Title: Coffeeshop
Rating: K (for now, at least)
Spoilers: Nope.
Summary: The girl who works the counter at the local coffee shop watches as Gibbs and Kate develop their relationship. KIBBS, naturally.
A/N: Okay, so this is sort of a new idea for me and I'm trying it out. I hope it will work--let me know what you think (nicely). Basically, I wanted to explore a romance between Gibbs and Kate through somebody else's eyes, without any of the normal office interaction. This first chapter doesn't have any KIBBS, I know, but there'll be some later. Trust me. :)
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I've gotten pretty good at typing people over the past five years. It comes in handy in this business. Sometimes it pays to know if a guy is the type to go for an espresso drip or a hazelnut latte with extra foam. It pays to know if a woman is going to want a mocha grande with skim or the new organic blackberry chai. But in five years of standing behind the counter, filling orders and watching people, I'd never seen anyone quite like him.
To begin with, his order was always the same. Don't get me wrong—that's pretty normal. People generally find something they like and stick with it. But when they come in a coffee shop, they're also generally looking for something besides just coffee…something a little more exciting, exotic, something that they're not going to get out of a regular drip machine. That's what we're here for. (Or so my manager tells me, ten times a day, five days a week.) But this guy—he always got the same thing. Black coffee, straight up, no cream, no sugar, no anything. And he always wanted the strongest stuff we had—basically the next-door neighbor to espresso. Every time I made it up, I wondered what it was doing to his stomach lining and then decided I really didn't want to know.
And then there was the fact that he came in every single morning at exactly the same time. Again, not so strange in the general scheme of things. People usually have a schedule and stick to it, give or take a few minutes. But he came in at exactly 7:00 AM, every day, rain or shine. Even on the weekends. I don't know about other people, but when I'm off on the weekends it takes a jet propeller to get me out of bed. I certainly don't get up and get dressed to get coffee at seven o'clock in the morning. I got the feeling sometimes that he didn't really want to stay at home, in bed or out. But that's just speculation, really.
He was always alone. I never saw him with a friend, a coworker, even a casual acquaintance. When it came to that, I never saw him with a woman either. It wasn't like he was ugly or anything. In fact, I secretly thought he was kind of hot, in an older-guy sort of way. He was pretty tall—a little under six feet, I'd guess. He was probably in his late forties, early fifties, but he had the build of a much younger guy—plenty of muscle under those long-sleeved shirts. His hair was thick and a really gorgeous silver, but whoever cut it must have flunked out of barber school; it was always too short on top and shaven too close on the bottom. But I think my favorite thing about him was those bright blue eyes—they just had this way of looking at you that cut straight through all the bull and saw things the way they really were. I used to think that with eyes like those he must have seen a lot—and some of it things he'd like to forget.
I didn't know who he was or what he did for a living till one morning when he forgot to bring enough cash to pay for the coffee and had to pull out his credit card. Usually he just had a couple of bills stashed in one of his pants pockets. But this morning he must have gotten dressed in a hurry or something, because when he dug around in his pocket all he came up with was a couple of nickels in change. So he had to reach around in his back pocket and get his wallet. That's when I saw the badge hanging on his belt, black leather with a shiny gold insignia on it. Normally I keep my mouth shut when customers don't seem too chatty, but this time I just had to ask.
"What's the badge for?" I said, my hands moving mechanically among the paper cups.
He looked up from searching for his credit card and looked straight at me with those piercing blue eyes. I squelched the urge to gulp and tried to look casually interested.
"NCIS," he said, in a voice that somehow managed to be soft and gravelly all at the same time. I couldn't help it; my eyelashes just sort of automatically fluttered.
"What's that stand for?" I asked as he handed me the card. He looked at me like I'd grown an extra ear or something.
"Naval Criminal Investigative Service," he said slowly. One of my eyebrows shot up.
"So you…go after criminals in the navy?" I asked, trying not to sound as stupid as I felt. He gave me another of those looks that made me want to duck under the counter and stay there for a while.
"We investigate any crime that deals with the Navy," he said in the same flat tone of voice. Then he looked down at the card I still held in one hand. "You gonna use that or do I get free coffee this morning?"
I felt a blush rising up to my hairline and hurried to swipe the card.
"Sorry about that—here's your coffee, sir," I said quickly, trying to make amends before he did something crazy like shooting me. What he did instead nearly sent my system into overdrive for the rest of the day.
He raised one eyebrow at me and gave me a level stare, dead-serious, no smile.
"You don't have to call me 'sir,'" he said simply before he raised the coffee to his lips and took a long swallow. I just stood there, trying very, very hard to keep my jaw from dropping. He nodded once and turned to walk away, and then turned back suddenly.
"Good coffee," he said, and shot me a little smirk that sent my blood pressure through the roof. He walked out the door, climbed into a dark sedan parked on the curb outside, and zoomed off, weaving like a maniac through the maze of D.C. traffic. I was still standing there, trying to make sure I wasn't hallucinating or something, when the whir of credit card reader interrupted my daze. It was spitting out a little ticket, the kind we had to keep in the cash register for the store records. I reached out and tore it off, held it up to the light to read the tiny print.
There it was, right on the top line, unmistakable in black and white. I stood there studying it for a while, wondering about the enigma that walked through the front door every morning at 7:00 AM sharp and ordered his coffee black. I shook my head once to clear it, noticed I had customers waiting and my manager was giving me a look that could kill. But I couldn't help whispering it once before I hurried over to take orders and fit on coffee collars. I knew it was going to stick with me through the rest of the day.
"Jethro Gibbs," I said. "What a name."