"I got it."
Jeff Martorelli smiled at the cantankerous edge to his client's voice.
"The microwave talks. The measuring cup talks. The thermostat talks. Hell, the whole damn apartment talks."
"We'll keep working on the Braille. If your tactile sensitivity improves, things can get quieter," promised Jeff.
Gibbs gave an inarticulate grunt in response.
"What time is it?"
The reply to this request was a groan of displeasure. Gibbs fumbled with the watch he now wore on his right wrist and pressed the button to listen to yet another mechanically-tinged voice, this one reporting it was 12:47.
"Guess you can make us some lunch, then. I'll..." Jeff smiled a little again at the glare Gibbs tried to throw his way, "just sit over there."
"Would it work if I said I wasn't hungry?"
"Nope." The occupational therapist pulled the chair away from the small, round table with a loud scraping sound. "I'm thinking a sandwich would be good. There's bread in the breadbox, tomatoes and lettuce in the crisper, and ham and cheese in the meat drawer. Go to it."
Gibbs moved with surprising grace. A man clearly at home in his body, even as it was now. Probably an ex-athlete, although Gibbs had never even hinted. Even if his record hadn't revealed it, it was obvious – given the way he took to meticulous organization – the man was ex-military.
Even hampered by the damage to his hands, he accomplished identifying the ingredients, although the OT had tried to make it easier by buying only one of anything that could easily be confused with something else. His life forcibly simplified now.
"I want mayo and mustard."
"Then get 'em yourself," Gibbs returned as he speared the hapless tomato he was holding onto the spikes in the cutting board with a bit more force than necessary.
Everything he did now had to be broken down into a series of steps, his goals diminished to making it through the next link of a never-ending chain of tasks. If he could check off securing the fucking tomato, that only left him facing "find the knife."
Knives. In the knife block. Right side of the sink.
Subgoal of the moment: find the sink.
He trailed the back of his left hand along the counter until he hit the cool of the stainless basin.
Check off "find the sink." Move on to finding the block of knives. Find the block of knives and move on to one of his favorites – grip the damn thing and manage to hold on.
Grip. Check.
Pull. Check.
Put the knife down on the counter and get a proper hold. Check.
Back to the damn tomato.
"We could tap Ducky's phone," suggested Tony, leaning against Abby's shoulder and watching pale fingers fly over the keyboard.
"Inelegant." Abby tilted her head in the direction of the seat next to hers, the soft clicks of the keyboard never slowing. "Sign on."
"Me?"
"Well, you won't let me tell McGee so, yeah, sign on," she urged, a hand briefly leaving the keys to pull out the chair.
"Don't you think Kate will miss me?"
Abby rolled her eyes.
"Okay, yeah, you're right. The less Kate sees of me, the better."
"An apartment has no title transfer," said Abby, getting back to business, "so that's out. We've got his social, so I was thinking if we were lucky they at least transferred the utilities to him."
"We weren't lucky," deduced Tony, tapping his log-in in one-fingered.
"No." Abby shook her head. "How have you never learned how to type?"
"It works fine," retorted Tony.
"Riiiiight," drawled out the lab tech. "So his cell phone is still with the same carrier but I was thinking maybe he changed plans – like, dropped the international coverage since he's not getting reimbursed anymore. And maybe when he changed that, he changed his addy or something. And," dark-nailed fingers produced a printout, "voila! He did. Unfortunately, he changed it to the rehab – Room 4, The Life Centre. With the Brit spelling, natch. Looked it up on the net, looks like a nice place."
"You think they'll tell us where he went?"
"No way. Serious violation of patient privacy regs."
"So?" pressed Tony.
"So we go in the sneaky way." Abby reverse-crunched her fingers with a digit wrenching pop.
"No," observed DiNozzo, "that's what you're going to do. What am I going to do?"
"Play Neocron and keep me company?"
"Uh uh ... I asked for mayo and mustard."
