Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by the writers, producers, et al of the television show 'NCIS'. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended. This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any person, internet persona, or other being, living or dead, is completely coincidental and unintentional unless otherwise noted.
A/N: I've said it before, and I'll say it again – having to work for a living sucks ass. I meant to have this out about two weeks after I posted the last chapter, but RL stepped in and said, 'Oh, no you don't!' Sigh. Maybe this time, my lotto ticket will win more than two or three bucks. Anyway, I should also mention that I don't own An Irish Lullaby; I don't think anyone actually owns that song, though Bing Crosby did a recording of it once upon a very long time ago, nor do I have anything to do with any of the nearly-innumerable versions of Whiskey in the Jar that have been recorded over the last sixty years or so (again, that one is one of those songs that no one should lay sole ownership to – it's too bloody old).
And if anyone doesn't know, a 'gross' is a unit of measure, meaning a dozen dozen, or 144 to be precise.
I say it again in the A/N2, but I should put it here, too: This chapter isn't done yet, but I thought y'all would want something shorter now, rather than having to wait for-freakin'-ever for me to find the time to wedge in more time to work on this sucker.
The Goth, the Cowboy, and a Mom
Chapter Eleven
Just south of a nowhere burg by the name of Monrovia, Maryland – which, in turn, wasn't all that far from being spitting-distance from Fort Detrick – a narrow, washboarded and potholed strip barely wide enough to accept a standard sized car peeled away from State Highway 75 in a generally easterly direction before twisting and turning through a hayfield, some thick trees, over a small stream (which sported decent fishing anytime it wasn't froze solid), through more trees, across a set of railroad tracks, and finally came to a circular dead end at the midpoint of a skewed, sorta-rectangular swath of knee-high green grass and wildflowers growing up around the Irving household, and surrounded by still more trees.
The house itself was something of a sight to behold; what had quite obviously started its life as a simple stick-built farmhouse (more likely than not purchased direct from Sears & Roebuck around the turn of the last century) had apparently found the climate of the eastern seaboard much to its liking and had grown wild as the flowers in its yard. Standing in the driveway's turnabout, facing the house, the left side of the building had an obvious late-Victorian-era addition, complete with 'princess tower' and was noticeably taller than the rest of the building. The middle section – the original house – was two stories tall, with space for a short-ceilinged attic or a tall-ceilinged crawlspace. The far left side of the building was but a single story tall, and seemed to be rather longer than the rest of the house, though it was a little difficult to tell from the drive.
More remarkable than its hodgepodge structural factuals was its color scheme. The wall facing the drive was a bright, cheery yellow, but the Victorian tower had been painted pale pink (nearly matching the wild roses which grew in the turnabout's center circle) and the wall which angled front-to-back of the middle section's second story was a deep green shade, with undertones of blue. The front-to-back wall on the first floor was an orange-red tone, normally only seen in poppies. The roof – the only bit of the visible portion of the house which seemed remotely normal, save for the white trim around the doors and windows, done up in normal dark grey-black asphalt shingles – was also somewhat less-than-usual; lines of rope and stout-looking wire were affixed to the roof's sloping surface, to the walls where they rose above the roofs below, and to any structure which poked up through the roof itself (such as the three chimneys visible from this side). One of the rope-getups that had been secured from the peak of the middle portion's roof to the midpoint of the lowest section's roof (of the three, the left's roof was the least-angled) looked like nothing so much as a cargo-net 'ladder', much like those seen at any child's playground in the nation.
Trellises decorated all visible walls at the ground level, usually sporting some vine whose flowers were a direct contrast to the walls behind. Nearly unnoticed in this riot of color and chaos and confusion was a dirt track leading around the tall end of the house. If one followed this narrow track, they would soon find that the back walls continued with their bright and merry one-color-per-wall scheme and that the one story side of the home was indeed about three times longer than the house proper, making an L shape which hugged a mass of toys scattered around a larger-than-life oak tree, from which hung a worn-out old tire on a thick hank of sturdy rope. One could also see the slide which sloped downward from the roof of the long arm of the L, forming yet another seemingly-protective 'hug' around a large rosebush with blossoms of pale blue-violet.
