Fling 5
"You do realise Jethro, that each of our young ones, used the excuse of a date to leave? And on a Sunday night?" Ducky asked Gibbs with a little chuckle, as Gibbs walked his friend and the birthday boy to his beloved Morgan. Shannon had insisted that Ducky stay for a cup of tea and dinner, afterwards. But he had declined her invitation to stay for dinner, he had to get home to his mother. "Young love is many a splendorous thing."
"Kell probably didn't have a date, Duck." Jethro corrected his friend. "She's still sporting the emotional battle scars from her relationship with Jay ending. Good riddance to bad rubbish, I say."
"Ah, Jethro. Are you in denial? I clearly heard your young lass say date." Ducky admonished his younger friend. "After all, her and that Jay fellow split up three months ago, also the length of time that they were together. Perhaps there is something happening with someone new."
Gibbs knew he was in denial about what he had found on the floor of his daughter's bathroom and quickly changed topics. "Speaking of someone having someone new, how wonderful is it to see Tim with a new someone?" Gibbs asked his friend with a grin. "Well not see, because he didn't want to introduce her to us yet. But I can tell that he likes her, a lot. When we were down in Norfolk, he even sent her some flowers."
"Yes, I thought perhaps he was seeing someone new." Ducky mused and wondered if his friend suspected anything. "Did you really have to tell that story and embarrass the young man? He cops enough torment from Anthony, you don't need to add fodder to the canon."
"You didn't see him, Duck." Gibbs laughed, as he held open the door for Ducky's Morgan open. "It's the details I left out that makes the story so much better, Duck. He had those black lace panties dangling from his finger. Panties is a weak word, it was more like a small scrap of lace posing as underwear. There McGee was, dressed in nothing but his boxer shorts and he opened the door asking if I forgot these in a tone of voice, I didn't think he had, let alone knew how to use. It was a page straight out of DiNozzo's play book. I was impressed. Tim is always well put together and looking neat as a pin and behaving so gentlemanly. It was nice to see him looking all messed up."
"Be that as it may, let him enjoy his new found relationship." Ducky admonished his friend. Ducky felt like he wanted to swallow his tongue. Knowing now, he had heard the full story, as well as the implication that what he had witnessed, it wasn't an isolated incident. "He will introduce us to her once he knows where it's going, I am sure Jethro. Just be patient with him."
Ducky knew that the MCRT team leader was going to have a field day when he learnt the identity Timothy's new lover. Waving his friend off, he drove down Jethro's street headed for his home in Reston. But not before he bypassed Kelly's house on his way home, just wanting to make sure that he hadn't been hallucinating. Her car was missing, which wasn't unusual, it could have been in the locked garage, instead of her driveway and there were no lights in her home.
He found himself in Timothy's neighbourhood next, which was well out of his way. Ducky saw that the apartment complex was lit up by lights and where Timothy's apartment was located in the complex, there were lights on inside the apartment. He looked around to see if he could see Kelly's car, but he couldn't. He figured if they were truly together, they may have left her car at her house and may be planning to commute to the office together, in the morning to save fuel.
As he pulled away from the apartment complex, he missed seeing Kelly and Tim emerge from the main entrance. Kelly in a navy blue dress with heels, Tim in a dress shirt, business pants and loafers as a cab pulled up and he held the door open for her, before climbing into the cab behind her.
Monday morning arrived before no one was really ready for it. The MCRT had a late start of 0800 today. Tim was usually the first one in the office, today he was the last.
He had taken Kelly out to a bistro out in the city centre of Silver Spring for dinner, securing a last minute reservation last night. After dinner, they'd walked to the ice-creamery on the next block. Tim had bought them a cone, they took a nice little moonlight stroll through the park and enjoyed the fountain, before catching a cab back to his apartment. Inside they had taken separate showers and gotten ready for bed. Climbing into bed, Tim and Kelly had made love to one another. Afterwards they cuddled and Tim and Kelly discussed their day.
