A/N: Thanks to aserene! To take a break from casework...

Chris Pacci looked down at the agent crouched beside his desk as he returned from the Director's office.

"He's in MTAC for the next fifteen minutes," he informed Jenny Shepard, sitting down with a smirk.

Across from him, his probie, Carson, was busy attempting to pretend nothing weird was happening.

Jenny got up slowly and gracefully, flashing a smile at Pacci. She leaned forward to peek into the bullpen where she worked, just to double check. That was a rule, after all—don't believe what you're told, double check.

Gibbs was nowhere to be seen. She should have known Pacci was good for his word. Grinning lopsidedly, she backed up and leaned down in front of Pacci's desk, glancing at Carson before she winked and crept out of his work area.

Pacci raised his eyebrows to himself and shook his head.

Jenny sauntered over to Gibbs' empty desk non-chalantly and picked up the hot cup of coffee he'd left sitting there after the Director had called him upstairs. It was his third cup this morning and they didn't even have a case. They hadn't had a case since the Morand fiasco closed, which meant the past five days had been technical and paper work.

Jenny was bored out of her mind, and Gibbs has become increasingly bad-tempered lately.

At least this time she knew the cause.

She looked left and right again casually, checking to make sure he hadn't somehow snuck up behind her like he usually did and turned slowly, taking his coffee with her and walking towards the filing cabinet.

"What are you doing?"

She nearly spilled the coffee all over herself and the floor.

"BURLY!" she snapped, glaring daggers at him. He lifted his eyebrows from where he stood behind the wall of the bullpen, arms crossed on top, watching her. He glanced down to the coffee cup, to Gibbs' desk, and back at her. His eyes widened.

"Is that—are you insane?" he hissed, lowering his voice instantly.

Jenny moved back towards her desk.

"What do you plan on doing with that?" Stan demanded, still looking as if someone had told him they had a sniper trained on the back of his skull.

'I can't tell you," Jenny informed him, "Rule six."

Stan paused, thinking, and stared at her. She rolled her eyes. He'd been here longer than she had and she still knew the ropes better than him. It made her feel warm and fuzzy inside.

"Best way to keep a secret: keep it to yourself. Second best way: tell—"

"One other person, yeah, I got it," Stan interrupted, muttering. He came into the bullpen, still speaking quietly. "So you can tell me, Shepard, what the hell you're doing with Gibbs' coffee."

She shook her head, smirking, and reached out to pat his face patronizingly.

"So sorry, Stanley," she said, clicking her tongue, "I've already told one other person."

He looked put out. Jenny smiled more broadly and walked around her desk, setting the cup down and blocking Stan's view of it. She leaned against the filing cabinet.

"Maybe you've forgotten rule twenty-three," he said sarcastically, "Never mess with a Marine's coffee if you want to live?" he prompted, when she looked at him blankly.

Jenny shrugged. She hadn't heard of that one before this moment. Eh, no big deal. Rules were made to be broken and Gibbs would have a really hard time trying to kill her…

"You can go away now," she informed him brightly. He didn't move; he furrowed his brow and crossed his arms.

"Do you have some kind of mental disease? Death wish? Most of us spend our careers trying to get on Boss man's good side!" he hissed, staring at her like she was crazy.

"I'm staging an intervention," she said cryptically, putting her face closer to his. He swallowed and backed up a few inches, remembering the last two times he'd crossed her.

"Why am I not allowed to know?" Stan whined childishly.

"Because I don't like you, Burly," she responded, smiling.

He winced and then glared at her in annoyance. She obviously wasn't going to forgive him for the snarky comment the first day they'd met.

"So, Gibbs do something mean to you? And you're getting back at him?"

She didn't answer. She smile at him, lifted an eyebrow, and pushed him away from the filing cabinet, walking towards him.

"I'd suggest you leave, if you want to have any kind of plausible deniability," she said sweetly.

