***Disclaimer: see previous
The weeks ticked by. The days dragged by. The hours never seemed to go quick enough. She checked her watch again as if the thirty seconds that had passed since the last time she checked had magically turned into months. The daily grind had turned into the daily nightmare. She was trying to be strong, fight against the urges that overcame her when Gibbs was around. She had moved on. Ok, not so much but she had tried. Marine Sgt. Rivers had asked her to dinner a week ago and she had accepted. It had been two and a half months since the trigger had been pulled. Two and a half months since he had ended it. Two and a half months since she had lost everything. Everything. And she wanted it all back. Day after day she showed up and went through the motions. But it was becoming ever more clear that this situation wasn't going to get any better. Matter of fact it might actually get a whole helluva lot worse before it even had a chance of getting better.
Her side was hurting her again. She had ignored it for a while but the pain seemed stronger today. When this case is over, she thought, I will see a doctor. But not until this one is over. And it was a doozy. They had the guy pinpointed to one area but couldn't, through various daily surveillances, get the guy doing anything worse than jaywalking. And the worst part of the day was yet to come. It was her turn on surveillance. With Gibbs. They hadn't been in a confined space for more than thirty seconds since he had walked out of her garage. She checked her watch again. Twenty more minutes before she had to leave. What the hell, she thought. She might as well leave now. Why prolong the inevitable? She slipped on her Redskins hoodie to stave off the cool March wind, grabbed her gear and headed for the elevator.
Gibbs checked his watch again. Then ten seconds later. And thirteen seconds after that. He was not looking forward to this. Alone in a posh hotel suite with Lizzy. Ok, to be perfectly honest, he was looking forward to every last tension filled second of it. He missed her. God, he missed everything about her. He leaned back against the seat and closed his eyes. He saw her smile. The after-sex smile. The I-kicked-your-ass-in-bowling smile. The I-just-called-your-bluff smile. The after-sex-in-the-shower smile. His mind was beginning to set a pattern when someone knocked on his window. He looked up to see the blue eyes that he'd been missing. His heart started beating a thousand times faster than normal. His throat constricted. She gave a little shake of the hands to show him coffee. Wonderful, hot, saving grace coffee. But she had two cups. They had stopped sharing coffee three months ago. He missed that too. It was always such a simple thing. A non intimate gesture that always felt intimate to him. He opened the door as she backed up. He took the coffee and lifted it to his lips. He let the effects reach his brain and he looked at her.
"Good coffee."
"Yea well. I know a guy." She gave a small smile as she spoke. Her attempt at breaking the ice.
He popped the trunk and grabbed his bag. They were relieving Tony and Ziva and all the equipment had been set up for days. The elevator ride was slow and silent. They reached the room and Tony answered the door. His face was slightly flustered and lipstick graced the collar of his shirt. Gibbs strode past him to the window where the camera was set up. Lizzy caught Ziva's eye and they exchanged looks. Once again, as she had many times before, she brushed off the look of concern in Ziva's eyes. She was fine. Well, only ok at best. Well maybe a little less than ok but only when she wasn't having cramps. As she was now. And it wasn't even her time but she had been spotting lately and the pain had intensified over the last few weeks. She put it out of her head. They had work to do. Ziva and Tony left in a hurry, not wanting to stick around for the fireworks display that was bound to explode sooner rather than later. They settled in to what could only be described as a very uncomfortable silence. She set up her laptop on the coffee table in the living area. He focused his attention on the camera, occasionally switching to binoculars. They both tried vigorously to ignore the king size bed that was less than fifty feet from them both. But she couldn't ignore it. It kept drawing her eyes back. She looked over at it longingly, trying to picture them in it. Naked. The black satin sheets cool against her skin. Running her hands across his chest. Raking her nails down his back. Screaming out his name when release finally came. His voice broke into her thoughts.
"Lizzy." Not so much of a question as a statement.
She gave him a questioning look.
"You're drooling," he said with a smirk as the heat rose to her cheeks.
She knew she wasn't but she knew she had been caught. But so what? This thing between them was over. Doomed before it ever began. She smiled at him, glad for a break in the silence.
"You want a snack,"she asked. "There has to be something edible in that kitchen."
"Not if Tony just left. You might find a carrot. On the last shelf. If you're lucky."
He watched her as she stood and made her way to the fridge. He didn't miss the fact that she took the longer route just so she could trace her fingers across the bed. The satin rippled as it left her fingertips and he was mesmerized. He wanted to be with her in that bed. He wondered what she would feel like wrapped in satin. Ah-ah, his mind gave him a head slap. That's how this whole damn mess got started. Curiosity. Curiosity killed the cat. But the cat does have nine lives, right? He wondered how many they would dock him if he ravaged her in the best sense of the word. If he dropped kisses on a path from her lips to her neck to her navel… If he entered her roughly and felt her buck in response…If her screams were to match his…
"Now who's drooling?" she quipped as she threw a dish towel towards him. "You might need this."
The towel fell at his feet without him even making an attempt. She walked over and sat on the floor behind the coffee table, a slice of pizza on the napkin she was carrying. She punched a couple of buttons as she took a few bites of the Italian delicacy.
"Anything else besides pizza?"