Monday morning rolled around and Tim and Kelly hit a diner in Silver Spring where Tim frequented for breakfast and coffee, before Tim dropped Kelly off to collect her car and they travelled into the Navy Yard, convoy style. They smiled and waved to one another across the parking lot, before heading into their respective buildings. "Good morning, heck of a day, isn't it?" Tim greeted Agents Jones and Carson, as he disembarked from the elevator and entered his own bull pen.
Gibbs looked at his agent carefully, then at his watch, before he caught the young man's eyes and smirked at him. Tim was smiling, his eyes were wide and his face was bright. He was definitely in a good mood.
"You left Gibbs' place last night and went and got your game on with little miss flirty text message." Tony accused Tim, playfully. He had been standing there talking to Tim when Tim's phone had buzzed. Tim had read the text and blushed bright red. Tony had verbally guessed it had been a text from a woman and Tim hadn't corrected the Senior Field Agent, letting him run with his assumption. "Look at him Ziva, he's a man now! I'm so proud of you, Tim."
"What are you talking about?" Ziva asked him, not looking up from her file. "Timothy has always been a gentleman."
"He's oozing a very powerful caveman-esque scent." Tony continued and Ziva looked up at him. "Like Heston in Planet of the Apes and it didn't matter that that world was ruled by orang-utangs because Heston went straight for the chick in the loin cloth."
"You are jealous." Ziva accused him, letting her humour colour her voice.
"Why, yes I am." Tony grinned at both of his colleagues. "There's nothing wrong with that, Tim. I'm proud of you."
"Be proud him on your own time DiNozzo, we've got a body at Quantico." Gibbs said, lowering his desk line into the cradle. "Grab your gear."
At the crime scene, Tim's good mood continued. He happily took the task of sketch and shooting from Gibbs' directions and settled in to get some work done, while Tony spoke with the witnesses and Ziva bagged and tagged. Gibbs stuck close to Ducky, who was flying solo. When Ducky commented on Tim's good mood, Gibbs grinned at his friend. "Well yeah, Duck. Tony's weirdly proud of him too, whoever she is. She's certainly making him happy."
As they were working away, a gun shot rang out and everyone hit the deck. Just a single shot and it was all over. "Everyone OK?" Gibbs called out.
Tony and Ziva both called out that they were OK, as did Ducky and Jimmy. It was only when Ducky saw the blood seeping between Tim's fingers that Tim called out. "I'm hit, Boss."
Kelly's day was going well, until she walked into work, this morning. A feeling of dread lingered through the air and it had a feeling that it was about to be blown out of the sky. She had received a call from her supervisor, saying that Director Vance wished to speak with her, immediately and to bring her work laptop and all of her current case files with her.
She made her way from the annex building, across the green space and over to the main building, past Keith on the security desk and into the elevator. Taking the elevator to level four, she noticed that her father, Tim and their team were out of the office, most likely in a case. Climbing the stairs to the mezzanine level, Kelly paused a moment before bracing herself and entered the outer office where Pamela, Vance's PA sat.
"Ms. Gibbs, the Director said to go on in and take a seat." she instructed Kelly. She felt awful for the young woman. The Director was in a bad mood and whatever he had called her in for, had irked the former boxing champ, further.
Taking a tentative step inside his office, she was surprised to see him sitting on the sofa at the far end of the room. "Come in, Ms. Gibbs. Take a seat." Leon Vance told her as he handed her a bottle of water. "We need to discuss the threats that have been received against you from Oliver Dawson. I know you're going to argue against this, but I think you need a protection detail, just until we get a handle on this. His behaviour has been escalating and so have his threats. Obviously, you will want people you know and trust on your detail and that's going to cause a problem. I won't have Agent Gibbs on your detail. It would be a conflict of interest for the both of you."
"Speaking of conflicts of interest, I need your assurance that what I tell you won't leave this room." Kelly began, she too knew that Vance made a valid point about her dad, but no one except her and Tim knew about their get together's. Tim could be in danger too and she didn't want that. She also knew that Tim being on her protection detail was a conflict of interest for the both of them, too. "Agent McGee can't be on my detail either, then."
