Jack sat at her desk, pulling the blue stress sphere in and out as she tried to breathe in rhythm with it. She needed to calm herself down. She didn't know how much more of this she could take. Well, yes, she did. She could take as much as he threw at her. The question was, did she want to continue this cycle they had created for themselves? Or, possibly, knock them off this path onto something that just might get them to that desired finish line a little more quickly? As she continued to breathe, she thought back to the turmoil of the past few months.
Despite the stress, she couldn't help the smile that crept to her face as she recalled the simple gestures he had shown lately. She made up he was trying in his unique way to show that he cared about her. She isn't the only one he cares about, and she knows it. That's the problem, how can she know for sure that he cares differently for her?
Yes, there had been gestures made. But damn, did he have to be quite so subtle about it? She had a feeling he had convinced more than a few women he was interested in them when he was not. All he had to do was look at them with those piercing blue eyes that still somehow managed to twinkle, even when he was shooting you a look that told you to back the hell off. Yes, she was sure there were quite a few broken hearts due to those damn eyes and that damn smirk. She just didn't want to be added to that list. She liked to think she was different.
"I'm not just making it up, he does treat me differently," she muttered to herself as she continued counting back up to three with each breath out.
He listened to her advice. He respected that she didn't back off when others would have cringed at his look. She smiled again as she thought back to how close she had come to confessing all.
Leveling her with that deceptively enticing look, he'd asked, "Anything YOU need, Jack?"
"Yes!" she wanted to scream, grabbing him, closing the small distance between them, and leveling him with a kiss that was sure to relate the entirety of her feelings.
Instead, when she met his eyes, she was lost. They swallowed in every last part of her sending a vibration that traveled down her arms to her stomach. She held her breath as she waited for him to move just an inch closer. Only to realize he wasn't going to and was expecting an answer from her.
"Later, we can talk later," she finally managed to respond.
There it was again, that smirk. It was so telling. At that moment, he knew precisely what she wanted to say and what she was hoping he would do. So what was it about that moment that held them both back? It was shortly after that encounter that he had finally tried to tell her something. Something more than the subtle smirks and touches they had been sending to each other for the past two years.
The elephant painting had given her such encouragement. You don't give someone that with THAT note and then never talk about it again. It wasn't subtle she had to admit. But then there was nothing. How could Gibbs go and do that and then nothing!
"I mean, you don't just go and drop that and then never talk about it again!" she yelled, glaring at the elephant's mocking ass. "At least normal people don't." "Breathe, Sloane," she told herself as she started pulling the blue sphere in and out. All the progress of the past few months and then this morning had to go and happen.
She wasn't exactly sure why she had reacted so harshly this time.
Always seeming to have an abrupt tendency, this wasn't the first time they had argued about a case. She was sure it wouldn't be the last time it would happen either. So what about it had her stomping out of the squad room to her office? Sulking, angry and hoping someone, anyone, would knock on her door so she could pick a fight?
She thought about what had set her off. In an outburst of anger and a glare worthy enough to make Gibbs pause, she had thrown the suspect's report on his desk. Stormed past the team, their mouths slightly open, marched upstairs to her office, slamming the door behind her? It had all started with a simple question. That had been enough.
The door had not banged closed behind her when she realized what a massive overreaction she had just made. Why did she take Gibbs comments so personally compared to that of others? If Torres had asked her the same question, would her response have been the same? She knew the answer; she just didn't like it. Didn't like how hard it was to control her reactions to him. Why, with almost every other interaction, could she remain calm and collected? Give her a problem, and she could instantly run through scenarios in her mind, finding the perfect response to the given situation. She could relay it with a calm, gentle smile or piercing gaze, whichever the case called for. Yet, when it came to him, lately, she found herself tongue-tied, angry or saying something inappropriate altogether.
Take last week; they were all called into the office on the team's day off. As she walked into the pit, she saw Gibbs walking towards his desk, hands full of what had been the clothes he had been in before being called in. He dropped his shoes by his desk and stuffed the ratty looking USMC t-shirt and stained blue jeans into his duffel that was under his desk.
"Nice shoes," she said, smirking at the ten-year-old looking tennis shoes that appeared covered in some kind of shiny black substance.
Looking up and catching her eye, he shrugged as he said, "Helpin' stain Phil's new boat. Shoes and clothes are covered in it. I'm sure Leon doesn't want it all over the office."
"Oh, well, you know what they say about men and their shoes, or is it their hands?" she responded.
She groaned as she internally scolded herself, "Oh my gosh! Jack, did you just say that out loud? Shut up!" All she could hope for was that at that moment, the floor would decide to open and swallow her.
"Nope, can't say I've heard that before Jack. What do they say?" he asked, turning to look at her with a slight twitch to his lips.
