Little Wonders

by firechild

Rated K

Disclaimer: Most of these characters belong to the Bellisarios. One of the bus station denizens belonged to my sweet friend Erin. Come to think of it, so did the other. Acapella belongs to God and Keith Lancaster (and to their wives, more's the pity.) I have no idea if NEARS exists.

Warning: Er, harmful if swallowed? May contain milk, wheat, gluten, nuts, and slobber?

A/N: This is for Erin.

A/N: No Marines were harmed in the making of this fic. Honest. No, really. Honest! You don't believe me? But...!

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2-2-88 4PM

Okay, now he knew he was hearing something. Something that he shouldn't be hearing.

The Marine stopped watching the board from his spot against the wall, standing stock-still for a moment, cocking his head to listen. The bus station was crowded to the point that he felt duty-bound to leave any free seats for the women waiting in the terminal (all of the buses seemed to be overbooked,) and he couldn't place the sound, but he didn't feel threatened, so he let it go.

Or would have, if a second later he hadn't felt something. Something that he definitely shouldn't be feeling.

The something was a light pressure on his left boot; he was a Marine, and so prided himself on control, but it took everything in him not to react reflexively. Holding his breath without realizing it, he peered down, only to find...

...what was either the shortest long dog or the longest short dog he'd ever seen. He was fairly sure, anyway, that it was a dog of some sort, given the very short, ropy, pointed tail that was currently slicing more air than his CO's 7-iron. So apparently somebody (or something) approved of his regulation footwear.

Nice to know he was passing inspection.

As he watched the tiny animal investigating his boot, his breath puffed out in a cloud, and for a moment, part of him revelled in the familiar chill of home. Ah, February in New England. Granted, he would never entirely settle with the difference between this and the ranch, but while Texas definitely had its points, he'd take the cold here any day.

Not to mention the company.

As he had every day of his last deployment--most of which had been spent in classified ops in places that he wouldn't have wanted to describe anyway--he thought of them, of his beautiful girls. His wife still took his breath away, the sight of her like a sweet ravaging of his insides, and his daughter... the thought of that little girl rushed in and replaced the missing breath with a light better than air. He was away so much, but their phone calls and letters--his baby was already writing some, and she always sent doodles, which found their way onto the wall above his bunk, and onto the metal sides of his cabinet, and onto the underside of the lid of his polishing kit--got him from one week to the next, from one job to the next. Now he was coming home, after more than nine months, he was only a couple of hours away now by bus, so close he could almost taste the sawdust from his carving bench in the basement, and he was starting to worry that his little girl might not recognize him. He knew it was ridiculous, that of course she would know him, but as much as he loved the Corps, he always felt a little like he was coming home a stranger to what should have been his life. If his wife hadn't been so staunchly supportive of him all these years...

Well. He knew that they loved him and wanted him; every time he left, even if it was just for a couple of days, his little princess, the girl with bins full of Barbie... stuff... and a standing Saturday morning date with the Thundercats, would shed her tough skin and beg him not to go. It could have been worse, but when she'd been a toddler, he'd taken the advice of a lance corporal with children and had bought her a stuffed beagle, big enough for a decent cuddle, and had given it to her as he was leaving for a deployment. His wife had told him a week later over the phone that the child was calling it Booger. He'd figured that she'd meant to name it Bugle, since she loved his old bugle the way most toddlers loved grape jelly, but his wife had said that she'd had the same thought but that the toddler had insisted that the thing had most definitely been dubbed Booger. That beagle had been used as everything from a pillow to a handkerchief to a crash test dummy to a fencing foil, and his wife had basically reassembled it, part by part, over the last three-and-a-half years. Sadly, his wife had reported that Booger had died a heroic plushie death on the way to his sister-in-law's a month ago and was now resting in a shallow grave in a backyard just outside of Springfield, Missouri. He sighed; he'd grown up surrounded by live animals and didn't remember ever being attached to a stuffed toy, but he gathered that the loss of the polyester beagle was a minor tragedy and that it was his job to figure out how to make it better, and give his wife a break.