Leon Vance was taken aback by her declaration. To his knowledge, McGee was always respectful and no one had ever not requested him for an assignment, before. "What's the problem with Agent McGee?" he asked, seeing the young red haired woman turn shy. "I can't imagine Jethro Gibbs letting McGee do anything to you that would make you that uncomfortable for him to be around you like that."
The shrill ringing of his personal cell, interrupted his words. Checking the caller ID and seeing it was the father of the woman before him, he excused himself and answered it, worried. He listened to Gibbs as he explained what had unfolded at the scene and how he had sent one of his agent's back to the Navy Yard with Ducky and under a local LEO escort. That Mr Palmer and another agent would escort their victim back to the morgue.
Disconnecting the call, Leon Vance scrutinised the young woman carefully. "Someone just took a shot at Agent McGee. Agent Gibbs is sending him back to the yard for a protection detail, too. He thinks its was Oliver Dawson." Leon Vance watched as he saw the worry take up residence on her face and he let out a sigh. "How long have you and Agent McGee been seeing one another?" he asked with a grin, adding up the little information he knew, so far. He wasn't born yesterday. With all of the questions added up, the answers all pointed to the two of them, as a couple.
"We aren't exactly together like that, Director." Kelly explained, hesitantly. "It's just a fling. You know ... mutual admiration? ... Friends with benefits?"
"I take it no one else knows, Miss Gibbs." Vance asked her, thinking that her father, McGee's boss was going to blow a gasket about this. Especially once word was made that the pot shot that was taken at Tim, was because someone was out to get his daughter, Kelly. "You do realise that you and Agent McGee will have to come clean with Agent Gibbs, right? Because Gibbs wants blood for someone taking a shot at his agent. I could hear it in his voice."
Before Kelly could answer, Tim had been let inside the office from Pam, the Director's PA. "Tim!" Kelly exclaimed, seeing him enter. He was unharmed, minus a bloody and ripped shirt, with a bandaged upper arm, where the bullet had grazed him and she automatically went to him, in concern for him and his welfare. "Are you OK?" She rushed out, not bothering to hide the emotion in her voice.
Leon Vance watched as Tim pulled her close to him, with his good arm and whisper in her ear, before kissing her lips, chastely. "I promise I'm OK, Gorgeous." Tim reiterated, seeing Vance's own questioning gaze directed at him. He released Kelly from his embrace and her finger's lightly touched the bandage that adorned his injured upper arm.
The two of them stepped back from one another and maintained a respectable distance between them now, sitting in opposite chairs away from one another. Leon Vance had to smother his own smirk. Both Kelly's reaction to his injury and Tim's kiss had not been the actions of a friends with benefits arrangement. Or the reactions of a couple of kids having a fling. They were the reactions of young lovers, who maybe hadn't acknowledged their own feelings yet and he groaned out loud, as he realised that they had just found himself in the centre of a huge mess.
"Are you sure that you're OK, Agent McGee?" Leon asked, genuinely. He actually liked the technologically minded agent on the MCRT. "Did you get medical attention?"
"My arm is throbbing a bit, definitely manageable." Tim told him, truthfully. "Ducky looked at my arm, stitched the graze, cleaned it and patched me up."
"As I was saying to Miss Gibbs, you and her need to come clean with her father." Leon repeated himself, looking directly at Tim. At Tim's confused look, the Director smirked. "Oh yes, I put the pieces together and did the math. I take it your boss doesn't know. So you two need to tell him, because when he gets back here and starts demanding answers, he is going to find out. One way or the other, he will find out and it would be better if he heard it from you, rather than me. It seems that a suspect that Kelly has been studying has been making thinly veiled threats against her and you've been caught in the cross-hairs, McGee."
"He must be stalking her, Director." Tim added, reaching across from his seat, to Kelly, for her hand. "No one knows about us, except you, Director. We've been very discreet, ourselves. Not even so much as leaving a parked car at each other's house's."