"No," answered Gibbs, plopping the plate on the table with a clatter.
"You going to spend the rest of your life without condiments on your sandwiches?"
"If I have to." Gibbs located the other plate and used his curled hand as a stop so he could pick it up.
"The hell you are." Jeff scooted away from the table and retrieved the new bottles of mayonnaise and mustard from the refrigerator door.
Gibbs heard a drawer open and something else shut, then suddenly found his plate pushed away and a variety of objects dropped in front of him.
"Identify and open them."
"Thought the official lessons were over," observed Gibbs laconically.
"Just do it. I'm hungry."
With a sigh Gibbs dutifully crept his fingers toward the pile. "Plastic squeeze bottle." He popped the cap and put pressure on the sides. "Still sealed."
"So ... open it."
"Crap," muttered Gibbs, bringing his right hand up to act as the only thing it was good for these days – dead weight. Holding the container steady with the press of his hand, he fumbled with the cap, pulling on the seal. The contents spit out with a decided wet splat so he stuck a finger into the congealed mess now soiling the table and offered it to his guest.
"You don't find this boring?"
"Hell, yeah," said Abby, "I spend half my time waiting for something to go 'beep'. But when the 'beep' comes, it's like this pure Eureka!-bathtub moment and, for like a second, I'm at the top of Maslow's fucking hierarchy. I am at one with the cosmos."
Tony blinked. "Over a 'beep'."
"Well, yeah," said Abby, sounding suddenly shy. "Don't you ever have orgasmic moments over anything other than ..." She studied Tony's face. "Forget it."
"It's some kind of 'female' thing, isn't it?"
"No, Ducky has them too. Kind of intellectual Big O's."
"Whoa." Tony put his hands up. "Ducky getting off in any way is not something I particularly want to think about."
Abby scrunched up her nose. "Why? The Duck-man's adorable. I bet he'd be such a sweetie in bed." Her frown deepened. "Is this an age-thing? I've never really gotten what's up with that. I mean, a person who's beautiful at twenty-five is going to be just as beautiful at sixty. Eyes don't change. Souls don't change."
Tony opened his mouth to protest but Abby was still rhapsodizing. "And I've seen you look at Gibbs, so don't tell me you don't find anyone over thirty attractive."
He realized later – sometime after the computer beeped, sending Abby into realms he simply refused to contemplate – that his jaw was still gaping open.
Quiet.
Normally, Gibbs liked quiet.
It had been hard enough to find a peaceful moment sharing a building with eighteen other "residents," but he'd gotten used to the noise again, just as he'd gotten used to the lack of privacy in the corp. Like he'd gotten used to sleeping anywhere. On anything.
Hell, how many mornings had he woken up on a bed of plywood?
Crap.
Among all his other lists for the performance of any menial task while sightless was one marked "mental stability." And in the top five under the heading of "things not to think about" was "the boat." Which was probably kindling by now anyway.
Fuck.
What he needed was distraction.
Weekday afternoon TV held no appeal. He pushed his way off the couch and used his leg to follow the upholstered edge to the end where he stood straighter and put out his left hand at waist-height. Four steps forward. Two to the right. Should hit the desk.
He clumsily knocked into the keyboard and groped until he found the dotted button that brought up the e-mail program. At least it banished the quiet. Even if it translated Ducky's educated tones into a harsh electronic rasp. Gibbs fingered the edge of the keyboard and listened to the electronic stand-in for the ME tell him all about the latest case, which devolved into some obscure statistics about the deterioration of bodies locked in submerged footlockers, and, finally, about Tony going off on his own again and Kate's not-unexpected reaction.
Fuck.
He shut the program down. Quiet wasn't so bad after all.
"So, why are you standing here?"
Tony looked down at the address scrawled on the piece of paper and then back at a clearly hyper Abby. When he'd left sometime after ten the previous night she'd been on her sixth jumbo-sized cola.