Once the house itself was out of the way, a visitor to this house on the border between reality and fantasy could see a garage, painted sensible white (but whose trim around the doors and windows had obviously been done with the leftover bits from the main house), down a short hill, just to the right of a large red barn. A series of fenced enclosures – some large and grassy, some small and dusty – spiraled out from the barn to the forested edge of the clearing, and a duck pond sat at precisely the midpoint between garage and barn, but no white ducks graced it with their presence. No, it was the less common wild variety which cooled their feet in its murky waters, and no goats, pigs, sheep, or chickens marred the barnyard with their presence. Instead, a pair of pretty buckskins and a palomino grazed peaceably near the pond side of their enclosure. In addition to the horses, the only other animals not decreed to be there by nature were the cats (which had numbered thirty-nine the last time any one had bothered to census them) and Lazy, the golden retriever who spent most of his time asleep on the front porch.
Dawn was just starting to kiss the eastern horizon when Quin's inner alarm told him it was time to shake dreamerie from his mind. Had this been a working day, he would have gotten up, started the coffee for Sammy, and then checked the corkboard by the phone to see whose turn it was to make breakfast. If it was his turn, he'd grumble under his breath and make either oatmeal, malt-o-meal, or grits – for all that he could cook, and enjoyed doing so, he wasn't all that fond of breakfast in particular. He much preferred it when Sammy had to cook breakfast. She may wind up burnin' down the house some day by trying to make mac'n'cheese, but she can make pancakes and hash browns and waffles fit for a king. Her lasagna's good enough to kill for. Huh…I've wondered before and I'm sure I'll ask it again in the future, but how come she can't make nothin' that's not either breakfast or lasagna?
Since it wasn't a working day, Quin allowed himself a brief lie-in. He couldn't bring himself to be too lazy, though; it just wasn't in his nature. Even when he was a kid, he never slept much past dawn, unless he was sick. Besides, he needed to tend the horses – today was Aaron's day off. Aaron DeParr was a recent retiree and their hired-man who took care of the livestock and any minor repairs that surfaced around the house.
Eventually – meaning about twenty minutes after waking – Quin stretched and pulled himself out of bed. The movement woke Sammy and her head turned to face Quin's side of the bed even as the rolling stretch started creeping up from her toes. While Quin pulled on a pair of jeans and a worn t-shirt, Sam's stretch finished its journey with her customary yawning squeak. "Coffee?" her bleary voice demanded.
"In a bit, Sammy," Quin replied, sitting on a folded quilt that topped a chest packed full of winter bedding that rested at the foot of their four-poster bed. He pulled on a pair of socks and smiled lightly at Sam's petulant groan. "Aaron's off today – horses before humans."
"Sure, throw my own words back at me, why doncha." Sam emitted another squeaky yawn before stumbling blindly towards the bathroom. "Coffee," she demanded on passing Quin.
Quin sighed and shook his head. Don't ever change, hon. He padded out of their bedroom and down the hall to the second bathroom in that part of the house. Fifteen minutes later, he was marginally more aware and presentable. He flicked the switch on the coffee-monster as he crossed the kitchen, headed for the mudroom and his boots.
A word about the coffee-monster – it was far from a normal coffee maker. Coffee makers tend to come in three styles: a percolator, a drip, or the fancier espresso-style machines. The monster was something of a cross between an espresso-machine and a whiskey still out of the hills of Tennessee. The original monster had been developed by Sam's father, long before Sam had been born, and the basic concept was to keep the temperature of the coffee at precisely two-hundred degrees Fahrenheit while extracting the maximum amount of actual coffee from the grind without losing any of the flavor or subjecting it to possible scorching. The original monster did this by manual monitoring of heating elements (with a standard candy-thermometer, secured through the side of a giant economy-sized percolator that had a steam-pipe which reprocessed the steam back through the coffee). The incarnation of the coffee-monster which graced the Irvings' kitchen was somewhat more high-tech. In place of the candy thermometer, there was a digital, computer-controlled heating element which forced hot water through the grind at high pressure, while high-density plastic tubing routed any steam which tried to escape back through the brewed coffee.
The result of this contraption was a cup of coffee which possessed the maximum possible content of coffee flavor and aroma (not to mention a higher-than-average caffeine content).
Quin sometimes joked about having married Sam for unlimited access to her coffee-monster.
Outside, Quin quickly tended the horses – he forked some hay into their stalls, should they tire of the grass outside, and made sure the water trough was full – and then took a few minutes to simply enjoy the daylight slowly creeping its way across the landscape. In truth, he was also enjoying the silence. But I'm also looking forward to the kids coming home today. When'd Becky say they were coming back? Eleven? Sounds about right. If Sam hadn't already made plans for the day, he would have headed for Beer Run Brook and spent the day fishing, likely fending off offers of help from Phoenix off and on until the sun set. But Sam had invited a passel of her new coworkers over, and so Quin had a list of crap to get done before they showed up.
