murmured quietly, setting the cruise control just on the borderline of the speed limit. "Sleep."
"Gotta keep you awake."
"You don't, Kate." He promised into the darkness. "I got this."
"I wanna stay awake with you." She demanded with a pouted whispering. "That annoy you?"
He considered it. Staying awake all night with Kate? Did it annoy him? There were multiple levels of "No."
"Then why are you making 'Annoyed Gibbs' face?" He could tell she was squinting at him, a pouted shift to her lips, could tell just by her tone of voice. "See? I annoy you."
"You do not usually annoy me." He admitted on a hush, letting a half smile take his lips as he leaned his head closer toward hers. "Startin' to now, Todd."
She sighed out hard into his sleeve. "You're so grumpy all the time."
And then she let her head finally take the last slip of space needed to just rest into the curve of his shoulder.
And it made it hard to swallow.
"You don't annoy me." He breathed over her forehead, affectionately letting a smile into his words, letting her hear the gentleness.
"I do. Sometimes." She countered quickly but gently. "And sometimes you annoy the crap outta me."
"Don't mind that you annoy me, though. It's cuter on you than DiNozzo."
"You just call me 'cute'?" Her whispering was flared up with undiluted pride and a slivering of amusement.
He dipped his head back and forth in response to her tone, knowing that she'd feel the shifting even if she couldn't see it. "It may have been indirectly implied."
"Are you flirting?" Feigned surprise rushed her whispering higher. "Is this what flirting looks like on Jethro Gibbs?"
"Shhh." Gibbs admonished, chancing a glance across the darkened cab to check that Tony was still lumped awkwardly into the window. "Not the first time."
Then she cuddled up closer to him, no apology or excuse or reason other than she obviously wanted to do it. "No, it's not. We still in Virginia?"
There was still a muzzy hum to her words but it sounded sorta pretty, especially as close to his ear as it was.
Gibbs grunted as he nodded his head at the windshield. "Unfortunately."
"I wouldn't say 'unfortunately'." Kate countered softly. "What happens in Virginia stays in Virginia."
"Please," he debated the words slipping off his lips for only a fraction of a second before just breathing them out, angling his jaw into the whisper, "do not tell me your middle name is 'Virginia'."
Her laughter tripped brightly off her lips and he couldn't help grinning into the fact she girlishly banked her face into his shoulder to stifle the sound.
She rubbed her face into his jacket, her hair too near his skin for any innocently explainable reason and it turned his smile into a slack jawed sighing as she spoke softly. "My middle name is not 'Virginia'."
The very last thing he should have done was turn his mouth into the edge of her hairline.
Especially when Tony's sleep heavy breathing had gotten quieter rather than deeper.
Especially when he was trying to track his glance back and forth across a too-dark-in-the-middle-of -he-night road.
So, of course, the very first thing he did in response was turn his mouth rubbing along her hairline.
"I know it isn't." He murmured into her hair, eyes still on the road as he let his cheek wipe leisurely against its dark warmth, listening to be sure the other man was still patterning his exhalations toward the other window.
And then she was pulling on his arm, fingers curling softer than he'd expected as her palm stroked down the fabric of his jacket and stalled at his wrist.
It wouldn't have happened if they'd brought the sedan instead of the truck.
Because he never would have broached the space between seats this way.
"You know everything. You knew I was at the range?"
The reflexive urge to close his eyes hit a fraction of a moment before he remembered the part where he was actively driving the vehicle, blinking them back open as he palmed the wheel hard and let her palm stroke flat against his other hand.
He groaned quietly, barely audibly as he intentionally bypassed any sort of actual reason and flexed his fingers tightly between hers. "You smell like gunpowder."
And it's sexy like slow-morning-sex sexy.
"And you like that." And the smell got stronger the closer her hair got to his nose. "Freak."
Like lifting you up onto something sturdy and wrapping your legs around -
Her hushed round of taunting laughter (entirely at his expense) trapped his attention back, eyes on the road and head in the clouding scent of her. The tease of her hair on his skin.
Which, if he were to be completely honest with himself, was sexier than most any sexual fantasy. Most any.