"A coupla bags of chips, some candy, and some grapes." She reached for her coffee as he moved toward the kitchen, not daring to look at the bed. She checked her emails as he scoured the cabinets and fridge for something… anything.
"Abby sent us something, Gibbs," she said, her mouth full of pizza.
He finally grabbed a few things off the counter and walked over to the couch. He sat down and his knee brushed against her elbow. Her arm stiffened in response. In fact, her whole body stiffened. He saw her tense and absentmindedly began rubbing her shoulder with his right hand. His left hand dumped out the contents of his snack onto the coffee table. As he began separating his snack, green from every other color in the bag, he continued to massage her tired shoulders. At first she didn't mind. She almost fell right back to that place. That crazy, mixed up, Alice through the rabbit hole place that she always ended up in when she was around him. She reached her hand up to rub the spot his hand had just left. Instead he captured her hand and held it in place. He leaned in and started nuzzling her neck, knowing that it was the wrong thing to do before his lips ever met skin. But he didn't care. The world fell away as he pulled the hair tie and let the tresses fall in front of him. He inhaled slowly. He had missed her. Missed this. The closeness. The intermingling of scents.
"Oh, Lizzy…," he said as he buried his face in her hair.
And that did it. That snapped her back to reality. This wasn't happening. Not again. She wouldn't let herself be set up again. She extracted herself from his grasp and walked over to the window. She checked the camera, giving herself a minute to cool off. His touch reminded her of everything she could never have. Everything he would never give her. She had broken the contact out of a selfish need to save herself.
"There's that damn switch again, Jethro."
He shook his head, feeling out of sorts with her no longer next to him. He had done it again. He could hear it in her voice. The pain. The ache. The anger. The frustration.
"Why do you keep doing this to me?" She wanted to hit him. Hard. Slap him around a little bit. Give him back every ounce of pain that he had caused her. And then maybe she'd kick him. For good measure.
"I'm not doing it on purpose, ya know."
She shook her head. "Then why are you doing it?"
Because he wanted to feel alive again, his mind screamed, hoping that she would hear him. Because he needed her in order to exist as a normal human being. Because she was what got him through the day. But he was silent. He knew nothing he could say would make her feel better, would make it right. She walked over to him, invaded his personal bubble and repeated the question.
"Why?"
"I don't know Lizzy. When I figure it out, I'll let you know." He knew it was the bastard in him talking but he couldn't help it.
"That's not good enough, Gibbs. What are you so damn afraid of?"
He stood fully then and looked her straight in the eye.
"I am not afraid, Agent Edward," his voice now steel and grating.
"Oh so it's Agent Edwards, now?"
He brushed past her to give a look through the video camera, making sure they weren't missing anything important.
"You're afraid, Gibbs."
"I told you before—I am not-"
"Afraid. Yea I heard it too. But how do you explain the hesitation? How do you justify locking yourself away in your basement with only a tape player and a Strawberry Shortcake lunchbox and a bunch of ghosts to keep you company? You're gonna die in that basement, Gibbs. Alone."
She could see the muscles in his jaw contract. She watched pain hit his features and waited for it. The explosion that never came. He was silent. He leaned down again to look through the camera. "But at least you'll be with the ones that matter most to you in life."
She saw him take a deep breath. She watched as he noted something in his memo pad and set it on the coffee table.
"You're afraid of losing again. All the women in your life disappear."
He continued to stare out the window, still without words.
"You remember when I told you when we started this that I wasn't asking you to love me? Yea well…. You didn't send me that same memo."
There. She had said it. In a roundabout way she had admitted it. Admitted what had been eating her alive for weeks…months…Admitted the reason for what she was about to tell him.
"I'm leaving too, Gibbs."
She saw his body stiffen. That was the only reaction she got.
"I put in for a transfer. I'm not leaving NCIS, just your team." She took a breath. "I will be the new agent afloat aboard the USS Enterprise."
His stomach turned and twisted. His heart took that knife that had been stuck in it and drew it in deeper, twisting and turning it the further down it went. His mind stopped functioning. Leaving. She was leaving. Gone just like the others. He finally turned to face her. She raised her hand and split her fingers into a 'V'.
"Live long and prosper," she said with barely a smile.
"How long?"
"Two weeks from today."
He repeated himself. "How long?"
"Indefinitely."
He stared at her now wondering if it was his mind playing tricks on him, or just his ears. She wasn't really leaving. Was it really that bad? She was a vital part of the team. He didn't want to replace her. He shouldn't have to replace her. He should step down. It was his fault it had gotten this far. She must have read his eyes.
"There's no changing it. Vance signed my orders this morning." She sat on the couch and began twisting the dishtowel that was beside her. She met his eyes once more and they were stained so blue they were black.
"It's no one's fault. We were both curious Gibbs. We both jumped in feet first and got caught in the undertow."
He stared at her for a while before taking his coffee cup to the sink and dumping ¾ of it into the sink. He grabbed his jacket and headed for the door.
"I need more coffee."
It wasn't a question. It wasn't a statement. It was a man that needed to escape before a single tear fell. The door slammed behind him as his mind began damning that god blessed cat to hell for all eternity.
A/N: Still not done…