"Coffee! I've brought coffee," Torres called, getting off the elevator with Ellie and McGee following behind.
"We've, we've brought coffee," Ellie corrected, giving Torres a slight bump with her shoulder. Torres just grinned as he held a cup out to her and started distributing the rest of the coffee to the eager agents.
Jack's shoulder visibly slumped with relief. She was never so glad to have a conversation between her and Gibbs interrupted. He just looked at her in bemusement as she quickly moved away from him to greet the team and grab her coffee. Gibbs, thankfully, let it go and turned his attention to the case that had called them all in to work in the first place.
"Gear up, body at Quantico," he ordered as he grabbed a coffee and headed towards the elevator, leaving Jack red-faced and standing in a now-empty squad room.
With a sigh of embarrassment, merely thinking about it, she leaned back in her chair. Yes, something needed to change, and soon. The answer was simple and yet so complicated. She was reacting with her heart when it came to him, and she somehow had to find a way to control it.
The loud knock startled her out of her thoughts. Dropping the stress sphere, she sat upright in her chair as the door swung open with a fuming Gibbs standing in the doorway. She met his glare with one of her own, glistening, auburn daggers, shooting at steel, icy blues.
She may have recently realized that she had overreacted to his question, but that did little to squelch her anger. When brown clashed with blue, she just became furious all over again.
"What the hell, Jack!" he growled, kicking the door closed behind him. "You want to tell me what that was all about?" he continued.
Bypassing all formality, he stormed around her desk, standing directly in front of her. Glaring up at him for invading her space and his attempt to put a Gibbs intimidation move on her, she decided to dig in.
"Me!" she all but screamed at him, standing so quickly the chair rolled several feet away from her. "You have the nerve to ask ME what the hell is wrong with ME?! What the hell is wrong with YOU?" she shouted, jabbing a pointed finger in his direction.
Remarkably, Gibbs was the one to back down first. Quickly realizing he needed to take a step back, take a couple deep breaths like Grace had shown him. He did not want to mess this up with Jack before there was even anything to mess up.
What had he done to illicit such an un-Jack-like response? He racked his brain, trying to recall what the exact words were that were said just moments before. The case. They had been discussing the evidence, the suspects, and the new witness that they had just brought in for questioning. There had been a debate going on about something the witness had told them. Ellie and Jack had just finished talking to the witness in the conference room and were relaying the insights they had gathered from her. He had asked her a simple question about it, and then all hell had broken loose.
Replaying the conversation he had downstairs was getting him nowhere. Palms turned upwards, surrendering to the situation, he turned around to face the woman he cared about. Acknowledging for the first time to himself, he cared about her more than any other person he could think of.
With calm and patience he hadn't thought he was capable of, he asked, "You want to let me in on what I've done?" His eyes pleaded with hers to help him out of whatever whole this was he had dug.
She couldn't make eye contact with him. She was far too embarrassed by her response downstairs and now again in the office. His rejection, even when done innocently, simply hurt too much. Her undoing was him gently placing one hand on her shoulder as he crouched down to look up into her downcast eyes.
"Jack," he whispered, "talk to me, what have I done?"
She couldn't look, to meet what she was sure were piercing, gentle as the breeze, blue eyes. Closing hers, she took a breath, and stepped back, breaking the connection he had been trying to establish.
Taking a shallow, somewhat shaky breath, she answered, "I know I overreacted Gibbs. There is already enough gossip about us, for me to go and fan the flames like this. I had wrongly assumed there was more to us than simply coworkers and office gossip. I guess I was wrong."
"This isn't you, Jack," he huffed. "We talk. So, can you please just tell me what I've done?" he urgently tried coaxing a real answer from her.
Isn't this ironic, he thought, Me, tryin' to get her, to open up.
"Nothing! You have done nothing! Let's just forget about it, okay," she responded with a hint of defiance to her voice.
Still calm, but losing his gentleness, he countered, "You don't get to push this aside like that, Jack. All I was doing was discussing the case with you and the team. We were deciding on the believability of the witness if I recall correctly?"
With a weary sigh, she realized she had to finish this conversation. She was sure it wasn't going to be her desired outcome but LATER had finally arrived. One way or another, she was about to find out what their "thing" really meant to both of them.
"Yes, that's right," she finally conceded, still refusing to make eye contact with him. "Ellie and I believed that the witness might not make such a viable one. Considering how difficult it was to give a detailed description of the suspect. Despite sitting next to him on the bus for the past five days."
Struggling to find anything wrong with the conversation they were replaying, "Right, and Torres was giving Bishop a hard time about what constitutes a detailed description. Something about being able to define eye color or something?" he continued.
"Uh-huh," she croaked out, unwilling to finish what came next in the conversation.