"He's gone to a lot of trouble to protect his privacy, Abs. What if it's really what he wants?"
"Forget what he wants," said Abby decisively. "What about what he needs? You can't just take Gibbs' word for this stuff, Tony. He lies."
"You say that to his face?"
A tiny grin bent the corner of Abby's mouth upward. "A time or two, yeah."
"Then, maybe, you should go," said Tony.
"Even you said it -- I know my Gibbs. And you're the one with the golden ticket to Gibbsville, trust me on this one. You stand at the door and knock –"
"And he'll slam the door in my face?"
"Maybe the first couple of times." She laid a hand on Tony's arm. "Try not to take it personally."
"I'm thinking this is not a good idea."
"Well, then stop. Thinking, that is. Just follow your heart, little grasshopper."
"Okay." Tony crumpled the paper in his fist. "Okay. I'll go, but if he kills me – please don't have Ducky do the autopsy. It's ... creepy."
"Got you there." Abby reached out and slung an arm around his neck. "Don't tell Gibbs I hacked him, okay?"
"I can't believe I'm doing this."
"'You're like the fabled seeker of prophesy. You're going to bring our prodigal boss-man back to us." Abby made a complex bow. "I worship at the altar of your blessed sacrifice."
Then she swatted him on the ass. "Now get the hell outta here."
The word "stakeout" (Ducky once told him one long, dark night when Gibbs in serious case-mode was making them both wait for a report from Abby and they'd stretched out parallel on the steel autopsy tables) was metaphorically drawn from the "staking out" of land by surveyors. Substitute LEOs for the stakes and you get ... well, you get the backache Tony currently had from being scrunched in the front seat of a Buick, letting the cup of coffee go cold in his hand.
That he was, in fact, staking out Gibbs was nerve-wracking. Just not as nerve-wracking as doing what he'd been contemplating for the seven-hour drive, which was walking up to Apartment 9A and letting an unhappy Gibbs slam the door in his face.
So he'd been waiting.
For what, he didn't exactly know.
It was one thing to be prodded into boneheaded moves by a cheerleading Abby. Entirely another to face Gibbs alone.
Shit.
That was it. This was stupid. Gibbs didn't want him here and he knew it. Tony reached for the ignition.
At the same moment, across the street the front door swung open, the slanting late afternoon sun hitting the door's metal edge with a reflected shard of brilliance that played its way across the dashboard where Tony was dully staring. The sharp triangle of light made him glance up.
Gibbs stood just outside the little covered portico and tilted his face up to the deep blue sky as if basking.
Numbly Tony dropped his hand from the key.
Gibbs was a little thinner. A little grayer. A pair of oddly stylish sunglasses hid his eyes. As Tony watched, he reached out with his left hand and oriented himself against the upright of the portico, then he unhooked the folded cane from his belt and snapped it out. He held his right arm tightly against his side, the lifeless hand curled into his waist.
There was a decided method to Gibbs' movements. A kind of rote pattern in the way he positioned himself against the wooden pillar so he was aligned straight with the sidewalk in front of him. He held the long cane almost straight-armed, then with a deep sigh visible from even Tony's distance, started forward. His wrist swung the thin white metal in an arc slightly wider than his shoulders.
Tony got out of the car and leaned against it, both his hands suddenly clammy where they pressed into the driver's-side door. Gibbs made it to the perpendicular intersection where sidewalk met sidewalk and stopped, gathering the cane vertically against him so the tip rested between his feet.
"My technique sucks, I know."
Tony blinked at this pronouncement; sure it wasn't meant for him, but at a loss as to who it could be meant for.
"You gonna come in, DiNozzo, or you just going to stand there and gape?"
