Disclaimer: I do not own NCIS and its characters, I'm just playing with them.
Summary: The team has never seen Gibbs being so upset before. Is it just the stress combined with too much caffeine, or their newest dead marine has something to do with him being so tense? Maybe both?
A/N: This is the beginning of my first longer story. It's AU, because of the fact that Kelly is still alive and only Shannon died back then in 1991. Kelly is 27 years old at the time of the story. Jenny isn't dead either, she's still the director of NCIS.
Many thanks to my beta, anna-garny, who helps me a lot with this story!
Plan for that night no. 1 – Tony
No, this time he didn't have a date.
That's because poor Tony-boy was turned down by his latest dream girl- the newest hot shop assistant in a nearby bakery. He really did everything he could to win the girl's heart, but when smiling and eating croissants every day for a week had no effect at all, he gave up trying.
This fact, however, didn't discourage him from having fun, so he found another way to entertain himself that night; he was about to watch a Hitchcock masterpiece with Abby down in the lab.
He couldn't wait for the clock to reach six, so he could finally go to make some popcorn for the big event of the night.
Plan for that night no. 2 – McGee
McGee was about to flock together with his university buddies.
Once a month the little company gathered in a bar to drink a couple of rounds while talking about their lives – real or virtual, whatever.
McGee wasn't quite a beer drinker – he couldn't imagine why all the other members of the geek team liked that stuff so much.
Timothy – as a matter of fact – hated bars, too.
But most of all, McGee abhorred when his so called friends baited him for being an NCIS agent, or rather, made fun of him for not being a programmer at a prosperous firm, like all of them.
Despite all the circumstances, McGee wouldn't have missed out any of these gang meetings for the world, beacuse these dull reunions meant a chance for him to talk about the new software he was working on, about the lines and lines of code he was so proud of.
Plan for that night no. 3 – Ziva
Ziva planned to have pure fun that evening.
She wanted to forget about the world at least for one night. She wanted to be herself; let her senses go wild, be a really bad girl – in that not-killing-anybody sorta way this time.
What had earlier proved to be the best way of letting off steam for her was a night incognito. Walking into a club, dancing passionately under the glaring lights, sipping some coctails, getting tipsy – these were the things she needed exactly, and a little bit of more.
She had in mind she would wait until there were enough guys around her, till the air would become extremely hot, then maybe she would pick the most attractive one in the crowd just to pull him out to the parking lot and make love to him in his car.
The way the alcohol dulls her memory, she would forget the lover's name too.
But this was the night, when Tony didn't make popcorn, McGee didn't get a chance to go into raptures about softwares and Ziva didn't have sex with anybody.
An incoming call in the evening was every agents' nightmare, because it ruined the best-laid plans with one shrill ring.
"Gear up, we got a dead marine! McGee, go get Ducky!" Gibbs commanded, right after he'd hung up the phone.
Gibbs didn't have any special plan for the night, he only wanted to putter with his boat until his headache was gone so that he could sleep. He had only one more important thing to do - to give Kelly a call. The girl had broken up with her boyfriend a week ago, and she wasn't over him yet, so she needed a bit of support from her beloved daddy... and Gibbs would have done anything to comfort her. He even suggested to her that she move back home for a while, but of course she'd declined that, insisting she was all right, life goes on, and if not, then she could cope with the situation just fine, all by herself.
Gibbs didn't like her decision at all, but he knew Kelly was far too proud to show how hurt she was. How could he expect other kinds of behaviour, without knowing that she'd be just as stubborn as him? She was his daughter after all...
Right after he'd heard they had a new corpse, Gibbs felt in his gut that something creepy was about to happen. This feeling had nothing to do with his plans for the night going up in smoke, or with the awful headache he'd suffered from all afternoon. It was an intuition of some kind when a person feels that something is going to happen, something that might affect his whole life.
Just a silly fear, an anxiety about an unpleasant thing that is (maybe) about to happen. Like a sinister calm before the storm that could upset not only his present, or his future, but his past as well.
N*C*I*S
An hour passed in an instant when the unsaid prediction, the bizarre worry fulfilled itself.
And Gibbs was throwing up violently in the dead lieutenant's bathroom.
He felt three dumbfounded looks and Ducky's supporting hand on his back, but he was unable to stop retching for a long time. He put one hand on the tile, his other palm rested on his own forehead.
His head was throbbing and the sight of the dead body laying in a pool of blood in the other room wouldn't give him peace. Like a frozen picture he saw it again and again and he couldn't get rid of it, didn't matter how hard he was trying to concentrate.
"All right, Jethro, it's better now, isn't it?" Ducky asked, when he ascertained that the sudden attack was about to be over. His hand was on Jethro's back, just reassuring him that he wasn't alone.
As the nausea subsided, Gibbs was finally able to extort the horrible image from his mind, but the one it was replaced by was a memory generated by the sight of the dead body and this way that was even more painful for him.
The fair-haired little boy's head rested peacefully on the pillow, but it seemed like his cute, almost angelic face was intensely focusing on something even in his dreams: he pulled such a funny face as if he had been licking a slice of lemon just a moment before, his eyelids stirred from time to time – his muscles wouldn't have relaxed, not for a second as his chest rose and fell. Gibbs couldn't help but smile, because somehow he felt warm inside.
It was at the time of the afternoon nap.
Nick was only sleeping.
And the grievous vision of the body laying in the next room hustled back into his mind right away.
Though meanwhile the hair turned into brown, it framed the very same face exactly the same way.
What made the only difference was that the pillow became dark red and fluid, and the glassy eyes were staring blankly at the ceiling. His chest didn't move any more – his lungs gave up their monotonous activity for eternity.
This time Nick wasn't just sleeping.
As a matter of fact Nick's brains appeared to have been smashed out by some unidentified dirt-bag, who was still out there, somewhere, happily breathing.
When he felt the trembling subside and he could finally feel his legs, Gibbs went to the tap and splashed some water on his chalk-white face. When he straightened up he saw the reflection of an astonished Tony, horror-struck McGee and concerned Ziva in the mirror.
Gibbs turned towards them, water ran down his face and fell towards the floor, streaking down his shirt.
"What are you staring at? Haven't you seen anybody puke before?" he asked, glaring at them... but there was no ferocity in his tone.
"McGee, go look for footprints on the carpet, Ziva, you take photos, Tony, fingerprints and search the place for drugs, maybe there's more than what we saw on the night stand! Come on, why are you still here?"
"On it, boss!" they said in a chorus, then they started to push one another out of the bathroom.
Gibbs faced Ducky now. He knew that no words would be adequate to make the worries that he saw in his friend's eyes disappear, but he couldn't do anything about that, not yet.
But he spoke, because he couldn't leave him there with nothing.
"I don't want to talk about it, Duck. I'm fine now. Let's check on the babies, before they turn the nursery upside down."
He put one hand on Ducky's shoulder, managed a weak smile and followed the three ne'er do wells back to the crime scene.
A/N: Thanks for reading, reviews are welcome and apprecieated! :)