Excuses for delay range from work to Christmas shopping/wrapping to cage fight with original version of this chappy. I can only hope the result is worth the bruises...
Symbiosis
25
Regurgitation is the least tasteful way to reexamine the past.
It's hardly a new endeavor.
They have played at this sort of tangle before, the proverbial rooster breaking the dawn's silence to brag to the rest of the barnyard about their occasional slips into non-platonic mayhem. Past mornings have found mouths giving up the snore in favor of settling on a landscape of skin. Though more often than not, days begin with a ringing phone for a body that couldn't wait until an appropriate hour to be discovered. Like noon. Or never.
There is neither a call nor sun to intrude on this space between the dream and the hangover. Rather, McGee wakes with a snake-jaw yawn and blinks into a blackened room, a wad of hair sticking to his cheek. It will be black and he's strangely content with its present location, plastered to his skin and long seconds away from irritating him. Limbs are twisted around a sleeping woman who is delightfully devoid of clothing beneath the down comforter and snoring like a congested cat.
It's a gorgeous sound.
However loathe to separate from any part of her, Tim gives into the burgeoning itch and peels the loose strands of still pig-tailed hair from his face. He squints to read the digital faceplate on the thermostat, which seems to have gravitated toward rainforest. On a winter's night combated by his companion's reenactment of the equator, he's sweated through the t-shirt that Abby had assured him wasn't necessary. The hard-fought changes to his torso had met her approval and by last night's enthusiastic inspection, she found nothing about his mid-section that called Wonder Bread to mind. For all that it polished his ego to a blinding shine, a ghost still whispered doughy in the deepening dark and Tim had shrugged into a college tee once Abby had fallen asleep.
No stomach is at its best in a reclined position.
Hanging crooked on an opposing wall, the tail on his new Felix the Cat retro clock swishes away the minutes toward four am. Awake, perspiring and abruptly eager to let Mr Gemcity play with his pal Remington, McGee weighs the options; startle Abby with the loud clanging of typewriter keys or lay in the dark, a damp heap awaiting the sun. Next to a shivering woman. With a hangover unfairly earned by ultimately few drinks. There's surprising little time for proper drunkenness when eavesdropping on dangerous federal agents in subzero temperatures. Again. He really must stop doing that.
And when the distant horns of an early traffic accident announce that the morning has opted to commence, he tells Abby so. And ever considerate to his whims, Abby immediately disagrees.
"We're only watching their backs, even if it means protecting them from each other," gripes the paragon of reason, sleepy voice sucking gravel. "Isn't that exactly what you told me?"
"I know, but who'll watch our backs when they find us out?"
With a hand drifting under the soaked shirt, Abby makes a noise that is either anticipatory or slightly repulsed. Only one won't break his heart.
"It's thirty degrees outside but you're like a catenary arch kiln under there. All beautiful and..." she swipes at his collarbone with her tongue, "salty."
Fingers trace maps on his prickled flesh and when a second hand joins the first to remove the offending article, there's no disgust. Beautiful, she'd said. He bets Tony was never compared to an classically designed kiln. That the specified kiln is not known for efficiency will not trouble him when her mouth moves just there. The last shred of doubt is tossed to the floor with his shirt and the morning is greeted in a most improper way.
She's clawing at his shoulders when the phone rings.
…...
The scene suggests that a film has been shot here and the crew had left a set piece behind.
A cabbage field, one of the most bland, inoffensive sights on earth, is sprawling off into the horizon in a vast green carpet. A tiny apartment complex loiters uninvited in one corner, slightly misshapen by age and entirely out of place. From the fogged windshield, McGee notes that the cabbage is not as green as distance inferred. This being the dead of winter, the field has the fairly trampled and decomposed look of a place planted by a disinterested farmer. The work of harvesting had been left to the wind, which had better things to do.
There were ten windows at the front of the apartment building and none on the side where McGee parked. It might have been a decent residence once, square and formidable in its prime. One of those sights that probably claimed George Washington had slept there on his way somewhere or other. Hard to say whether the rotting vegetables or the decaying facade is the greater eyesore.
Exiting the womb of vehicular warmth, the snap of cold awaits his freshly shaved and thoroughly kissed face.
And he knows why they're staring.