"That is my theory too, McGee." Vance told them both. "The two of you are to remain in this office until Gibbs returns to the yard. Preferably at separate sides of the table, so when Gibbs finds out, he doesn't shoot first and ask questions later. I'll send Pamela to collect your laptop, McGee. Once Gibbs arrives, I will call him up there and the four of us will discuss the protection detail and I will let the two of you, inform Jethro Gibbs of the latest developments between the two of you."
"Thank you, Director." Tim nodded at him and Pamela entered with Tim's laptop and a bottle of chilled water and two Tylenol from Dr Mallard for his arm.
To say that Gibbs was pissed off, was an under statement. Someone had taken a shot at McGee. The bullet had grazed his upper left arm, bleeding profusely. He had identified the assailant as someone on their most wanted wall. Tony and Ziva had given chase, but they had lost him in the preparation of the fanfare for July four celebrations, that would be held the day after tomorrow.
"Find me something." Gibbs bellowed, as he, Ziva and Tony arrived back in their squad room. He found the post it note from Vance's PA and he hoped that was where his youngest, now injured agent was. "Locate Oliver Dawson, now! He couldn't have gone far! Going upstairs to see Vance, I want answers by the time I get back."
"On it." Both Ziva and Tony answered, almost simultaneously. They wanted answers just as much as Gibbs did. He had taken a shot at their team member, their youngest team member and they were all angry.
He took the stairs to the mezzanine level above, two at a time eager to see Tim, to see that he was OK for himself. Pamela waved him in. "McGee? You OK? Kell, what are you doing here?" Gibbs asked, seeing the two of them sitting opposite one another at the conference room table in the centre of Vance's office. They both had their laptops out and there were case files spread out across the bottom half of table where they had been working.
"Ah, Gibbs. Come in and close the door behind you." Vance instructed him and Gibbs saw the three of them exchange a look. Kelly and Tim began packing up their case files and locking their laptops. "Take a seat, the four of us are going to have a little chat."
Once Pamela had bought Gibbs in a coffee, mostly to sooth his inner savage beast, Gibbs got suspicious. "Whatever it is Leon, let me have it." Gibbs finally declared, getting restless at the wait.
"First off, Ms. Gibbs has been tracking and tracing Oliver Dawson for almost four months now. Three weeks ago, he made contact with her through the agency, began leaving idle, harmless threats. Until last night, the threats escalated." Vance began, looking at Tim first then, at Kelly. "But before I go on, these two have something to tell you and I am warning you Gibbs, behave yourself!"
Tim and Kelly looked guiltily at one another, they hadn't had a chance to discuss which one of them was going to be the one to spill the beans. They were having a wordless conversation and both were refusing to let the other one take the heat. "Will one of you just spit it out, already?!" Gibbs snapped, frustrated.
"I'll go on while those two sort out which one is going to deliver the blow to you." Vance said, amending his earlier statement. "Oliver Dawson has escalated his threats against Ms. Gibbs. We, Agent McGee and myself believe he has been stalking her. Taking a shot at McGee, kind of confirmed that theory for us."
"Why?" Gibbs asked, confused. "Why would taking a shot at McGee confirm that he has been stalking Kell?"
"Because boss, we've ... ah... been..." Tim stammered out loud, but Kelly kicked his leg underneath the table to shut him up. "Ouch!" He exclaimed in a hiss, directed at her.
"It's like this, Dad." Kelly began. She feared that her father wouldn't forgive Tim, as easily as he would forgive her. "Tim and I, we have ..."
"I think I get it." Gibbs muttered in a low voice, looking at Leon, before his head darted to look at his youngest but brightest agent. "Wait! No! Tim? Kell? Don't tell me." Gibbs was looking between the two of them. His daughter and his youngest agent. A table was separating them, but he saw a familiarity that wasn't there before. Gibbs shot to his feet and began pacing. "No! No! She's can't be your black panties girl? No, he's not the owner of the condom wrapper? No, this is not happening!" Gibbs denied. "No!"