"Boss?" It came out embarrassingly weakly. "How'd did you—"
"One, Ducky called me. The thing to know about Abby is she'll crumble if you offer her A&W Root Beer Barrels. Two, you're staking out a blind man, so it's not like you'd be hiding. Directly across from the front door was a pretty good bet. Three, it takes eight hours at most to drive up here. It's now been ten. If you weren't there, the worst that would happen is that the neighbors think I'm a little ... odd."
"You sure you want me to—"
Gibbs had turned his head to the side, trying to make out the weak reply. Now he bowed his head, a disturbingly uncharacteristic movement that showed clearly – as if Tony hadn't gotten it from the cane and the careful steps – that he was not using his eyes at all. "Get over here, DiNozzo. Now."
The bark was still the same, though.
"Yes, boss."
Gibbs frowned at the sound of keys being dropped on the asphalt. This was followed by the low groan Tony produced when he bent to retrieve them. Gibbs tilted his head to the left a little. "Watch out for the car," he said patiently.
"Yes, boss."
The vehicle passed. Footsteps beat a steady advance toward him and, in a second, Tony was standing beside him, his shadow blocking the warmth of the low sun. His breathing was audible and a little rapid.
Gibbs toed the crack in the sidewalk where the two concrete slabs met each other to get his exact position. "Quit calling me 'boss,' DiNozzo."
"Yes, bo--."
"And move," ordered Gibbs.
"Move?" Tony's voice, previously faint, had taken on a decided squeak.
"Yeah. When you're blind, everything you do has a plan. You're in the way of Step One."
"I—"
"Move, DiNozzo," Gibbs enunciated more clearly.
"Can't you just take my arm or something?"
"No." Tony found Gibbs' tone remarkably patient, as if he'd grown used to talking very slowly to idiots who didn't know how to handle the whole blindness thing. "I got myself out here. I'm required to get myself back."
"That like Gibbs' Blind Rule One?" inquired Tony.
"Something like that. Now get out of my way."
Tony held up his hands. Then lowered them, somehow embarrassed to have made the clearly unseen gesture. "Okay. I'm getting out of the way."
He stepped onto the grass and Gibbs grunted his approval, resolidfying his grip on the cane. Seven measured steps down the hard walkway he stopped, turning his head back in the direction he'd come. "You coming?"
"Yeah. Uh, yeah."
Quick footsteps brought Tony even with him. A faint scent of sweat and old coffee joining in the mixed aroma of honeysuckle and car exhaust that appeared to usually mark the building's front courtyard. DiNozzo, he could tell, had shortened his normally fast, long-legged stride. The younger man stayed with him step for precise step, the presence an unwelcome comfort at his side.
"Am I allowed to get the door?"
Gibbs swore he could feel the younger man's gaze fix on his damaged hand and he found himself drawing his right arm tighter against him. His eyes he could hide behind dark glasses, his hand there was nothing much to do about and, he admitted, it had some uses: paperweight being its currently favored function.
"You can get the door," agreed Gibbs. It took some effort to wedge the cane between his hip and right forearm for safekeeping, pull the door open, keep it open with a toe, regain the cane in his usable hand and then orient himself correctly in the hallway.
Tony's report of "it's open" was superfluous, however. Without effort he could feel the whoosh of escaping cooled air washing over him. He let his left hand bump against the door being held open by DiNozzo in order to locate exactly where he'd stepped through. The hallway felt cramped after being outdoors; he could feel the walls pressing inward even though it was easily wide enough for people to pass without any difficulty. Gibbs involuntarily shuddered when he realized he couldn't imagine being in the confines of a sub, or even a carrier, in his own personal dark.
"You okay?" At least Tony had managed to silence the "boss" he'd been tacking on to the end of every utterance. Although Gibbs could still feel it, hanging unspoken.
"Yeah."
Tony rubbed a hand over his face. Gibbs was back to practically being monosyllabic.
"Can I—"
"No," replied Gibbs to ... whatever was being offered. "Place is this way." He nodded his head to the right.
"Lead the way, b-"The honorific was quickly swallowed back.