Gibbs is many things, discreet being chief among the redeeming qualities buried under gruffness and his eyes betray none of the knowledge that has surely been passed like the flu prior to McGee's arrival. DiNozzo, who only unearths discretion when undercover, has forged a career of broadcasting the interesting tidbits of his teammates' lives. Because gossip unused is payback wasted.
McGee preempts the coming snide with, "Like you can talk," and brushes past the beaming agent.
Last night, Tim wouldn't have bet a burnt tater tot that normalcy could be achieved so soon after the averted disaster but DiNozzo looks so chipper in his ill-gotten gain that Tim can see the juvenile prankster Tony had been seeping from the evolving package currently snapping photos of rather untoward death. As glad as he should be to witness the relaxed set in the man's shoulders and the easy grin darting to his equally calm partner, McGee would prefer not to be the source of merriment for the team. Again.
If only she hadn't answered his phone.
Five minutes after Tony had called to inform of a dead aerographer's mate, the redness blooming like bruises on McGee's cheeks had rivaled the plum-shaded sunrise. Even the woman bent naked at her overnight bag couldn't sweep the panic from his coffee-hyper mind. Abby's fount of wisdom had been summed up thus;
"Just tell them our phones got switched at the bar."
If genetics hadn't stamped him with the promise of male pattern baldness, he'd have torn chunks from his scalp.
"Do you know why I don't do undercover? Because I lie like a five year old with a handful of crumbs."
By the glaze in her eyes, she'd stopped to ponder the McChibi image. "Okay, so we jump on the 'so what' trail the wonder twins already carved out. The way they attack things, I'm sure they left a wide enough path."
"I'd rather not take after them, thanks. There'd be a whole hemisphere of strange ground to cover and none of it rhymes with safe."
Geeks don't generally make arguments look sexy. Besides, their path should be shut down for maintenance at least once an hour. Tim wouldn't trust himself to prune the trail,let along forge his own version thereof.
"I'm not Jedi material, Abby. I'm more the the guy who fixes the broken lightsaber between fights."
"Can you not use Star Wars metaphors to put yourself down?" She had cradled his face, fingers cold against what little shrubbery the night is able to grow. "Don't worry, McChicken. I'll go wookie on any naysayers. Besides, it's not like we're getting engaged and having babies or anything."
That comment replayed in his head all the way to the scene.
Stomping his feet against the frosted chill, McGee approaches the dead woman and feels a twisted kinship. In times past, Gibbs seemed to view a relationship between Tim and Abby as a folly best left to fizzle out in its own inevitable time. They were the Mentos in Coke experiment, a sparkling thing of brief indulgence. But now, with his top agents playing tug of war with domesticity, another romance may be less tolerated. Forbearance isn't an advertised Gibbs trait for a reason.
Thus it might be best not to bring notice to the deep bite mark peeking from beneath Ziva's upturned collar. Appearing no worse for the hard-liquor wear, Tony crouches to snap shots of the victim's neck. A circlet of faintly raw skin suggests that she might have had a very frisky night prior to having a very bad one.
"She looks like that insurance girl, only not as intriguing," Tony observers. "You know, with the bullet-proof hair and tight white dress?"
"Do you have to vocalize every thought in your head?" Tim asks.
"You were thinking it too."
Busted. "Totally. That dress is killer."
A moment ago the corpse's appearance was immaterial and now all McGee can see is Flo the Progressive girl who, while pretty in an old-fashioned maven sort of way, ranks relatively low on McGee's list of provocative women. Because he's met DiNozzo, Tim recognizes that the agent is now picturing Ziva in that form fitting white dress, which is inexcusable on the job. And contagious because now Tim's envisioning Abby in said attire, all sunshine and exuberance about ensuring low rates for the masses. And bent over a desk, where there's stockinged calf, then bare thigh, then...
This line of thought has the apple-faced agent lowering his notebook to below-belt level and backing away casually.
"What do we know?" Gibbs trumpets over the din of rush hour's first gleaming.
Ziva holds up a dainty pink wallet. "Hildegard O'Connell. Thirty-six. Residence listed as Denton, Maryland. Served on the Eisenhower, which I believe returned from the Middle East in July."
"Ethnically diverse name," Tony notes. "Navy weather girl left in the elements with a noose ring on her neck and her hair hasn't moved."