"It's..." he swallowed thickly, "got its positives."
She was wrapping around his arm, knowingly angling his hand between her legs as she teased closer and rubbed her lips swiping along his jawline.
A hushed breath kissed against his skin, "You like girls with guns? Huh, Tony?"
She whimpered against the shoulder seam on his jacket suddenly, tensing as he drove the side of his palm up between her thighs and edged roughly against her. "Sorry. I'm sorry."
"What'd I tell you about - "
"You already make me weak." Her voice was so quiet that it was all honesty and no inflection. "No apology necessary."
If darkness made her this openly honest and so sweetly leaning then when they got back he was gonna trip the office breakers right before putting bullets in the back up generators.
"Shhh." Gibbs murmured with a groaning. "Not a sound."
"That's not - "
"You wake him up and... not a sound. Understood?" He demanded on a whisper, breathing in as he gripped tighter to the wheel and passed a quick surveillance to the opposite side of the truck.
Damn her for being able to disregard the snappish tone he was intentionally whispering aside by nodding a slow and gentled kiss against his cheek.
Right before she turned her mouth against his ear and nipped her teeth against it.
Drive. Truck. Drive the truck. Damn it, Gibbs. Just drive the truck.
He felt her hand shift, her fingers sliding from his but he caught against them, dragged them into his lap so that he could slope them flat against his thigh. His broader palm pressed hers still against denim, a smile twitching his lips when she dug into his pants, bunched the fabric up into her fingers and levered herself high enough to rub her mouth against the back of his ear. Then he was tracing the back of her hand with his fingertips while he let his jaw turn closer to her kissing. And nibbling and sucking and... oh, hell. He was staunchly enjoying how strong her grip was considering how much smaller, softer and more delicate, her hand was under his touch.
He knew it was the only chance he had to still gently (very carefully) settle this with some scrap of innocence, still save them some embarrassment and cleave down the middle of the situation with a modicum of grace. Sort of. Before their shifting woke the man on her other side. Before he touched her again, or before he let his hand fall loose into her lap and rest the tension in his forearm into the sweet comfort of an undoubted acceptance. Because she would accept the movement as though it was nothing unusual, as though he was just handing her a case file, reaching past her for his coffee, offering her a piece of gum.
She wouldn't stop him.
Christ, he knew that for a fact.
Especially when she happily sighed her mouth down the side of his neck and guilelessly rubbed her nose against him, like he was something unquestionably safe.
When she curled around his shoulder like she had no qualms as to whether or not she belonged there he dropped his fingers against her thigh and skimmed them up, tracing against the fabric of her pants before slowly driving the full spread of his palm back toward her knee. He squeezed against her knee lightly, massaging his fingertips into it as he turned his jaw against the top of her head, keeping his breathing as slack and slowly evened as possible. Which wasn't either, really. But at least he was keeping a strong eighty percent of his attention on the road.
Until her lungs let up a half shunt of breath, the pass of it through her lips landing against his shoulder as she buried her face there.
That simple shift of her head, that unconscious and unguarded sweetness...
So much for that moment wherein he could have stopped them up and still saved face.
Because he didn't want to lose the fact that her leg leaning along his fit perfectly into him as one hand gripped his pants and the other stroked unspoken encouragement along his bicep.
It sure as hell wouldn't have happened if they'd left that backass little town before dark.
And he was thanking every deity he could pry out of muddled memory banks that they just fucking hadn't.
"Hush." He whispered it sharply over the tip of her head. "Yeah?"
She nodded her jaw digging into his shoulder, snuggling up closer and tighter as she buried her face between his neck and shoulder. Her hair was tickling against his cheek, her breathing moist and hot against his skin as she angled farther up into him. Her breasts were driving against him in a way that was indescribably sexy, just by how possessively curved up along him she was.
He was stunned, eyes drifting back and forth across the darkened road as he rubbed her knee again.
That she'd be the one to curve some unbending force of possession on him rather than the other way around.
She wasn't playing at a game, though.
