Chapter Seven: Kate and the Gremlin
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Tony lolls his head back against the head of the chair and moans loudly.
Kate ignores him.
There's a muffled thump and, when she peeks, he's dropped his head onto the desk and is watching her out of the corner of one eye. As soon as he notices she's watching, he makes a pitiful noise.
She looks back down at her report, determined to ignore him.
A few minutes later, breath on the back of her neck alerts her to his sudden proximity, almost slamming her skull into his nose as she launches upright in shock. "Damnit, Tony! Wear a bell!"
The miserable expression he's wearing tells a story, and it's an annoyingly woeful one. "Kate, what happened to you to make you so cold?" he whines, drooping onto the divide behind her desk and covering his face with one arm. "Me, your faithful partner, suffering. I'm suffering, Kate, and you have no pity. Suffering like Ol' Yella."
"Ol' Yella got shot," Gibbs growls as he strides past, seemingly materializing from thin air as usual. "You need shooting?"
There's another man who needs a set of bells, Kate thinks, watching him go. Maybe she can strike a deal with Ducky…
"Understood Boss," DiNozzo says, standing abruptly to attention. "Shooting is unnecessary."
Kate watches Gibbs as he strides to his desk, shuffling busily through his drawers. "A case?"
"Nope," he replies, verbose as always. "Paperwork."
Tony thumps his head back onto his desk, muttering, "The suffering increases," to the scuffed wood. He's flung one arm out across the desk dramatically and Kate leans back in her chair, observing the way the sleeve of Tony's designer suit has ridden up his arm and exposed the burns that are only just beginning to scab and heal.
Gibbs drops a file on her desk, blocking her view. "Ducky wants this," he says, before striding off. An arm snakes over, pulling the file out from under her, Tony having snuck up to her again now that the coast is clear.
"Oooh," Tony croons. "Paperwork for the new autopsy slave temping for Gerald."
"Feeling better now, are you?" Kate asks him. She leans back and looks him up and down.
"Kate, Kate, Kate," he chuckles. "Never underestimate the medicinal power of having a new probie to haze."
"He's an autopsy tech," she corrects him, frowning with concern as he spins on his heel and strides towards the elevator. "Not a probie. Where are you going?"
Tony grins back at her and breaks into a jog. She cusses under her breath, taking off after him. "Tony! Don't you dare!"
But since when has he ever listened to her?
It's a race to the door to autopsy and they make it at the same time, bursting through the entrance in a flurry of shoving and pushing. "Tony, give me that, ugh," she snaps, copping a hand to her face that pushes her away from the file as he tries to duck out from under her arm. "Geddof, give it. Give. It!"
"Um, can I help you?" asks a flustered voice behind them. Kate trips over Tony's outstretched foot and almost sprawls onto the floor, saved by a firm arm snaking around her belly and holding her steady. She looks up, panting, into wide green-grey eyes magnified by smeary glasses.
She really doesn't have to look up far to meet those eyes. Even hanging barely a foot from the ground off of Tony's arm, she's almost at eye level with the new guy. He's tiny and spindly, with greyish skin and inhuman eyes, wide, bat-ears almost obscured by a mop of wild, ratty curls. The lab-coat he's wearing is pinned up around his knobbly legs, stuck into place by a complicated arrangement of clothes pins.
"New guy!" Tony crows, face lighting up as though it's Christmas. "We were just fighting over who drew the short straw to bring your paperwork down. It was no small order, you know."
"Stop," Kate hisses at him, standing upright and brushing his arm off her, feeling the warm line across her stomach where he'd held her tingle slightly as his arm slides away. "Hello, Caitlin Todd. Kate to you guys. Pleasure to meet you."
"Palmer, James Palmer, but my friends call me Jimmy," the new guy replies, huge eyes flicking from Kate to Tony warily. "I'm new here, the new guy, but you know that. Because you… you called me the new guy. New here." He shuffles nervously, pushing glasses up the bridge of his nose with long, narrow fingers and rustling the tightly furled wings on his back gently.
Kate's stomach sinks. Oh, this guy is way too easy a target for DiNozzo.
"Well, Jimbo!" Tony crows. He walks forward and places one hand on the top of Jimmy's curly hair, ruffling it in a friendly manner. "It's a tall order to replace Gerald, he was certainly larger than life. But, with my help, we can reach those high expectations. In fact, I think there's a shortage—"
"That's enough now, Anthony," Ducky instructs, stepping out of his office. "As hilarious as your wealth of stature jokes may prove to be, Mr. Palmer here has work to do. Something which I'm sure you have plenty of yourself."
Kate allows herself to be shooed out of autopsy along with the gloating Tony. "It was nice to meet you, Jimmy!" she calls back over Ducky's shoulder as he firmly pushes them into the elevator. Her last glimpse of Palmer is him awkwardly raising his hand in farewell as the elevator doors close. As soon as they're alone, she faces Tony and groans inwardly at the blissful expression on his face.
"He's a gremlin," Tony moans with a gross kind of rapture. "He's a literal autopsy gremlin. Pointy ears, spindly fingers, wings, the lot. Oh, it's Christmas, Kate. I have so many ideas."
Kate realises something and starts laughing. Tony blinks at her, startled. "Oh my god," she manages, thinking of their witch. "Abby is going to freak out!"
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Abby freaks out.
"I told him not to come in here, Gibbs!" she's shouting. "He's crossed the line this time! Look, what is that, that there? Tell me what that is."
Gibbs turns, examining the spot on the floor that Abby is pointing to and answering with a curt, "That's a line."