He had precious little to offer just now, though. He thought of the wooden shape wrapped in one of his undershirts in his duffle by his right foot; he'd spent weeks, using his precious free time, to procure and cut and shape and plane and sand the object, finally satisfied enough a few nights ago to cut a notch in one face, leaving a bar of wood over the middle of the trough. He'd even managed to make a deal for some paint and brushes, and then for some polyeurethane to seal it; a couple of his fellow operatives had teased him for spending late hours painting little pink butterflies on a purple something-or-other... once. Then, with the corner of a grin and a raised eyebrow, he'd held up the object, and after that, no one had so much as snickered in his hearing. Not even hardened Marines really wanted to mess with a Gunny sniper who'd crafted a half-inch-thick wooden paddle right in front of them. Well, they were accustomed to need-to-know missions, and he didn't see that they had any need to know that he'd cut the notch with the crossbar so that he could go shopping when he got home and find some elastic cording and a rubber ball.

It was a pathetic excuse for a gift, he knew, but he had no clue what Barbie... stuff... his daughter did or didn't have, or what toys were popular among her little friends, or even what his wife would or would not allow the child to have. All he did know was that his baby loved action toys, like tops and Slinkies, that her favorites were the paddleball sets, and that her last couple had fallen apart because they were cheap and flimsy. Well, he couldn't guarantee that this one would be indestructible, but he was fairly confident that it would stand up to the challenge of a five-year-old girl.

Almost five. She'd be five tomorrow. And if he could wrangle a ticket on a bus, she'd have a present from him, given to her by him, this time. All he had to do was find a toy store that sold elastic string and small rubber balls. And, oh yeah, stuffed dogs. They had a rule that she would get one gift from each person who chose to give her something for birthdays or Christmas (she never got overwhelmed with unwrapping stuff, she didn't expect to be showered with gifts, and all of the wrapping paper fit into one trash bag) but they could make the plushie a not-birthday thing.

He wondered if maybe he should find something to wrap around the grip--maybe some of that non-military-grade neoprene they used to make handlebar grips. Felt was too flimsy, and velvet would just rub smoothe.

He was debating using fleece, maybe some cuffing from one of his USMC sweatshirts that she loved so much, when the pressure changed to a light tug. He looked down again to see the dog--puppy--gumming his bootlaces, trying to pull them off. Fat chance, he snorted to himself--they were double-knotted. Only reason they were long enough for the pup to reach was because he hadn't tucked them into his boot this time, allowing himself that bit of comfort for the three planes, one bus, and one cab it would take to get to the house.

It was still tugging determinedly--this little scrapper was tenacious, he thought approvingly--when he heard the voice.

"Oh, sir, I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to let go. Please forgive me!"

The Marine looked up to find a woman with silver-streaked brown hair bustling toward him, eyes darting from his utilities to the puppy and back. She finally settled for looking down as she reached where he was leaning against the wall and bent to pick up the startled pup, who fought to hold onto the bootlace. The woman was obviously tired and frustrated, but she cradled the tiny dog in one hand and was gentle when she rescued his lace from her charge. She rose to her full height--all of 5'3"--and met his eyes, gearing up to apologize again. He held up a hand and offered a smile. "No problem," he said. "Little thing's got spunk." He reached out to rub between the floppy black ears, and the pup nudged his hand, pink tongue darting out to sample his cuff.

"Still," the woman said, still struggling to catch her breath, "I am so sorry; I didn't even realize... well, there was no carrier, and she got out of my bag while I wasn't looking."

He nodded. "It's always the short ones you have to watch out for. What is she, and is this escape artist gig new?"

She blinked up at him and then snickered, blushing. "She's a miniature dachshund, and I have no idea." At his quizzical look, she explained, "I'm with the New England Animal Rescue Society; we got a call a few days ago from an attorney who was dissolving the estate of a deceased client, and he informed us that the man had just inherited a bunch of puppies from someone else. They were all healthy and well-treated, and I was able to donate most of them to one of the state schools for the disabled, but they couldn't take one so small. Oh, she's not a runt," she rushed to assure him, "just a mini, but she was still too short--and too long--for their current circumstances." She levelled a loving look at the puppy. "They'd all had their shots, and most of them were already house-trained, including this one, but no one there would take her, and I think she's a little lonely now."

He ran his hand over the silky short hair of the pup's back, and the puppy refused to give up on climbing into his sleeve, her little tail whipping audibly as she tried to get her gums on his utilities. "What happens to her now?"