Not with the way she was shyly just keeping her face driven into the crook of his neck, her fingers bunching almost desperately in the fabric of his pants, his jacket.
Forward or back in a moving vehicle.
She was waiting for him to stop himself.
"Gibbs." She'd never promised to take orders from him all the time. He knew she wouldn't start just because he was drawing a lazy and repeated circle against her knee. "No apologies."
Yes, ma'am. Copy that.
His palm slicked up the inside of her thigh roughly, jerking her leg up raised a bit against his and momentarily disturbing how laxed she'd snugged into him. "Hush."
He could swear he felt her smile against his jaw, her lips lifting to wipe his cheek in a swelled shift of appreciation as she sighed on him. The rub of her breasts against his arm as she leaned tightly in again, shifting her hips lower in the seat and her shoulders in his direction, that was her victory march across whatever shred of resolve he may have had. So he turned his elbow, twisting his wrist enough to start teasing lines against the inside hem that ran her thigh. Her head dropped sidelong against his shoulder after a moment, the hand that had been on his leg lifting to loosely lay wrapped on the bottom of the steering wheel in unspoken support. He couldn't help but smile at that movement, the way she doubly guarded them even as she instigated something that could have been legitimately dangerous.
He listened to Tony's loudly even breathing for a moment, just enjoying the curled up and outwardly innocent way they were both driving the truck and each other toward insanity. Then he traced his fingertips between her thighs, ran a line up and down the inside seam as her knee jolted against his thigh and the hand she had grasped into his sleeve went choking on the fabric.
So warm as he lazily stroked her.
So damn deliciously warm and he imagined, probably, getting damp.
He fleetingly wondered what sort of underwear she was wearing.
Because rubbing the fabric of her pants into her was a slicker and easier movement than he'd expected. "Silk?"
Her curbed laughter buried her affirmative response into his sleeve for a moment before she looked back up at the road and shyly rounded her temple against his shoulder.
He snorted into a half smirk, "Are you kiddin' me?"
Kate Todd smells like gunpowder in silk panties.
Oh, sweet Christ...
I've either been an exceptionally good man to deserve this, or an exceptionally bad one.
Because this is either really promising, or an unnecessarily extreme punishment.
He figured that if it hadn't been dark her blush woulda flushed all the way down her beautifully elegant throat and lower.
"Devious." He muttered sideways into her hair before kissing against the dry heated darkness of it, cupping his hand against her, clamping his fingers and grinding the heel of his palm on her in an owning movement. "This is dangerous."
The moan that slid over the angle of his shoulder said she didn't much care.
"Which part?" Her voice culled so quiet but so daringly lush at once. "Me or the driving?"
He chuckled broadly, momentarily forgetting Tony's quiet presence two seats over, "Seems the combination is possibly deadly."
An agreeing noise hummed up her throat. "And gunpowder and silk?"
Use of deadly force. Unforeseen magnitude.
He slowly wiped his hand back up along the top of her thigh, squeezing muscle to keep the contact. "Kate - "
"Nuh uh." Her voice was thickening with sleepiness again, fingers rising to cling into the fabric of his sleeve as he slowly lifted his hand to the opposite side of her head and palmed against her cheek. "No apologies, Gibbs."
"Tired?"
"Mmmm." Her agreement matched the nuzzling way she couldn't keep from somehow cinching closer with each shift of movement. "Can I stay here?"
First Response: 'Long as y'like.'.
Actual Answer: "Of course."
Her body was relaxing along his side again, cradled into his side and pressing hard into his hip. "What if he wakes up?"
"Think he's gonna say anything to me about it?"
"No." He could hear the whispered smile in her tone just before her lips wiped his jaw. "G'night."
He grunted a nodding agreement, "Sleep, Kate."
Stay right here.
Closer to me.
"They're black." She stifled a yawning into his neck, groaning as she shifted more sideways into him as he stroked against her hair. "Black silk."
He grinned wildly toward the road, rubbing the pads of his fingers into her scalp. "Course they are."
"You can see 'em later."
Damn sure of it.
He turned his eyes off the road only long enough to rub his kiss against her forehead. "Go to sleep."