First things first, he headed to an incongruously-paved spot about halfway between the barn and the house; the paving was red brick, about ten feet by twenty, roughly ovoid in shape, and encircled a permanent brick-lined pit dug into the ground. He got the fire going in the barbeque pit, using hickory logs others would have called whole trees, and set up the iron stands that supported the roasting spit. Then he headed back to the house and helped himself to some breakfast. Sam left a note on the dry-erase board on the fridge that let him know she'd headed to the grocery store to pick up the last of the supplies they'd need for the day while he'd been dealing with the barbeque and horses.
Once he'd had just enough to keep the edge off until later – namely, some peanut butter on toast and coffee – Quin got out a large pot and filled it slightly more than halfway with water, adding some white vinegar and salt before setting it to boil on the stove. When the water started boiling, he carefully dropped whole eggs into it, one at a time, until all three dozen were out of their cartons.
While the eggs boiled, Quin then got out the ingredients for bread, and set to making enough dough for a gross of dinner-rolls. If there were any left, dinner rolls froze nicely, and they had a walk-in in the basement, so he wasn't going to get too worked up in either case.
Sam got home while Quin was in the middle of kneading the giant ball of dough on the stout kitchen table. She lingered in the doorway, admiring how the resistance of the dough made the muscles in Quin's arms and shoulders pop with definition and move oh-so-prettily under his tee. "You just gonna stand there and watch?" Quin asked.
"Nope, but I still gotta take the time to admire the view," Sam retorted. "Anyway, picked up everything that was on your list. You gonna help me schlep it all in?"
Quin finished manipulating the mass of dough into a roughly-spherical glob and nodded. "Yeah. You get the spit washed?"
"Last night, after we got home."
"Good," Quin eyed the ball of dough on the table one last time before turning to face Sam. A grin flashed across his face when he saw that she was wearing her one all-black shirt.
Reading the mischievous glint rightly, Sam backed away from Quin's flour-coated self as he stepped towards her. "No," she said, shaking her head.
"Yes," Quin replied, then lunged in Sam's direction. Sam squealed and ran down the hallway towards the side-door that opened onto the 'playground'.
Gibbs didn't particularly care that he was nearly two full hours early – If no one's home, I doubt they'll care if I take up space in their driveway 'til they get there. The day was absolutely stunning; one of the very few days wherein the weather was perfect. It was about seventy-six degrees, with just enough breeze to keep the air from feeling stuffy, bright blue skies and clusters of friendly blobs of clouds steadily moving across the sky while subtly changing their shapes from one moment to the next.
He veered off onto the gravel trail which Sam's instructions informed him would lead to her house, a rooster-tail of dust pluming up behind his Challenger. Had he not had the driving experience he did, the road likely would have had him inching his way along – some of the potholes were large enough that a low-riding car could risk a cracked axle if they weren't careful. Gibbs made a mental note to call Ducky and warn him; the road would be particularly unforgiving to the wooden frame of the doctor's Morgan.
The car rattled across a narrow wooden bridge over a deceptively deep stream (at either end of the bridge was a cockeyed, hand-painted sign which proclaimed the waterway as 'Beer Run Brook' – though he knew from maps of the region that the small stream didn't have an official name) before following the 'road' through the thick, dappled shade and up a small rise. On cresting the rise, Gibbs was startled out of his thoughts by the sudden appearance of a rather tall-looking horse, whose coat was the same shade of pale yellow as the dust his car kicked up along the drive with white mane and tail, ridden by a kid of perhaps ten years, who wore a blue denim jacket, jeans, and whose curly orange-red hair was shoulder-length and shot through with streaks of pale orange and blonde; the color of the kid's hair was such that it looked like the kid's head was on fire as the motion of the horse rearing up at the sudden appearance of Gibbs' Challenger caused it to flicker in and out of spots of sunlight.
In less time than it took to realize what he'd seen, Gibbs' hands and feet were working on instinct, tapping the brake and swinging the car around the horse. The right rear tire slipped off the graveled surface and caught the edge of a jagged drainpipe, hidden from view by the thick underbrush. The metal gouged a substantial hole in the tire, and as Gibbs wrenched the wheel back around to get the car on solid ground, it sent a distinctive shudder through the classic car. With his pulse thudding at his temples, Gibbs spotted a trail crossing the drive just ahead – the trail was merely two dirt tracks with a strip of lethargic grass growing in the middle – and limped his car to a stop. He got out of the car to make sure the kid and horse were okay, only to see that the kid and his palomino were less than a dozen yards away.
