The Night Before

Why he had let Abby talk him into going to the Sterile Puppets concert in the first place Tim did not know but, always susceptible to her manipulative charms, he had found himself driving over to Abby's place to pick her up and then drive with her to the RFK Stadium. After all, he told himself, it was a night when he was not on call and he and Abby had not been out for a while and he missed their little adventures even if some of them were not necessarily what he would call "his sort of thing."

As they approached the venue the queue for the car park was long and slow-moving and with little to no patience Tim called over the traffic cop who was supposed to be martialling the waiting traffic to try a trick he had heard Tony talk about before which had been used to get out of speeding tickets and parking fines in the past. With any luck it would get them moving and stop Abby from panicking that they were going to miss her friend the drummer who had gotten the tickets for her in the first place. Finally pandering to her repeated, "Do something McGee", Tim fished into his pocket and pulling out his credentials he waved them towards the cop who came over to the window of the vehicle,

"How can I help you Sir?" he questioned, frowning slightly as he took in the details of the Badge waved in front of him.

"Er, we need to get through this line officer, we,… um, … er … have been called in for extra security within the Stadium" offered Tim, not overly convincingly. Seeing the cop hesitate he quickly added… "We are expecting there to be a lot of Navy personnel here tonight and things being as they are with the high alert status, we have been drafted in."

"And your friend here?" asked the cop nodding towards Abby and noticing the goth outfit she was wearing, "she a navy cop too?"

"Sure," Tim nodded, noting perhaps for the first time himself the over the top, self-styled Abby costume which he loved but did not necessarily fit the profile of someone going to provide undercover security, "we need to blend in you know," he added.

Seemingly it worked, either that or the cop was too disinterested to inquire any further. Putting his hands up to direct the nearby traffic and in the process causing traffic mayhem and various irate blasts of car horns, he ushered the excited Abby and rather nervous McGee through the line of traffic and into the employees parking lot.

Ordinarily McGee would have locked his creds into his glove compartment at this stage, not wanting to risk losing them in the crushing mosh-pit that Abby was about to drag him into. Worrying however that once inside the cop who had helped them may call him up for further questions and therefore needing to keep them on him he tucked them into the back pocket of his jeans and entered the throng.

Although it wasn't his beloved jazz, Tim had to admit that the concert had been great and he and Abby had a great time, had met the band afterwards for a drink (or in Abbys case several drinks) and then had driven her home made sure she was safely in her apartment and had set off home himself. All thoughts of how they had got into the concert and the lies he had told the officer were long gone from his memory.

As he set off from Abbys' to his own address, and not far from the Navy Yard itself his cell phone pinged with a message from Delilah,

Call me Sweetie need to talk.

Concerned that it could be urgent Tim dialed her number. No answer. Three attempts later and still nothing. Tim spun his car around into the Navy Yard and headed into the NCIS headquarters. Practically deserted at that time of night save for the cleaners, a few security and the night response team who were up on 5th floor, Tim made his way over to his desk. Recalling that he had left an update programme running over night he realized he wouldn't be able to use that to get hold of Delilah over the computer. He thought about logging onto one of the other computers but last time he had tried to use Gibbs', well lets say it had not ended well, and Tony, well his desk was currently covered in files and doughnut dust and Tim didn't have time to shift it.

Looking up towards the next floor and the big grey door to MTAC, a thought occurred to him, Delilah in full cinematic size in front of him would be great, he missed her so much and no one would disturb him in there. Seconds later he bounded up the stairs into MTAC and connected with Delilah.

"Hi Tim" she answered looking rather puzzled at his appearing at this time of night on the MTAC screen where she was working, "Is everything ok?" she asked as she looked around to see if Gibbs or Tony were about to appear on screen too.

"I'm answering your text, it sounded urgent," responded the equally bewildered McGee.

"Oh…. I sent that hours ago before I came into the office, have you only just received it?"

Tim looked down at his phone and noted that the time of the text would have been roughly the same time that he and Abby had gone into the stadium. He guessed he had lost signal there for a while and the message had only pinged through sometime later. Feeling himself going slightly red with embarrassment at the unnecessary panic he had betrayed to the woman he loved and wanted to show he could protect and look after, Tim shuffled over to the screen and started muttering an apology of sorts for disturbing her at work.

Delilah, wanting to put an end to his obvious embarrassment repeated his name over and over, first of all softly and then when that did not seem to break into his babbling apology she got a little louder until she shouted so loud that she herself panicked that she would bring in her colleagues from neighbouring offices to check if she was ok.

Eventually Tim overcame that embarrassment and the two soon lapsed into their easy chats about life, work, the concert and more. As they started to bring the conversation to a close 40 minutes later (mainly due to the fact that McGee was struggling to stay awake) Delilah sent him home to bed to sleep, just as he was about to say goodnight to her, Tim suddenly realized he had not in all of his initial embarrassment asked her why she needed to talk to him.

"Oh, its just that my parents are insisting that when I'm back from this assignment in a months time I go and stay with them and not with you but they want to meet you, Dad says he wants to have a word with you man to man about something," blurted out Delilah.

Seeing that Tim was doing a great impression of a worried goldfish, Delilah added a hurried "Don't worry it will all be fine." Seeing that this still had not eased Tims' worried expression and failing to get any further words out of him she told him she loved him, blew him a dozen kisses and shut off the link between the two centres.

Still in that state of high anxiety, Tim wondered out of the building and eventually home. It was now nearly 0300 and he would just about have sufficient time to grab a shower, sleep for an hour or so and then get himself up to start another working day on Team Gibbs. Dumping his clothes into an unruly pile on the floor and resolving to sort them out in the morning, Tim showered and jumped into bed with thoughts about his forthcoming meeting with "the parents" of the girl he loved.