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Serbia
"It's like a goddamn western, ain't it?"
Franks laughed loudly and shook his head, pulling a thin metal spear from the roaring fire and letting the cool ocean air kill the flame that lit up sausage he'd been grilling.
"Two old dogs and an old fashioned grill," he snorted, eschewing utensils and biting right into dinner.
Gibbs smirked and shook his head, his eyes on the fire. He was silent as he pierced a slab of steak with metal prongs and lowered the beef over the fire – fire he'd built with leftover wood from his latest repair project.
Franks lit a cigarette with a flame, leaning precariously close to smoldering embers, and Gibbs looked over the ocean for a moment. He squinted into the blackness, trying to see where sky met water, and when he turned back his vision was fuzzy, blinded by the orange and yellow flicker that so drastically differed from the voluminous darkness of night.
He blinked his eyes, shook his head, and with a jolt he was suddenly in front of a different fire, and he wasn't on a beach, but he was in some sort of field –
It had been hard enough to start the damn fire with her hovering over him, fascinated to see it really could be done with just two twigs, but to stoke it, and ensure it stayed in the brick-lined, clumsily made pit, while she burrowed into his side was almost impossible.
He tried to shake her off, and she bit into his shoulder gently.
"'M cold," she murmured, shivering for effect.
"Go put some damn pants on," he retorted.
She'd come out here to do something silly, something romantic – watch the stars – and noticed the little fire pit, and lamented their lack of lighter – and that's when he'd told her he could build her a fire.
She sighed and rolled her eyes, smirking.
"If you insist – " she teased, but he snaked his arm around her waist and pulled her back.
He tossed aside the long, knobby stick in his hand and sat down, pulling her to the dirty, dry ground with him. She tried to resist, but gave in, and tumbled against him, forcefully knocking him backwards.
"Don't tell me you can weave a wigwam out of the tall grass," she whispered sarcastically, her legs splayed over his hips.
He rolled his eyes and pushed her long red hair back, giving her a smug look.
"Warmer?" he asked gruffly.
"Mmm," she murmured, nudging his lips with hers and then grinning, her forehead resting against his, "might be warmer with some of that moonshine."
"That old stuff Callen left on the counter?" Gibbs grunted quietly. "Jesus, Jen, you think I'm gonna try somethin' some genocidal Serbs cooked up?"
"Scaredy-Cat."
He thrust her off him into a heap and went to the house to get the liquor, leaving her laughing and brushing her hair back. She inched closer to the fire while he was gone, letting it warm her, and when he came back, dirty old jar in hand, he stood for a moment and stared.
It looked picturesque, her sitting in that field by the glimmering fire, in a farmhouse on the outskirts of Progorelica – like nothing could touch them; like nothing would touch them, not while they were here.
He sat down behind her, wrapping his arms around her and pulling her close. He handed her the liquor.
"You first," he challenged, his voice low in her ear.
His hands slid over her stomach and down to her thighs, playing with the wrinkled edges of the flannel shirt she was wearing – his flannel shirt, and nothing else – what would the agency think, of him letting his Probie run around like this, naked in Eastern Europe, with bullet shrapnel in her thigh?
His hands ran over the healing scar, and she tipped her head back, batting her lashes before she took a sip.
"After that bullet, I can take anything," she murmured.
She poured a brave amount down her throat, and closed her eyes, wincing. He laughed at her, and took it away, watching her struggle to swallow without coughing, and then he took his own sip, unbothered by the strength.
She tilted her head back again, and he bent to kiss her, savoring her fire-warmed, moonshine-sweet lips.
"Let's stay here," she murmured wistfully. "Let's never leave."
He had just nodded; content, then, to wallow in the anonymity of a countryside safe house in a forgotten world –
-the ocean crashed against the sand, coming precariously close to their feet and the fire, and Franks swore, leaping up.
"Didn't know you liked your steak well done there, Probie," he growled, stamping out a cigarette and indicating Gibbs forgotten roasting spit.
Gibbs yanked the spear back, shaking his head a little – distracted; besieged – he hated how aggressively and poignantly memories of her came back to him; he didn't understand what had happened, how the woman in the hospital room was the same one in these flashbacks, these hidden moments.
The tall grass, the sprawling, eerily silent field – morbidly silent, even – where had they been, where was Progorelica? The city had come back to him, the village, but not –
"Serbia," he muttered out loud.
Serbia, and not too long after genocide had ravaged the eastern block.
"Hell, Probie," groused Franks, "You gonna start talkin' to yourself, then build your own damn hut. Town ain't big enough for the both of us."
Gibbs ignored him, and stared back into the fire again, holding the roasting spit loosely between his knees – had the firelight looked like her hair, or had her hair looked like the fire?
Serbia
-alexandra