The horse was more interested in the mass of green at the edge of the drive than the humans, but the kid was glaring at Gibbs with all the anger a preteen could muster. "You okay?" the kid asked.
Gibbs nodded. "Don't think my car will ever be the same, though. You?"
"I'm fine," the kid's reply was clipped and over-enunciated, much like the short bursts of anger more common to someone twice his age.
The kid shifted a little in his saddle, and Gibbs realized that the kid – ten or not – had a loaded slingshot in hand. The slingshot wasn't any kid's toy, either, but a legitimate hunting weapon, capable of putting a piece of lead shot through a deer skull at full draw. He didn't think the kid was quite strong enough to pull it to full draw, but Gibbs thought it best to err on the side of caution. Besides, I just about ran him over – I'd be a little jumpy, too.
Gibbs held his hands out, much like he'd done any one of the countless times he'd been forced to approach an edgy and armed perp throughout his career without the benefit of his Sig in hand. "What's your name, kiddo?" he asked, smiling.
"Michael Patrick O'Shaunessy," the kid replied.
"Well, Michael Patrick O'Shaunessy, I'm Leroy Jethro Gibbs," Gibbs replied, taking another step towards the horse and rider. "I work with Sam," he said, unsure if the kid considered Sam to be his mom, an aunt, or something else entirely.
"Just stay right there, mister." The kid shifted in the saddle again and Gibbs stopped. The palomino made a whuffing noise and lifted its head to stare first at the kid and then at Gibbs. The horse pawed the ground twice, then went back to grazing. "I know, Prissy," the kid muttered, patting the horse's neck. "I saw it, too." The kid's eyes didn't waver from Gibbs'. "Can you prove you work with Mama-Sam?"
"I don't know how you expect me to prove that without her here," Gibbs replied.
"You'd best think of something," the kid replied.
"She makes some of the best coffee I've ever had. Brought me a thermos of it yesterday – big green metal thermos with a handle."
The kid nodded. "Okay." Without warning, he stood in the stirrups, drew the slingshot up, and let fly with a muted thwap of the elastic.
Gibbs had a split-second thought of Why, that little snot! before he realized that the kid hadn't been aiming at him at all, but at something on the ground about halfway between them. It took a moment for him to realize just what he was looking at was the still-twitching body of a northern copperhead – one of only two venomous snakes native to Maryland. A neat hole was punched through the snake's head, precisely equidistant from side-to-side and Gibbs would bet money that what had once been the snake's brain was smeared into an identical little hole in the dust under its gold-and-brown patterned body.
The kid climbed down from his horse and tucked the slingshot into a holster tied to his right thigh. His left sported a sheathed fillet knife, and there was a small, shallow basket threaded around his belt, just to the rear of the slingshot. "Stay put, Prissy." The kid then headed for the snake and picked it up with one hand while drawing the fillet knife with his other hand. "So…" he said, somewhat friendlier than he'd been thus far. "You work with Mama-Sam?"
"Sure do, though she works in the lab."
The kid made short work of beheading the snake. "That means you don't. You must be one of the…" he searched for the right word while making a long slit down the snake's belly. "Agents?"
"Yeah."
The kid nodded, "Agents, then." With the snake split open, the kid wiped the knife clean on the leg of his jeans before returning it to the sheath on his thigh. He then reached into the snake and ripped its innards out. The guts were secreted away in the covered basket on the kid's belt and the rest of the snake was coiled into a saddlebag. "You don't talk much, do ya, mister?"
"Not much, no."
The kid just nodded again. "Good. Look, you can either walk up to the house, or you can come with me – either way don't matter much to me – I just got a coupla chores to get done with first."
"I'm in no rush," Gibbs replied.
The kid snorted. "You always drive like that when you're not in a rush?" It was Gibbs' turn to nod. The kid shook his head, "I feel sorry for the other drivers, then, and grateful I ain't gonna be driving for another six-and-a-half years. Though I gotta say, if you drive like you do all the time, it's probably a good thing your car's bright yellow."
Gibbs chuckled. "Probably so, kiddo," he replied.
The kid grinned. He wiped his grimy hand on his jeans and held it out to Gibbs, "Call me Phoenix."
"Gibbs," the agent replied, and shook the kid's hand.
"Can you ride, Gibbs?"
"Yeah, I can ride."
The kid's grin brightened. "Well, come on, if you're coming. Daylight's wasting, and I still have a frog to find for Katty." He climbed into the palomino's saddle and waited while Gibbs used the back of the saddle to pull himself onto the horse as well.