If he interfered with her fun much longer, Gibbs was going to come storming out of MTAC like an angry bull and catch her red handed.

Stan swallowed, nodding. He clearly found her suggestion a fantastic idea. He turned, giving her one last disbelieving look over his shoulder, and returned to whatever he'd been doing with Agent Balboa's team, disappearing behind a desk in another area.

Jenny reached down to open the second to bottom drawer of the filing cabinet and shuffled through her change of clothes, two pairs of shoes, and a few other select items before finding the stuff she'd been saving for a rainy day:

Two packets of sugar and a small cup of caramel creamer.

She threw a cursory glance at MTAC before she popped the lid off of his precious coffee and proceeded to empty the sweet and sugar substances into his bitter brew. Stan might think she was crazy, but that's only because he was afraid of Gibbs. She wasn't. It was amusing to work with him, he was damn good at what he did, and she liked him.

In a completely professional and platonic way.

Snapping the coffee top back on, she added insult to injury by taking a very long drink, making sure some of her lipstick rubbed off on the top.

"I wash my hands of this," Pacci said jovially, walking by with a file in his hand. He nodded upwards to the stairs and Jenny saw Gibbs come out of MTAC, talking with the Director.

"It'll be fun," she drawled convincingly, getting up and replacing the cup in a completely random place on his desk.

Pacci just shook his head and went up the stairs, his smile perhaps a little too wide as he greeted Gibbs passing him on the way down.

Stan walked back into the bullpen just as Jenny re-seated herself at her desk and Gibbs walked in from the other side, muttering a good morning to her. Jenny leaned back in her chair, putting a foot against the edge of her desk, and Stan sat down at his desk hesitantly, watching cautiously.

"We're gonna—where's my--?"

Gibbs stopped mid-sentence and trailed off, looking around when he reached for his coffee on the front of his desk and came up empty handed. He twisted around and spotted it at the back of his desk by his printer. Frowning, he picked it up, opening his mouth to finish his thought.

Again, he stopped, staring at the lipstick on his cup. Slowly, he raised his eyes above the lid to Jenny, narrowing his eyes. Stan cleared his throat and bent forward, suddenly looking very interested in the file he had with him.

"Jenny," he said warningly, glaring at her.

"I was thirsty," she said, "You never think to bring me back any so…" she trailed off, shrugging.

"You don't drink coffee," Gibbs growled.

"You could still ask. It's nice," she informed him.

He scowled at her and wiped her lipstick off the cup with his finger. Stan looked up quickly and furrowed his eyebrows, looking from Jenny to Gibbs, obviously waiting for the explosion.

"We're going up to Norfolk. Something about some alleged sexual harassment between—god," he bent over the trashcan next to his desk and spat out the mouthful of coffee he'd just attempted to drink.

He tore open the cup, noted the lighter, creamier color, and promptly dropped the entire cup in the trashcan, ignoring the fact that the full cup splashed up and made a mess.

Jenny stood up as he walked forward menacingly, glaring at her.

"You really want to work with me without that cup of coffee around?" he demanded, putting his hands on the front of her desk. She leaned forward, tilting her head with a smirk.

"I'm shaking in my heels," she said sarcastically.

"You got a reason," he asked sharply, "for sabotaging my coffee?"

"Boredom," she answered simply. He looked at her like he was unaware anyone had the audacity to actually do such a heinous thing. In return, she gloated for once again thwarting his bad-ass, scary iron man routine.

"If you entertained me, I wouldn't have to resort to sabotaging your Jamaican blend," she informed him.

"You want me to find something for you to do?" he asked threateningly, squinting his eyes.

She wasn't sure exactly what he meant, but she suddenly imagined piles and piles of useless paperwork on her desk and winced.

"Nope. I'm good. Coffee did the trick," she said, dropping back down in her chair and looking up at him. She put her nail in her mouth and bit it absently, smiling.

He grunted in irritation and turned away, giving his trashcan a moody look. He really didn't want to resort to someone babysitting her whenever he left her alone, but she had pulled a few weird stunts these past few days.