"She'll go back with me to a shelter, where she'll be listed for adoption; in a few weeks, we'll have her spayed, but after that..." The woman looked sad as she trailed off. Then she shook her head to clear it, and looked up again. "Anyway, I'm terribly sorry that we bothered you." She started to move away, then glanced back at his fatigues. "You shipping out?"

He gave a little grin. "Back in. Just finished a deployment; I walked here from the airport, and if I can get lucky and get a ticket before the next century, I'm one bus and one taxi from home."

She smiled. "That's wonderful! You in for the full hitch? You must have someone waiting for you at home--you're too cute to not've been snatched up."

Some Marine he was; he hadn't blushed in years, and here he was, getting all warmed by this woman who just might be old enough to be his mother. The wink she tossed him told him that she knew and that it would be their little joke. "Yes, ma'am. Wife and a little girl--she'll be five tomorrow. I wasn't supposed to come in till the 15th, but here I am."

"Well, now, that's just about the finest present you could give her, then, being there when she blows out those pink candles on that Barbie doll cake!"

He chuckled. "It may be more like Barbie candles on a Transformers cake, but thanks. But me being there isn't her gift. I'm making a toy for her, though I might be better off just handing her ten bucks and letting her loose in a toy store. A personalized paddleball set ain't exactly gonna make her the hit of the preschool."

The little woman rounded on him, a challenging glint in her eye. "Now, you listen to me, soldier," she said with just the faintest Irish lilt to her firm tone, "you are her daddy, and you are going to be there to kiss her cheek on her birthday, and that matters more than any lump of plastic. She doesn't need another doll or fancy noisemaker; she needs her daddy, she needs your love and kisses, she needs to know what the man under that uniform means, and she needs to know what she means to that man. Making a gift yourself is wonderful, but you are going to be the best daddy in the world when she wakes up on her birthday, even if all you have to give her is a cuddle, and I don't want to hear any more of this nonsense about preschool popularity, you hear me?"

Noticing that some of the people near them were hearing this middle-aged pint-sized dynama lecturing a uniformed United States Marine, he cleared his throat sheepishly. "Yes, ma'am, I believe I do."

"Good. See that you do." She turned away from him, muttering to the dog. "Lord love a duck, you'd think a nice boy like that'd know that already."

He'd never know what came over him or why. "What does it take to adopt a dog?"

She stopped, stood still for a moment, then slowly turned back to face him. The pup saw him and started trying to stretch her way back to him, and the woman retraced her steps. She looked up at him, her sharp green eyes piercing his deep blue ones, and he had the crazy thought that he wished he was still wearing his cover. "What are you asking?"

She knew--he could see it in her eyes. He shrugged. "She's bound for a shelter?" The woman nodded. "With a bunch of other dogs no one wants?" Another nod. "Which'll all be bigger than her?"

"Most probably."

"They'll eat her for breakfast."

The woman nudged closer to him, maintaining eye contact.

"And if they don't kill her, the shelter budget eventually will."

She nodded again, unconsciously adjusting her grip on the ambitious little pup.

She was going to make him say it.

He was crazy. He'd left his sanity in his other uniform.

"Any reason I can't take her?"

The woman huddled right up against his chest, eyes hard, taking his measure. After a few moments of silence, she dropped her gaze to the pup in her arms. "What do you think, wigglebutt? Would you like to be a Marine?"

He should have laughed. He should have rolled his eyes.

He held his breath.

And let it out in a whoosh when the dog's tail started wagging so fast that her tiny rump actually gyrated with it and she barked, high and small, as she kept up her bid for his shirt. The woman, and a couple of people in their 'audience,' chuckled, and the handler let go of the dog. She nodded approvingly when he caught the wriggly little animal--and the wriggly little animal went to work diligently trying to chew up one of his shirt buttons. As she only had a couple of teeth, and neither of them was in the right place for this job, he wasn't so much worried about the integrity of his uniform. He laughed when she sniffed her way up to the next button and started over, systematically trying every button he'd let her reach. She also tried to nose in between buttons to climb inside his jacket.

"Congratulations--it's a girl. I'll have your word, though, your word as a Marine that you will have her spayed and that you will make sure she always has a good home."

He looked into the woman's eyes and smiled. "Yes, ma'am."

She nodded once. "I'm trusting you." She reached into the pocket of her quilted jacket and pulled out a card, slipping it into his breast pocket. "You call me if you need anything. And you wish that girl of yours a happy birthday for me." With that, she turned and vanished into the crowd.