Ten minutes of companionable silence later, the horse was picking her way through the thick underbrush of the forest, heading for Beer Run Brook, and the faint melody Phoenix had been humming under his breath finally emerged in actual singing, "Over in Killarney, many years ago, me mother sang a song to me, in tones so sweet and low. Just a simple little ditty, in her good old Irish way, and I'd give the world if she could sing that song to me this day." Even though Phoenix didn't have much of an accent, a strong Irish brogue flavored his singing. Gibbs was nearly positive it wasn't faked – more mimicked from a distant and hazy memory; he recalled that the boy had gone to live with Sam when he'd only been five years old. He joined in on the song's chorus. "Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral, too-ra-loo-ra-li, too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral, hush now, don't you cry, too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral, too-ra-loo-ra-li, too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral, that's an Irish lullaby." Phoenix continued on with the second verse solo, as Gibbs could only recall the chorus. "Oft in dreams I wander to that cot again. I feel her arms a-huggin' me as when she held me then. And I hear her voice a-hummin' to me as in days of yore, when she used to rock me fast asleep outside the cabin door." They sang the chorus twice over, and then Phoenix signaled Prissy to a halt in a grassy area on the bank of the stream.
Gibbs slid off the horse and took in the sights – not that there was all that much to see, but he'd been nearly caught once today by the local wildlife, and that was one time too many to his way of thinking. The clearing was maybe a twenty-foot circular triangle, with one side delineated by a curve of the stream, the second by a tall stand of raspberry bushes, and the third was the way back to the road. A nylon rope angled out from roughly the middle of the stream, which was about fifteen feet across and muddy enough he didn't even want to guess at its depth, and was tied off on a tall maple tree.
Phoenix swung out of the saddle and told Prissy to 'stay' again, then headed to the nylon rope. Though it was obvious the kid didn't really need the help, Gibbs lent a hand in hauling a string of five conical mesh traps out of the brook. The first two were mostly-empty, save for some smallish crawdads, but the other three each held at least two eels apiece. While transferring the eels to an empty saddlebag and re-baiting the traps with the contents of his little belt-basket, Phoenix once again started singing. This time, it was Whiskey in the Jar, the same version that Gibbs vaguely recalled from radio broadcasts from when he was in junior high. He couldn't recall precisely who had recorded that version, but he thought it might have been the Grateful Dead, but he wouldn't swear to it.
"The shining yellow coins did sure look bright and jolly, I took the money home and I gave it to my Molly, she promised and she vowed that she never would deceive me, but the devil's in the women and they never –" a muffled squawk of garble and static interrupted the song. Phoenix sighed and pulled a small CB radio from an inner pocket of his jacket. "Yeah, Mama-Sam?"
"You about done? Quin's wondering where his raspberries are."
"Be done soon, Mama-Sam. Just got done with the traps – got seven eels this time."
"I'll let Quin know. You hurry, though. It's creepin' up on two. I'd like it if all you little hellions could be made somewhat presentable before everyone starts showing up."
"I'd get done faster if you'd quit jawin' at me."
A growling sound answered Phoenix's reply. "Don't take that tone with me, Phoe. I'll make you have stable-duty all next week. I'm sure Aaron would like the extra time off."
"Noted, Mama-Sam. I'll be home soon."
"See that you are." The tone, distorted though it may be through the radio, was definitely one which allowed no room for argument.
Phoenix returned the radio to his pocket and untied the bucket from the saddle-horn. He thrust it in Gibbs' hands and gestured to the stand of bushes off to the right. "If you don't mind?"
"No problem." It had literally been years, maybe even decades, since he'd last picked wild raspberries, but his hands remembered the trick to avoiding the thorns.
The smallish bucket (which had once housed ice cream) was about halfway full when Phoenix finished with the eel traps and shimmied his way up the tree where the traps' haul-rope had been secured. Gibbs paused and watched as the kid patiently fed the traps back into the stream, one at a time, leaning far out over on the branch. When the last of the rope was played out, Phoenix swung down out of the tree with all the agility of a young chimpanzee and joined Gibbs at the stand of raspberry bushes.
It took less than fifteen minutes to fill the bucket with berries, even though half of all the ones Phoenix picked wound up in his mouth.
A/N2: Aside from work, the main reason this was so long in coming is that though I could see the inside of Sam's house quite clearly, I hadn't seen the outside. This is one of those times when the story surprised even me. And yes, it's not as long as I'd promised, but I figured y'all would rather have something now, rather than having to wait who-knows-how-long for me to get the time to sit down and finish this to the point I'd planned.
Remember to lemme know what y'all think.