The young medical examiner felt the flesh of the body lying before him give way as he pushed down onto the scalpel. His mentor left the autopsy room to grab a bite to eat, and Palmer wanted to do the best job for his lovable boss. He was glad Ducky was his superior and not Gibbs, whom he was afraid of. Palmer often tried to hide his comfortableness concerning Gibbs and wondered if he was at all successful.
When he first started performing autopsies, the horror of cutting into people, especially as lovely and beautiful as the woman lying on the cold table before him, gave him nightmare. But Palmer learned a while ago to accept the necessity of this. The body—no matter how beautiful was, after all, lifeless and dead, and the only thing left to do for her was to catch the perp who killed her. He knew his skills would help the NCIS agents, whom he considered to be friends, to do just that. Their main suspect was this woman's former boyfriend, whom she dumped several days ago. Apparently, from what Palmer heard, he wasn't too happy.
Palmer was glad that McGee was taking his break up with Abby well. Not that McGee would ever do anything like this to the forensic scientist no matter how well he was taking it or not, but still—Palmer was glad. Things were extremely tensed between them at first, but it seemed like McGee was accepting this. He even saw McGee and Abby laugh together in her lab as their fingers clanked across the keyboard.
At first, everyone—including Palmer, no, especially Palmer- was shocked when they saw Gibbs kiss Abby not on the cheek as he sometimes did but on the lips. The only thing that kept Palmer from staring too long as Gibbs's eyes narrowing at him. "Isn't there somewhere you have to be, Palmer?" the former marine sniper asked, every word sending shivers down Palmer's spine.
But soon everyone accepted the relationship between the head NCIS agent and forensic scientist. Interestingly, Palmer noticed that very little else—besides the position of their kisses—changed between Gibbs and Abby. After all, they had always been close. Very close. Palmer just never realized how close. He wondered if anyone else did, especially if McGee did. Is it strange that your girlfriend left you for your boss, he wanted to ask. But Palmer decided it was best to keep his mouth shut as he imagined Gibbs glaring at him for daring to ask such a question. But Palmer noticed that McGee was taking this news very well—like he had known, had suspected. Palmer supposed that was why McGee was a federal agent.
Finishing his examination, he decided to step out of the autopsy room and into the world outside for a breath of fresh air.
"Hey, McGee!" Abby voice rang out. "You will not believe who I ran into recently." Her voice was bubbling over with excitement. But this was Abby. Something had to be seriously wrong for her not to be excited. "Ruby! Remember her—the scientist that we met from the country. She helped us solve a case. She asked about you. You should definitely ask her out, McGee."
"Really? Great! Thanks, Abby!" Palmer could see the Agent's face lit up.
Her arms wrapped around McGee's body in a hug. Palmer smiled to himself. He often found it sad that all relationships didn't end like that—when they had to end—with a hug.
He walked outside, his fingers pushing a familiar phone number on his cellphone.
"Hey, Jimmy," a woman's voice spoke on the other line. "Is everything okay?"
"Everything's great. Just calling to tell you that I love you." Palmer smiled at the phone and knew his wife was smiling right back.
The end!
I was actually going to end it with the last chapter, but I felt it would be wrong to leave McGee all miserable, so I wrote this chapter/epilogue. Thank you for the reviews! I don't write a lot for fun, and this is my first NCIS fic, so feedback is greatly appreciated.