A/N: This is loosely based on something that happened with my roommates once :)
Penelope Shepard was soaked. Soaked and muddy and in a very bad mood. It was a late Thursday evening, and she was searching for her keys, standing on the porch of her brownstone, her NCIS windbreaker drenched by the rain. Her long red hair was sticking to her face and the raindrops dripping into her eyes made it almost impossible for her to see anything.
"Fuck this," she swore and resorted to simply banging against the old wooden door with her fist, guessing by the light shining through the milky glass window that someone was home.
She tried to kick some of the dirt off her combat boots against the steps leading to the door, when she saw a shadow move in the entrance hall. She took a step back as the door was opened and was greeted by a very peculiar sight.
"Did you lose your key?" her sister asked, her face almost as red as her hair and a little out of breath. She was still dressed in her work clothes but had, curiously enough, thrown a kitchen apron over the expensive suit. Her hair was a mess, her make-up was smudged and the look on her face could only be described as pure desperation.
"What the hell happened to you?!" Penny asked, trying to squeeze past Jenny into the house. However, the latter was blocking the door.
"I could ask you the same question. You're not coming in, dirty like this"
"Jen. I've spent the past 5 hours digging through the woods looking for a goddamn murder weapon. In the rain. With DiNozzo. I swear to god, move or I'll move you."
Reluctantly, Jenny stepped aside, glaring disapprovingly at the muddy footprints Penny left all over the tiles in the hall.
"So?" Penny asked, wringing out her wet hair and peeling herself out of her jacket, "did you try to cook or something?"
Jenny didn't answer, she just grabbed the dirty windbreaker from where her sister had dropped it on the floor with two fingers and hung it on the banister, before drying her hand off on the apron. She put her hands on her hips and watched with disgust as Penny unlaced her shoes, unholstered her gun and stripped out of her jeans, making an absolute muddy mess. She stopped in her tracks, balancing on one leg, the other still stuck in her jeans and started laughing. "You really did try cooking, didn't you?"
She hopped forward and held on to Jenny's shoulder with one hand, trying to shake the wet jeans off her leg. "I didn't try to cook," Jenny said, giving in and pulling the wet denim off her little sister's foot, "I actually managed to."
"Yeah?" Penny smirked, wrinkling her nose, "then why does it smell burnt?"
Horrified, Jenny straightened up and started off towards the kitchen, causing Penny to almost lose her balance and drop to the floor, if it wasn't for the side table she held on to. She heard Jenny rumbling in the kitchen, followed by a loud curse and the deafening sound of the smoke alarm.
Groaning, Penny was quick to grab a broom from the laundry room and hoisted herself up on the side table by the banister, trying to reach the damn thing, when Jenny came running back from the kitchen.
"WHICH BUTTON DO I PRESS AGAIN?!" Penny yelled, blindly poking the shrieking thing with the end of the broomstick, obviously repeatedly missing the turn-off button.
"TRY THE LITTLE WHITE ONE!" Jenny yelled back, pointing to the ceiling.
Penny kept hitting the smoke alarm with the stick, but it felt like the sound only grew louder, making her want to cover her ears instead.
"GET BACK" she heard her sister shout and turned around to see what she was doing. She had apparently picked up Penny's gun from the pile of wet clothes and was now pointing it at the smoke alarm "I'LL SHOOT IT!"
It must have been a strange sight, Penny, only in her panties and drenched shirt, barefoot on the antique side stable with the broom in both hands; and Jenny in her apron, gun in hand, expertly aiming it at the noise erupting white plastic thing on the ceiling. A sight one Leroy Jethro Gibbs was greeted to, when he let himself into the house, immediately covering his ears from the horrible sound.
They just stared at each other for a moment and Penny didn't even ask herself why he had a key to their house, too preoccupied with the alarm and her gun crazy sister.
"WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?!" he yelled and moved towards them with a few big steps, lowering the gun in Jenny's iron grip.
Tired of shouting like an idiot, Penny gestured towards the smoke alarm, pointing to the tiny button with the broomstick. He understood and, without a warning, grabbed her around the knees and lifted her up. For a second, she thought she was going to fall backwards to her death but then balanced herself on the wall and reached for the button. Stretching out, she was just tall enough the reach it with her index finger and when she pressed down, the noise finally stopped.
Penny sighed in relief and held on to Gibbs' shoulders as he carefully dropped her back on the ground.
"What the hell is going on here?" he repeated and looked from one Shepard to the other, obviously trying to decide which of them looked more ridiculous, "Is that an apron?!"
Jenny secured the gun and put it aside, bracing her hands against her hips in annoyance, "Yes, Jethro, that is an apron. Your investigative skills never cease to amaze me. People wear it when they decide to cook. Why do both of you act like this is such an anomalous sight?", she snapped.
"Because you don't cook!" Penny and Gibbs replied at the same time.
"For a reason, I might add," Penny continued and pointed to the smoke cloud that was slowly spreading in from the kitchen. It wasn't too bad, and she guessed that her sister had already turned off the oven, but it was getting a bit foggy in the hall and study.
"Everything was going just fine until you got here and distracted me," Jenny answered while taking off the apron and throwing it onto the clothes pile.
"Oh, so now it's my fault, you almost burnt down the house?"
"I didn't burn down the house. That stupid thing is set to go off way too easily"
The older Shepard rolled her eyes and tried to wrestle her messy hair into a ponytail, glaring at her sister in the process.
"And you were going to shoot it?" Gibbs piped in, grinning at her with a raised eyebrow and reaching out to wipe something that looked suspiciously like burnt cheese off her cheek.
"She just wanted to make murdering me look like an accident. You ruined it." Penny answered instead. He shook his head in disbelief and, in a swift movement, slapped both of them on the back of their heads.
"You," he pointed at Penny, "go take a shower. You look like you dove through a swamp." "And you," he turned towards Jenny, "open a window, while I order all of us some actual food."
The two sisters exchanged a glance and silently contemplated to protest but then shrugged and decided to just go with it. Penny picked up all the clothes from the floor and walked to the stairs. She took a few steps up and then stopped again, turning back around to tilt her head at Gibbs, "Why do you even have a key to this house?" she asked, a grin spreading across her face.
"Because you two," he pointed back and forth between them, "can obviously not be left alone."
Penny rolled her eyes with amusement and was about to retort with a snappy comeback, when she watched Jenny elbow him in the side, before stalking off to finally open a window.