Leon Vance was amused and bit back a grin. He couldn't even berate Jethro Gibbs for his denial, he was pretty confident he would have been in denial too, had the roles been reversed. "Afraid so, Gibbs." Leon sympathsised with him. "Oliver Dawson took a shot at McGee because of his connection to Kelly. I suggested a protection detail and Kelly then requested McGee not be on the detail. I thought perhaps he had upset her, and she didn't trust him. But then I picked up the details and did the math."
"You don't trust me?" Tim asked out loud, hearing the Director's summation and feeling hurt. She had explicitly told him, that she trusted him and he had believed her. "Kell? I thought you said you trusted me."
"Tim, no." Kelly denied, vehemently. "I trust you, trust you more than anyone else in this world." Kelly raised her eyebrows at him. Trying to get Tim to remember why she trusted him more than anyone else in this world. She had been a tiny bit scared, but she had let him do something to her body that no one else had ever done before. She had let him go down on her and give her oral sex.
"Oh!" Tim exclaimed, cottoning on to what Kelly had reminded him of. "Director? Gibbs? It's not a matter of trust."
"Knuckleheads!" Gibbs snapped at them, refocusing them both. He couldn't believe what he had learnt. It made a twisted sort of sense though, in the weirdest way. They were the same age and shared the same interests. "How long? How long have you two been a couple and lying to your friends and family? Lying to me?"
"Not a couple." Kelly corrected her father. "We're just..."
"Having a fling, Boss." Tim finished for her. "Some fun ... the no strings attached kind."
"I don't care what it is, Agent McGee." Gibbs seethed and Tim sat perfectly rigid and didn't react at the coldness in his boss' words. Which was surprising, even Leon and Kelly flinched at the team leader's tone. "It's not happening. End it now, or I will."
"Well, I don't care what you have to say. Once I'm off the clock here, I don't answer to you. I am an adult, perfectly capable of making my own decisions." Tim told him in reply, harshly. "I don't need to run my list of bed partners past you and get your approval."
Gibbs sank back into the chair he had been sitting in. He felt chastised and scolded, by own his own agent, too. He could not believe that Tim had taken that tone with him. "Gibbs?" Leon Vance asked, garnering his attention. "We have a more pressing issue to deal with. Ms. Gibbs and Agent McGee are both adamant that the only way Oliver Dawson could have known that they were spending more time than usual together was if he was following her. The threats started with her and now they're escalating."
"Kell? How in the hell?" Gibbs asked, his daughter. He remembered seeing the love bites that he had seen adorned across McGee's back. He remembered that Kelly had been wearing a comic con tee that didn't belong to her. "Neither of you thought that you should say something. Hell, we all spent the whole day together yesterday. McGee; you said that you had a date last night."
"No, I implied it. But I did take Kelly out to a beautiful little bistro I know for dinner." Tim corrected Gibbs. "After dinner, we strolled over to the ice-creamery for dessert, walked through Maltby Park and Watson's fountain. Before we caught a cab back to my place."
Leon Vance smirked at the couple in question. Again, that didn't sound like a fling or a friends with benefits arrangement. That had sounded like a date to him and a romantic one at that. Leon had had his own flings before he met his wife, a fling was very different. It sounded like the beginnings of a relationship and he was the only one in the room who wasn't in denial and that amused him.
"Where I suppose you defiled my daughter in all sorts of degrading ways, no doubt." Gibbs seethed in a low mutter, but it was loud enough to be heard by the room. He didn't think he could ever be as upset at one of his agents, as what he was at McGee in that moment.
"Dad! Just who the hell do you think you are?! Speaking to Tim like that!" Kelly exploded, in anger at her father. "Because you certainly aren't my kind and caring, understanding father. Tim and I don't just make love with one another. We go to dinner, we cuddle, we partake in our own leisurely pursuits together, spending time together outside of the bedroom, as well as inside. We actually have a lot in common, you know?"