Abby throws her arms in the air. "It's more than a line!" she hollers. "It's a 'No-Go-Jimmy' line, and he crossed it!" Kate can feel her mouth hanging open, the sight of Abby in a full-on witch-meltdown a rare and enchanting spectacle. Gibbs looks at the line again, then back at Abby, one eyebrow raised. "That's right, Gibbs!" Abby responds to his expression, hands now on hips. "How can I be expected to work under these conditions?"
"What is actually wrong?" Kate asks hesitantly, trying to defuse the situation since their boss seems content to stand there twitching his eyebrows in lieu of speaking.
Abby turns to face her with the full might of her forceful personality. Kate feels herself shrinking back nervously. "He killed Major Mass-Spec, Kate!" she howls, and are those… real tears? "He murdered my baby!"
Gibbs walks over to the silent machine, tapping the top. "How?"
Abby sniffles sadly. "He brushed against it and it just stopped. There's a 'No-Go-Jimmy' line for a reason Gibbs, he needs to respect that! Gremlins break things—it's what they do. They're poison to technology!"
Gibbs smacks his palm down hard on the top of the machine, much to Abby's consternation. Kate flinches as she shouts, charging over to put herself between Gibbs and her 'baby'.
But the silent machine chokes out a long whine of whirring, before humming smoothly to life.
Abby stares at it. "Wow, Gibbs. Guess you really do have magic hands." Their boss chuckles, patting her on the arm and walking out without another word. "I'm still really mad about the line!" Abby shouts after him. "Really mad!"
"I'll talk to Palmer," Gibbs calls back before the elevator dings.
"Bert's looking lively," Kate offers, as Abby stares in bewilderment at her mass-spectrometer. The stuffed hippo stares back at her from Abby's desk, one ear charred.
"I don't understand," Abby says, mouth twisting in confusion. "He's supposed to be a one-woman machine. Yet, Gibbs just made him purr like a kitten? My one-woman machine is actually a bi-person machine. Why didn't he tell me sooner? He should know I'll always be proud of him."
Kate abruptly decides that she's had enough Abby for one day, and heads for the elevator. Maybe Tony's finally finished googling short jokes for Palmer and they can get lunch.
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Tony slings his arm around her, pulling her close and breathing beery breath into her face. "Kate, Kate, wonderful Kate, have I told you how great…" he slurs before trailing off and hiccupping.
Kate tries to wriggle out from his grip unsuccessfully, fighting the drunken urge to giggle. "Thanks Tony," she says, feeling a warm bubble of happiness in her chest. Or possibly that's the incredible amount of alcohol she's had foisted on her tonight by her co-workers. Turns out Abby can quite easily drink them all under the table, even the vampire. Who, Kate has discovered tonight, can get drunk, contrary to popular belief.
He places a finger carefully on her mouth, almost going cross-eyed with the focus it takes to not miss and poke her in the eye. "Shhhh, sh sh sh. Not done. Nahwt done… I want you to know, that out of everyone at NC-CIS, including McGoober, you have the greatest ass." To punctuate this sentence, he tries to point to her rump, missing and tipping back a little bit.
Kate stares at him, face still, until Abby flings herself out of nowhere and cuts off any retort she'd planned and pummelling Tony with half-hearted punches as the vampire tries to hold her back. "Toooooony, what about my butt?" she shrieks. "And Gibbs' butt! Gibbs has a great butt!"
It's the wisest choice to walk away and have nothing to do with the steadily worsening argument about the quality of NCIS posteriors, so Kate turns the other way to face Palmer and a teary McGee. "Is McGee crying?" she asks Palmer, wiping the condensation from her glass onto her jeans.
Palmer twitches his ears and looks up at her with an expression that can only be described as pleading. "Help me, Kate. I don't know what's happening, I was just talking about this story Ducky was telling me about when he was a young man and—"
"Never mind, Jimmy, I'm pretty sure I know why he's crying," she cuts him off, patting him on the head and standing to walk away. Wobble away. Just, away.
McGee leans back as she passes behind him, laying his head against his arm. "Kate you're wonderful." He's beaming, smiling wetly up at her. "You're wonderful, and Abby is wonderful, and Gibbs is wonderful, and Tony is…" He stops, face scrunching up with the difficulty of his thoughts.
Oh, he's that kind of drunk, Kate thinks, watching as he suddenly begins to tear up again, whispering, "wonderful," to himself. Well, at least he isn't complimenting her assets. She extracts herself from him, carefully draping him over Palmer, who almost falls off the stool he's sitting on under the weight, having to fling his wings out to try and balance and almost sweeping drinks off the barmaid's tray. Kate decides to make herself scarce as Palmer stutters out an apology.
Gibbs is carefully lining up a shot at the pool tables with Ducky when she wanders over there, listening to Ducky chatter on about a murder case he'd once assisted on with the investigation, where a man had been bludgeoned with a pool cue and coated in blue chalk.
"Problem, Kate?" Gibbs asks her mildly, standing and tilting his head at her the same way he had the day she'd met him at Air Force One. Maybe it's the alcohol that gives her the guts to do it, or maybe it's the warm, happy feeling that's spread throughout her entire body as she looks at her boss, the man who'd given her the opportunity to join this crazy, wonderful, weird-ass family.
"Thank you," she murmurs into his chest, finding herself in a sudden wobbly hug that's she's pretty sure she'd initiated without conscious thought. He wraps an arm around her shoulders, pulling her close. His jacket smells of wood and a slight musky scent, and she thinks that she's never quite been as happy as in this moment.
