disclaimer: I don't own NCIS or its characters...
Author's note: This chapter may not further the plot ('what plot?' is what you're asking yourself right now) whatsoever but it was fun to write anyway...
McGee sat in the waiting room of the OBGYN office, flipping through magazines. Kate had already been called in to see the doctor and he was desperately trying not to make eye-contact with the plethora of pregnant women scattered about the room. He retained what he felt was a justifiable fear of the hormonal females. The last thing that he wanted was for some strange woman to bite his head off for 'giving her a weird look.'
He shifted uneasily and scanned the room quickly before returning his attention to the magazine. All the women seemed to exude an aura of angry discomfort at being detained in the stuffy box of a room. He could practically feel the hormones accumulating in the stagnant air. He tried not to think about how he could piss off any one of the impregnated patients just by being the nearest man around.
The magazine left him no relief. He had read women's magazines before, thinking that if he could understand their needs and emotions, he would make a better potential mate. However, there were certain things that he had never wanted to know about women. He found most of those things in the pages of the waiting room's magazines. Confronted by an especially disturbing feminine factoid in fancy font and glossy photography, McGee decided to retreat. He hastily closed the magazine and set it on the coffee table as far away as possible from him, in case it decided to mount another assault on his delicate sensibilities.
Unfortunately for him, the lady sitting beside him took this as a signal that he would like to converse with her. She was a plump woman, and the beginnings of laugh lines upon her face led him to believe that she was in her early forties. He was happy to realize as she leaned in to talk to him that she was not in as bad a mood as most of the other women in the waiting room seemed to be. In fact she was the kind of person who radiated joviality, the kind that threatened to smother you with it.
"Hi, I'm Martha White," she introduced herself to him in a much louder voice than necessary to reach Tim's ears. Within the next twenty excruciating minutes, he learned that she was in fact forty-three (he congratulated himself on his astute observational skills), and pregnant with her fifth child. He also was acquainted with the less idealized aspects of child birth and rearing.
Martha finally seemed to wind down, and he sighed in relief, thinking that their conversation was over and that he could turn his attention to less disturbing thoughts, such as what color, exactly, was the wall of the waiting room painted; he was leaning toward eggshell. However, he had forgotten the cardinal rule of small talk, and socialization in general…The conversation always has to cover both participants, especially upon the first meeting of two individuals. And realizing that McGee was unaware of that particular rule, Martha decided to help him out.
"Your wife is very pretty," she told him, trying to shift the conversation into his domain. "I'm sure your child will be absolutely beautiful."
"What?" McGee responded as he tried to process what was said to him. "Oh! Uh-Kate's not my wife."
Martha gave him a slight disapproving look, but being as understanding and forgiving as her Christian upbringing allowed her to be, she continued attempting to converse with the young man. "Your girlfriend, then. She is quite attractive with those big eyes of hers and gorgeous hair."
"Uh-She's not my girlfriend, either," McGee supplied, becoming embarrassed at her confusion over the rather complex situation. He attempted to enlighten her. "She's my coworker, actually."
"A little office fling gone awry, eh?" the presumptuous plump woman winked at him knowingly.
"It-it's not like that!" he responded quickly, becoming afraid that Kate would show up and kick his ass at any minute. Further thought caused him to digress into a perplexingly contradictory statement. "Well, it is like that…just-just not with me."
Martha gave him a look of utter consternation, so he continued trying to explain. "I'm not the father, another coworker of mine is…uh-that sounds bad. Kate's really not like that. It's just that she's in a relationship with Tony-my other coworker-if you could call it that. I don't really understand it. They're always at each other's throats. I don't know how they manage to live together…I mean the other day, they argued over whose stapler was whose for three hours and they didn't get a thing done. It was just lucky that Gibbs wasn't around because…"
He let himself trail off as the look on Martha's face clearly informed him that he had been rambling. He got to the point instead. "Kate didn't have a way to get to her appointment today, so I helped her out."
"How sweet of you," Martha said to him, a blank and stunned look upon her face. She had come to the conclusion that he was incapable of carrying on a normal conversation. He was relieved to spend the rest of the wait in silence, even if it was an uncomfortable one.
When Kate finally returned to the waiting room, he could tell from the look upon her face that things could have gone better. She didn't look pissed as much as miserable. He had seen her angry before, and this was not Kate being angry. But he could also tell that things could easily degenerate into Kate being violently angry. He quickly got up and offered her coat to her. There was no 'thank you' given in response, only confirming his diagnosis of the woman's mood.
"How'd it go?" he risked asking in the hopes that geniality would sway her from her mood. He opened the door for her and she briskly passed through it and headed for the car. He rushed to keep up with her, probing further. "Well?"
"I don't want to talk about it, Tim," she informed him with a calm yet gruff voice. She opened the car door and got in, pulling it shut behind her, all without making eye-contact with him. Her behavior was really starting to worry him. He got in the driver's side and closing the door, turned to face her.
"Are you okay?" he asked, deeply concerned over her welfare. He hadn't known Kate to act so coldly to anybody; not even Tony, and not even in her worst moods.
"I'm fine," she said, still cold and distant, even a little cranky. "Can we go now?"
Tim tried to read her and failing, relented. "Sure Kate. If that's what you want, we'll head back now."
She nodded her head and he started the car.
A/N: Sorry...no revelations in this post...maybe next time ;-)