It's wrong to speak ill of the dead, Grandma used to say right after raining down insults on her good-for-nothing, welfare-hogging brother, God rest his soul. The body before him appears to have used a hairspray technique to fend off errant enemy fire. The helmet-hair look is born no better with the ashen gray pallor than it likely was in life. The slight flip at the shoulder-length ends is retro fifties, the soiled pantsuit is ultra-conservative and the one remaining shoe is a pump so sensible, it must have its own savings account.
"Looks like she was dressed for an interview."
McGee circles the body, which had been shoved inside the small tool shed behind the apartment. A hawk-nosed janitor had called in the find after thoughtfully dragging her out of his workspace. The local force pegged her for navy by the laminated pass clipped to her lapel. Pentagon-authorized but left in the cabbage-soaked shadow of a residence not her own.
The custodian has been hovering, eying the victim as one would a wandering teen holding a spray can. Beneath the three layers of mismatched jackets, an elderly frame defies the wind by letting his liver-spotted bald head face the freeze without a hat.
"I seen stuff in my day," he says. "Never had a dead'um blocking my rake. Course, I hear ol' Gus found three skinned cats in there once, but that was 'fore my time."
Only God and rope existed before this fossil's day, McGee scoffs. The sailor's wallet had been suspiciously empty, he'd heard and no doubt the old gentleman and his four teeth would dine luxuriantly on the local McDonald's tonight at Hildegard's expense. As Gibbs gently takes the man by the arm to lead him away, Tony turns over the woman's hand to expose a similar set of red marks on her wrists.
"There's something under here."
With a few quick bursts of flash to document the pre-extraction location, Tony reaches gloved fingers into the vic's sleeve to retrieve a crumpled beige rectangle and hands it to the freshly returned Gibbs.
The boss tilts his head as the card is examined. "Not the usual line of work for an off-duty crewman."
A crunching of dried leaves behind the gathering announces the arrival of Ducky's van, Palmer expertly sliding the large vehicle between the shed and the front line of future fertilizer. Gibbs angles his frowning mouth toward the newcomers.
"Took the scenic route, Duck?"
"Preserving our transport from committing vehicular homicide, I fear. It seems that a vast percent of the city chose to turn up at a store closing, minding none of the clearly marked crosswalks. Our bumper almost claimed three pedestrians in mid-town trying to get here. Do you know, it looked rather like a wildebeest stampede, five hundred bodies racing toward absolutely nothing at sixty-five miles per hours while our African guide tried to save our jeep from the throttling. Why, I nearly lost my best safari hat on that excursion."
Though his toes have fought the battle for feeling and lost, he can still muster a smile at the older man in a fishing hat who manages to bring rich foreign soil with him everywhere and never take a breath.
Gibbs has no particular default smile. "Tell me why a navy officer carries a card for an escort service and ends up with the greenery in her corporate finest."
Standing, Tony brushes the dirt from his pants. "The Donna Reed revival isn't a common request in D.C., except for guys who miss their moms."
"Military maternal vibe? Not my thing." McGee imagines his thing and the notebook's going nowhere.
"You're a very sheltered boy, McConvent."
And this is what slowly asphyxiating snark sounds like: a DiNozzo-ism birthed but delivered like an obligation, trailing off at the end so that the nickname arrives in a choke. The agent's attention has drifted three miles south of present. Ducky catches it too, turning to McGee who looks to the boss currently squinting against the sunlight to Tony, whose attention has tripped over Ziva. He's fixated on the movement of her fingers. Her own focus has narrowed the galaxy down to the victim's hands. That Ziva rubs absently at her own wrists sends a gaggle of suddenly self-conscious men back to work. Except her partner, who waits until her radar picks up the blip of his gaze. He gives the slightest nod, which says 'I'm here' and 'it's okay' all at once.
Under the scrutiny, her hands immediately plunge to her sides.
And while a body grows colder on the ground, the senior agent has to clamp down on the instinct to comfort his woman. Public coddling is not appreciated by the modern Mossad. Ziva's cleared throat is a signal and both turn back to the work at hand.
Some moments, while lost in the grind, have a way of resurfacing. McGee's not fooled by the constant returns to normal these two have perfected. Ziva spent a lifetime in Somalia today and this won't be the end of that non-discussion. Not according to the way Tony's gaze splits between the stranger who breathed her last among the stench and the woman who owns controlling interest in his universe.