She needed him to be the one to say it, to hear it for himself.
"Okaaay, and then I agreed with Torres," Gibbs replied, still not connecting it.
Closing his eyes, he thought back to how he had agreed with Torres. But, what exactly had he said next that caused her reaction?
BAM! WHACK!
Knocking the air out of him, it hit him. Replaying what he had said. No, what he had flippantly ASKED. He was sure this was the reason he was currently standing in the middle of Jack's office, frozen with remorse at his insincerity. Raking a hand through his silver hair and over his face, he replayed the scene.
Replying to an annoyed Bishop, he said, "Torres is right. I'm sure he doesn't know the eye color of Betty over in accounting. I mean, come on; he would still be able to ID her in a lineup, right?"
Before Ellie could reply to Gibbs and Torres's dismissive remarks, Jack stopped her with a small shake of her head.
"Gibbs, I don't think eye color is the point Ellie was trying to make," she responded, placing a gentle hand on his arm. "WE are saying that this woman was unable to tell us ANY real details about the suspect that could help ID him." "Besides stating that he was a white male, 30-45 years old, medium build." With a smirk, she added, "She did know his eye color though, the same color as mine."
"And what color might that be, Jack?" he had replied.
Her entire body stiffened as a crimson hue flushed up to her cheeks. Throwing the report of the witness onto his desk with such force she sent his coffee spilling everywhere. She glared at him making him jump from where he was leaning on his desk. Without a word, she spun, stormed past the shocked looking team, up the stairs to her office, slamming the door behind her.
Scrambling to clean up the coffee mess, he grumbled, "What the hell is her problem?"
Eyes wide with shock, Ellie retorted, "Um, her problem Gibbs?"
"Boss, you think maybe you should see if she's okay?" a worried McGee asked, looking up the stairs...
Softly he walked up behind her, placing his hand on her shoulder, "Then I asked you what color your eyes were," he said, understanding fully now her reaction.
With a gulp, she responded, "I should know better by now. I'm just a human lie detector and analytic decoder for you."
"What?!" he asked in disbelief.
"I should know better by now," she repeated.
"You already said that," he softly answered.
"Jack, look at me?" he demanded.
"No," she quickly answered. "Why should I? So you can see the color of my eyes?" she added with angst, unable to let go of the hurt.
With as much control as he could manage, he assured her, "Jack, you know that's not true. Of course, I know the color. I was flippant and insensitive." "Wusn't thinkin'," he shrugged; the only way he knew how to apologize.
Spinning around, she closed her eyes tight and demanded, "All right, then tell me: What color are my eyes?" "You won't be able to tell me, because you've never paid enough attention to them!"
A big part of her knew she was acting ridiculous. Of course, he knew her eye color. He not only knew her, but he also happened to be the best damn agent she had ever worked with.
But then, there was that small part of her, that part that seriously doubted he would know. How else could you explain the complete standstill of this "thing" between them?
He couldn't take it any longer. Not know the color of Jack's eyes?! How could she even think that let alone say it? Well, you did ask her that question only ten minutes ago, he internally reprimanded himself.
Stepping into her space, he placed his arm around her waist, pulling her close. Her eyes remained closed as she let out a small gasp at his touch. She didn't try to retreat this time. He noticed that she had placed her hands on his chest, waiting. Moving so close to her mouth, he was sure she could feel his hot breath on her lips, he responded to her demand.
With a tenderness that could leave little doubt to his feelings, he began, "Your eyes are soft and fearless, a deep molten brown, with splashes of liquid gold that light up when you laugh. They smolder chestnut when angry and glisten with affection for me whenever I look into them. Which makes me want to lose control and kiss you every time."
A soft smile began to spread across her lips as she listened to his words. They were a balm to her tired, cracked heart. How long had she been waiting to hear him be bold and speak those words? Slowly, she opened her eyes; eyes that were now shimmering with joy-filled tears looking into his.
Turquoise starred into amber as she whispered, "Well, Cowboy, what are you waiting for?"
That was all the confirmation he needed. His lips touched hers in what was meant to be a short, soft kiss. Feeling her press back into the kiss had him deepening it as he explored her mouth with his. What was intended to be short and sweet instead turned into a kiss that had them both using Grace's breathing techniques to slow their racing hearts and fill their lungs as they pulled apart.
"Damn Cowboy, I wasn't sure you had it in you. I hoped, but you never know," she teased as she rested her head on his chest.
Kissing her softly once more, he grinned, "Four wives Jack."
Smirking, he added, "And Jack, my shoes are a size 13, ya know, if ya were wondering." Capturing her laughing mouth with his, he again let her know his feelings for her and those remarkable brown eyes. Just in case she was as thickheaded as he had been.
~The End