He'd come back from Autopsy two days ago to find her wearing a completely different outfit.

He supposed this was better than her falling apart completely, like he'd half expected. He'd been on eggshells around her at first after the Morand Case, anticipating her breakdown. He'd seen it before; Probies hit their first really tolling case and crack under pressure; or make their first kill and never come to terms with it.

She seemed fine, though, and he sure as hell wasn't going to push her to talk or anything.

"We're going down to Norfolk to—"

"Hang on," Stan interrupted, looking immensely confused as he came around his desk, almost glaring at Gibbs.

Almost. He didn't actually have the guts to glare a Gibbs.

Gibbs turned a piercing glare on him. If he didn't get to finish this sentence soon, they were all in for it.

"She practically poisoned your coffee," Stan said, pointing at Jenny accusingly.

Gibbs stared at him.

"Your coffee, Boss! Your power source! Rule twenty-three? Come on, Boss!" He whined, coming as close to stomping his foot as a thirty-year-old man could.

Gibbs continued to stare at him silently.

"Why does she get away with everything?" Stan demanded petulantly, turning to stare at Jenny in annoyance and admiration.

Whack.

Jenny giggled as his head shot forward under Gibbs' palm.

"We are going to Norfolk to look into sexual harassment accusations," he said in a calm voice, glaring at Stan. He turned his gaze on Jenny, remaining silent a moment to give her a good glare too. She lifted her shoulders innocently.

"Get the car," he said "I'm going for coffee," he added with a growl and a menacing look at her.

Halfway out of the bullpen, he stopped and turned around, glaring at Jenny pointedly.

"You want anything?" he asked sardonically.

Stan's mouth dropped open shamelessly.

"Nah, I don't drink coffee," she answered politely. "Thanks for the offer!" she yelled after him, suppressing another laugh as he left with a glower.

She stood up and holstered her firearm, giving Stan another patronizing look as she made sure she had her badge, ID, everything she needed for a quiet investigation.

"Are you sleeping with Gibbs?" Stan asked suspiciously as she picked up her jacket.

Caught off guard, Jenny stopped and stared at him, narrowing her eyes instantly at the suggestion. Of course Stan would assume because Gibbs didn't treat her like crap, she had to be sleeping with him. That was who Stan was. That was why she didn't like or respect him; he made comments like that towards her all the time.

Glaring at him with tight lips for a moment, she reached up behind his head and slapped him hard enough to make Gibbs proud.

"You can't do that!" he shrieked, grabbing his head.

She shoved by him, making sure she hit his shoulder hard, and went to get the car.

Gibbs shut the file from Norfolk in front of him and tapped his fingers on it, leaning back. He looked across the bullpen at Shepard's head, resisting the urge to ask her what she was doing on the floor behind her desk.

"What's your theory?" he asked gruffly, reaching for a cold cup of coffee. He hadn't let this one out of his sight since he'd bought it.

"She's not being harassed," Jenny answered, her voice muffled. She appeared behind her desk, rising up on her knees and leaning forward, laying her gun and holster next to her lamp. Gibbs studied her. He'd been thinking along the same lines, but he'd figured she would be more on the woman's side in the whole situation.

He smirked inwardly. Just another way she proved she wasn't the stereotypical, bleeding-heart female.

"Why?" he prompted.

She had to learn to back up her conjectures. He'd noticed she seemed to just make a statement and insist she was right. End of story. The only annoying thing was she just happened to be right a lot.

Jenny shrugged, disappeared, and then reappeared with a stack of papers. She stood up and dropped back into her chair, leaning forward on her knees.

"The tears were convincing, and yeah, the guy was a slimy bastard," she said neutrally, and even a little unsympathetically, "but she had a nice hicky right under the collar of her uniform. She claims he's making her sleep with him because of some blackmail she won't tell us about, which sound sketchy right there. But assault, rape—it's not about sensuality, it's about power. A predator is not going to take the time to give a hickey, and a woman desperate to be helped is not going to attempt to hide the evidence of assault if he did."