Later, the dead woman is bagged and loaded into the van, having no choice but to face the holiday traffic with Jimmy and Ducky. The scene is picked clean of possible evidence, which would be an easier affair if the breeze didn't insist on refreshing their collective nasal passages with the scent of sauerkraut that has dedicated itself to rotting obnoxiously.
Silence is a tricky ball to hit and McGee tiptoes carefully to the plate once Umpire Gibbs steps away. "You know, the odor of rotting cabbage is added to natural gas so leaks can be detected."
"I'm sure our vic was up late worrying about that," Tony says. Ziva is finishing in the shed, undoubtedly aware of her observer. Gathering himself from among the four directions of concern, Tony hefts his attention to McGee with the weariness of a husband forced to carry all the luggage. "It's Mercaptan they add to natural gas, McShowOff. I read too, you know."
"Was it literature that helped you gain appreciation for Flo?"
"I appreciate her enthusiasm for discounts and the distinct cut of her garment."
When the breeze sends a potent flavor across his nose, McGee chokes back the gag reflex. Farmers who don't bring in the crop should be fined. And hung. And then made to harvest this mess.
"I have a theory about this vic. You wanna hear it?"
"No," says Tony. "What I want to hear is your intentions with my little sister."
He will not swallow in the presence of the suddenly too close and slightly towering man. There's a wall behind McGee and he only wishes it were figurative. An eternity ago, he'd been forced against one for misspeaking. Tim wants to say that they're doing nothing wrong and certainly nothing new. He wants to remind Tony that his own business is rather complex and therefore should be minded, preferably with a singular focus that leaves no time for hovering over smaller agents. But what issues from his mouth is;
"It was her idea."
"So your intention is to blame Abby? That'll go over well when you have this conversation with Gibbs."
"You're going to tell him? After I kept your secrets?"
Green eyes narrow and harden. "What you knew was gained through deception, McSpy. Don't think I've forgotten."
The mail-order backbone arrives, late and woefully inadequate. But Tim's not quite ready to concede just because guilt is no kind of armor. Only doughy people fall into malleable lumps on the board.
"Shaky ground you're standing on to judge me. You're blatantly sleeping with your partner in clear violation of every regulation."
What should have been cutting only amuses Tony.
"And yet I didn't blame her when caught. Besides, I'm also engaged to my partner, which is not only a noble venture but signifies an impressive level of commitment. You should try it."
"Right. I should follow your timeline." McGee's spine receives the needed injection of iron. "Which means spending years fighting and flirting to the detriment of mortal passersby, then hiding a relationship from Gibbs and finally pretending to be engaged in order to shield the fact that you were, in fact, engaged. Did I miss anything?"
Pending matrimony has done nothing to deplete the man's storehouse of smug, cranking the gauge on McGee's blood pressure to eleven. Mischief throws a champagne glitter into Tony's eyes and his hand slaps Tim's shoulder.
"Like I said, you should try it."
"If I tried all the things you have, I'd be armless and incarcerated."
"That hurts, Probie." Straightening his tie, DiNozzo lifts a righteous chin. "But I can be magnanimous in my role as the responsible one."
"By dispensing advice without a license?"
"You scoff but you could learn from my adventurous lifestyle."
The feminine snort behind them delivers a third-party opinion. "Yes, learn not to emulate it."
Turning, Tony greets his ninja with the grace of a man with one foot in an empty bank vault. "You're right," he compromises. "There's nothing appealing about uninhibited twins on the star-lit roof of a skyscraper. I will strike it from my memory."
"That is your version of adventurous?" Having locked away this morning's haunt, Ziva's striving for the easy tease.
"No, that's my account of New Year's Eve. You're my version of adventurous."
Tony's head jolts forward and as he rubs at his skull, Gibbs barks, "And I'm your version of unemployment. This ain't a schoolyard, kids."
"I did notice the lack of monkey bars," Tony grumbles as he lugs his kit to the car, then looks at McGee. "But monkeys we have."
Tim plasters on his best grin. "I hear monkeys bite. Is Ziva up on her tetanus shots?"
The man is simply incapable of blushing, a trait McGee would donate a kidney to possess.
"Told you, McCabbage. Adventurous."