Gibbs felt like the air had been sucked, right out of his lungs. He had never heard his daughter take that tone of voice with him before or speak to him with an attitude like that. First Tim and now, Kelly. "I'm sorry, I really am." Gibbs apologised to them both. "Especially to you, Tim. I know you and I know how you treat women. You'd never treat a woman the way I accused you of. I am truly sorry."
"So you should be, Gibbs." Tim snapped at him, harshly. He couldn't believe that Gibbs had been so cold and uncaring towards him. "I didn't do anything wrong."
"Except sleep with my daughter, while you were drunk." Gibbs retorted, trying to let go of the residual anger and hostility that he was still felling.
"ENOUGH!" Vance boomed at once, reining them all in. "We all need to work out what we're going to do with these two. Gibbs, you and Shannon could be in danger too. He didn't hesitate to take a shot at McGee. It's not so far fetched to believe he might make a move on one of you, two."
"I can defend and protect my family from Oliver Dawson, Director." Gibbs argued, now with the Director. "We can go to our family cabin, in the Blue Ridge Mountains. McGee can come too."
"Not good enough, Gibbs." Vance argued, stubbornly. "He knows everything about Kelly, everything about the whole Gibbs family. He probably knows everything about McGee's family, too. He's a methodical, cold, calculating radicalist with ties to everything from terrorism to coin betting scandals and just about everything in between. I've got CCU on Ms. Gibbs' workstation, looking to see how she was targeted. I've got Balboa looking to see if he was targeting McGee separately and it is just a coincidence that they're a couple and both targets."
"Rule thirty-nine, there is no such things as coincidences." Gibbs muttered lowly, but it was heard and acknowledged by everyone in the room with a nod of their heads.
"I've been working on a top secret project for Commander Watkins for almost two years now. Is it possible that this has something to do with me and he found Kelly through me?" Tim asked and Gibbs looked at him, like he could spit chips. He didn't know that McGee had been working with Commander Watkins on a top secret project for over two years now. But he knew that McGee was highly sought after and had completed top secret projects in the past.
"No, both Secret Service and Homeland have ruled that out, we believe that he is fixated on Miss Gibbs and the threat has originated from something she has been working on, with the cooperation of the DOD and our analyst department."
"My company deals with many different branches of government and its agencies, as well as big businesses in the private sector." Kelly explained her own theory. "Not just domestic, but foreign business too. I can have my people run scans through our systems and see if anything or anyone flags."
"Thank you, Miss Gibbs." Leon said, adding that to the list of things that they were doing to get answers. "Only one person from your IT department."
"Or I could run it." Tim offered. "I've been testing a program that I wrote to quickly run business files through our own databases to check for flags and anomalies. It's still in the beta testing phase, with the help of our CCU."
"Any objections, Miss Gibbs?" Vance asked, seeing the two younger ones share a heated look.
"Tim? You and me, we can take a look together." Kelly offered and sent him a sly grin. Vance had to look away to smother his smirk. The look that Gibbs' daughter had sent the man's Senior Field Agent had been heated and Gibbs had seen it too.
"For goodness sake, Leon." Gibbs let out in a huff, head slapping the back of Tim's head. "My place, twenty-four hour protection detail on the perimeter. Two in a car in the rear lane and two in a car out the front. I'll keep watch inside."
"Not good enough, Gibbs." Leon Vance argued with him. "I was going to suggest we sequester them. Put them up in a hotel room."
Gibbs took a menacing step towards the Director's personal space, getting up in his face. "You want to hold McGee and my daughter up in a hotel room, alone? Right after I find out they've been sleeping together?"
Leon Vance took a step of his own towards Jethro Gibbs. "I wasn't suggesting we book them the honeymoon suite at the Ritz Carlton, Gibbs. The two of them can be trusted to be professional."
"McGee, pack your stuff. You're moving in with us." Gibbs ordered, staring the Director down. "Kelly, you're moving back home too. Until we get a handle on this, no one goes anywhere without your detail. Got it?"
"One night, Gibbs." Vance told him, before looking at Agent McGee and Kelly Gibbs. "We will revisit this discussion at 0900 tomorrow morning."