Jenny shrugged her shoulders and started flicking through the papers. She knocked them all off haphazardly into the wastebasket.

"Seems to me that her lover started seeing another girl, and she saw an opportunity to wreck his career,"

Gibbs nodded, impressed with her observation. Not that he'd admit it, but he'd been too busy focusing on the woman's eyes to notice anything else about her. He watched her jerk open a drawer, scoot her chair up, and bend over it, producing clattering noises as she shuffled through it.

He sipped the cold coffee absently, watching her curiously. She pulled a few empty water bottles out of the drawer and a hairbrush. And hairspray. Gibbs pulled the cup away from his mouth, unable to remain silent on the matter anymore.

"Jen, what the hell are you doing?"

She looked up in mild surprise.

"Cleaning out my desk," she answered slowly, caught off guard.

He raised his eyebrows and got up, coming to stand over her and examine everything. Hairbrush, hairspray, papers, gun—there were things that belonged and things that didn't. She gave him a look and went back to the drawer she was working on, which seemed to be filled with hair things.

That would explain why he rarely caught her looking like hell, even when they were up for days on a case.

"I don't like you hovering," she warned without looking up, throwing an empty Hershey's kisses bag into the trash.

"Go something to hide?" he teased. She looked up and glared at him.

"Would you like it if I got all up in your space when you were trying to work?" she asked.

"You're not working," he scoffed without budging. He continued to hover and Jenny rolled her eyes, opening the drawer above her current one. She started to paw through it, moving pens and other office supplies out of the way.

After a moment of being ignored, he picked up the finished files on the corner of her desk and went to the filing cabinet with them, setting his coffee cup on top and reaching down without looking to open one of the drawers.

He reached down to place the file inside in case the Norfolk thing turned into something bigger and stopped short.

"What the…"

Jenny looked up at his half-asked question and blanched, leaping up from her desk like she'd been burned. She dove forward, trying to slam the drawer shut, but Gibbs held fast, keeping it open.

He turned his head to her and stared, smirking slowly.

"What have you got in here, Shepard?" he teased, knocking her arm out of the way and moving to block her from pulling any more violent drawer slamming attempts.

He knocked aside two pairs of heels and picked up a blouse, smirking at her over his shoulder. She had a change of clothes in the filing cabinet and, if he was seeing right, other girly toiletries.

"Gibbs," she said warningly, hitting him repeatedly in the elbow. He shook her off and ignored her. She ducked under his arm and wriggled up next to the drawer, grabbing his hand. He smacked her away playfully and continued going through the drawer.

"Who knew you were such a girl, Jen," he taunted, rifling through the drawer.

A blouse, shoes, a skirt and a pair of trousers, deodorant, a few items of make-up…he pushed aside a bottle of face wash to see what else she had in there—and stopped.

She flinched under his arm. He'd unfortunately come across her other feminine products in the back, and somehow managed to pick up a very lacy, very off limits pair of panties.

He dropped them like he'd been shocked and drew his hand back, his ears turning red. Glancing quickly at Jenny, he was annoyed to see her looking amused, a smirk of her own playing across her lips.

She removed his fingers from the handle on the drawer one by one and slammed it shut, leaning against it.

"At least you bought me dinner before you tried to get in my pants," she said sarcastically, lifting an eyebrow as she gestured to the drawer. He cleared his throat and narrowed his eyes at her, apparently trying to look stern or something. Like she shouldn't have those things at work. Serve him right for snooping.

"Careful where you stick your hands," she teased warningly, tilting her head at him and slapping her hand against his chest as she pushed him out of her way. She sat back down at her desk and bent over her drawer again, looking up once to smile slyly at him when she caught him still glaring at her.

"It is possible for women to carry a gun and wear lace too, Jethro."

XOXO

Alexa