He was still trying to figure out how all of this had happened when he heard an announcement that one of the bus runs had been delayed due to transmission problems, and he felt the mass groan. "Well, it's only been thirty seconds and I've already broken my promise--doesn't look like we're ever gettin' home." He studied her for a moment. "Wigglebutt?" He wrinkled his nose. Out of curiosity, he reached up to take the card out of his pocket. The puppy saw his cuff button and threw herself into her work again. The Marine chuckled. "Well, looks like you've got yourself a name--Buttons. Anything's better than Booger, huh? 'Cept maybe Wigglebutt. Yeah, Buttons we can live with." He pulled out the card... and blinked. There was no organization name, no logo, just the name--Nathalea--and a phone number with no area code. Well, that would be helpful.

He'd save the paddle. He was sure he'd find a use for it sometime.

He was about to look around for something he could buy or barter for to use as a leash while he settled in to wait for a nonexistant bus ticket when a man approached him. "Excuse me, sir? Did I hear that you're trying to get home for your daughter's birthday?"

Five minutes later, he and a freshly walked Buttons were climbing onto a tour bus, where they skipped the need for the cab as the members of Acapella dropped him at the end of his own driveway with a tape of them singing "Happy Birthday" to his daughter. When he insisted on paying for the ride (and the coffee, and the sandwich, and the mixed nuts,) the bass of the group eyed his utilities and said pointedly, "I think you already have."

--

2-3-88 3:03AM

"Thank you, Murray; I really appreciate you dropping us in the driveway." Shannon leaned over to squeeze the cabby's shoulder.

"No problem, Mizz. All part of the service." He put the cab in park and got out to help her with the luggage, expecting to carry the bags while she retrieved the pajama-clad sleeping angel from the other side of the backseat.

"Oh, you can just leave it here, Murray. Soon as I get Kelly in, I'll come back for our stuff." She got out of the cab but didn't make it any farther than that.

"I'll get her, don't worry."

Murray saw the redhead's eyes go wide as she gasped, and he was ready to go into protective man mode when he saw the owner of the voice--tall, muscled, dressed in jeans and a USMC sweatshirt, and grinning at the pretty lady.

"Jethro!" She half-whispered the name, and when he threw a wink at her, she smiled, and her exhausted face lit up the cold night like fireworks on the 4th of July. She ran around the back of the car as he gingerly unbuckled and lifted his daughter from the seat.

The little girl moaned and started to rouse. "Mama?" she murmured.

"Shhh. It's okay, gumdrop, I gotcha. Just go back to sleep now."

The girl froze for a moment, then said, "Daaaaaaaddy," sighed softly, and melted onto his shoulder.

Well, she remembered him, that was for sure.

He tipped the driver, who was insisting on carrying the bags into the warmth of the house so Shannon wouldn't have to come back outside, with the 50 he'd planned to use for a bus ticket, and carried his child up to bed. Once he had her tucked in, he went back downstairs to where his wife was shifting stuff from the entryway into the living room. He reached out and took her hand and gave a little tug back the way he'd come.

"Are you going to take me upstairs and ravish me?" she asked quietly, blinking her bleary eyes.

"Nope. I'm gonna take you down to the basement, show you something that's gonna make you want to kill me, and then I'm gonna take you upstairs, kiss you till your eyes pop out, and then put you to bed. But I think I can pencil in some ravishing..." He pretended to think. "Next Wednesday work for you?"

She squeaked, then tickled him till he'd turned his back to her, and she jumped onto his back, demanding that he at least be a gentleman and carry her to his death. "What's in the basement?"

"My surprise."

"I thought you being here two weeks early was the surprise."

He snapped his fingers. "Man, if I'd known that so many women thought I was so special, I wouldn't have called your mom to come babysit Kelly on Valentine's Day while we go to Manhattan for the night."

Shannon's jaw dropped, and she smacked him on the rear as he descended the stairs. "Leroy Jethro Gibbs! You cheeky..." She blinked. "Hey, wait a minute, whaddya mean, so many women?"

Jethro laughed as he toted his wife down to a meeting with the newest member of the household. "Well, let's see... there's Monday... and Tuesday... and, ohhhhh, Friday, mmmmhmmm..." She kept smacking, and he kept laughing.

Home, his girls--all three of them--and sawdust.

Life was good.

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