"What?" She's watching him with an unexplainably affectionate smile – one that she generally saves for when she doesn't think he's paying attention to the turning of her head.
Gibbs just lets the chuckle off his throat, shaking his head as he focuses on the deserted road again, palming the wheel as he shrugs. "You're stubborn."
"Yes, I am." There's a sweetened up valving of laughter in her throat that nearly hums into appreciation. "How so?"
"Just go to sleep." He banks her a glance quickly, letting his eyes scatter over the way her head is turned long and lingering against the headrest. "Get rest where you can."
It's a foxhole life, sweetheart. Trench nap.
"I can't." Kate murmurs, her hand lifting into the space between them, fingers hesitating into the sudden jerk of his jaw at the movement.
Damn it, he couldn't help it.
She actually has him nervous. Twitchy. A slight twinge cagey.
"And why is that?" He intentionally drops his shoulders relaxed and bites on the smile that pulls at his lips as she wipes her fingers gently against the sleeve seam of his jacket, her palm sloping the upper sleeve before it drops raggedly back into her lap.
"You'll think too much if I don't keep distracting you."
He lifts his head understandingly into her assertion, "And change my mind?"
"Mmm hmm." Kate sounds it off slowly and quietly, the noise dwelling warmly between them. "You seem to forget that I know you."
"You don't know me as well as you think you do, Agent Todd." He roughs out between them, navigating a turn with one palmed shift of his hand on the wheel.
"And, yet, still more than you'd like me to." She smugly shrugs her glance out the window and he can't help but feel comforted by how eased he is by her in the seat beside him.
"Don't profile me, Kate." He shakes his head slowly as he takes another turn, letting his body relax farther into the seat.
A laugh comes off her lips that starts in her throat and stays more breathy than he expects, "Too late."
"Started on Air Force One, didn't you?" He's grinning into it, keeping his eyes on the road even as he realizes that she's been in the car long enough that the scent of her has become a very part of the enclosed environment.
It's why he likes using the truck.
She's been in it enough that it inherently clouds the smell of her around him.
"It wasn't Air Force One. It was - "
"Alpha Foxtrot 2900." He interrupts with a lazed tone, bringing her head swinging back toward him with a widened smile. "Didn't you?"
"Yes."
He nods amusement into her strict adherence to select security measures, "And you vetted me before you let me anywhere near the President."
The shifting of her draws his attention briefly away from a road he could run while ragged and he smiles into the way she's nearly cradled and turned in the seat, "You're goddamn right I did."
"You vetted me." He blinks back to the road on a nod.
"Completely." The twitch of control that curbs her tone makes his head angle in a subtle suspicion.
"Full background check." Gibbs doesn't ask it. He knows it.
"More than. Multi agency access." Her voice strikes defensive as he takes the last turn before his driveway, letting off the gas as he forces himself to exhale. "How could I not, Gibbs? It was my job. My responsibility."
His shoulders feel tight again, unrelentingly knotted up in wariness, "And Fornell? My team?"
"Yes."
"But you're a good Agent, a good woman. Respectful. Compassionate." Gibbs lets it breathe out of his lungs as he shakes his head, sighting the driveway as he lets the vehicle idle even slower. "You don't tell them that you know where they graduated or what their SAT scores were?"
"Of course not. That's personal or classified information." He can hear the nervousness on her, like it's something she's extremely uncomfortable wearing. "Tony's full of shit when he tells the football injury story, by the way."
"I know that." The turn into the driveway is hard and tight and he catches the way her fingers rise into the window frame as she leans away from him. "You vetted me. All the way back. Multi agency access and more than a background check."
Shit. Shannon and Kelly.
"Yes, I did."
God damn it, Shannon and Kelly.
"Instant recall of pertinent information but you keep it locked down. You pretend you don't know." He's letting the words go stagnantly, letting them lull between them like a middling accusation as he jerks the car into park. "You're a double agent."
"Sometimes." She confesses.
Gibbs nods into the briefness of her tone. "You pretend you don't know."
"I do."
Distinctly single syllable answers are actually pissing him off. She's reverse interrogating him, deflecting and driving the information all at once. He very suddenly realizes that she's a better student than he'd dreamed she possibly could be. Because she's not only grasped some of the subtly finer points of a Gibbs-ian interrogation system, she's damn well adapted them. He's always been of the opinion that she's one of Darwin's finer examples of evolutionary excellence – she doesn't need to rub it up in his face.
Strike that, belay – he was fairly sure having her rubbing anything up into -
"Gibbs."
He stalls her interruption of his thoughts with his own wearied and rasping tone, fingers angry as he shuts the engine down, "Kate - "
"I know nothing." She banks sharply into the otherwise odd quietness of the vehicle, fingers lifting enough to draw his attention to her small hand. "Not really. Just facts. Just dates, numbers."
He nods slowly, a spike of almost pain shafting from his tensed jaw to the base of his skull, "You slipped up, though. You told DiNozzo I'd had four wives."
"And you corrected me in front of him." Her voice lends so soft, so hesitantly cool even as he bites down harder and shakes his head toward the driver's window. "You lied."
"It wasn't…" He forces all the air from his lungs like he's about to submerge everything, let it sink while staring out a darkened window. "You let me lie."
"Yeah, I did." She's watching him with darkly pinned eyes when he looks back, the same excruciatingly pretty way she'd once looked at him like she wanted to put a round in his shoulder, knee, whatever was close and damn painful.
"Caitlin."
"I know nothing." Kate murmurs on a slow shake of her head, her features forced intentionally blank. "Just numbers."
He jerks his seatbelt undone with a quick shake of his head, "We're done with this."
"I figured we would be by the time we'd gotten here." There's a resolve in her tone, a new leveling up to seriousness that slants controlled. "Guess I should've slept. Miscalculation on my part, huh?"
She seems disappointed, but not devastated.
As though she's been patiently expecting him to alter whatever arrangement they've been cradling between them since he'd shoved her back into that table and pressed on her.
"I meant the discussion." Gibbs leans into her tightly, nodding once into the way her head doesn't shift from staring at the front of his house.
"No, you didn't." Kate argues sharply, her shoulders suddenly jacking into tightness as his hand slips along her side to pop the seat belt, her head finally turning accusatorily in his direction. "You meant all of it."
"You don't know all of me, Kate." His fingers tighten up where he's clipped her jaw still, letting his own flex before he lays a sharp kiss against her surprised and still lips. "You just know some numbers. Get outta the car."
Well… now she's just intentionally, blatantly, smart-assedly baiting him. Because his favorite (perfectly-worn-in-thread-bare) flannels are tied up round on her hips. And they're still just delightfully loose enough to sling low on her pelvis. The tank is vaguely familiar and he's pretty sure probably came out of her back up gym stuff before they'd even left the office. It's tight and lean and unapologetically curves on her – and he unapologetically appreciates it long enough for her to realize he's doing so. The cocked glance she gives him brings up a grin and he gives her a lazy shrugging in return.
"I said the top drawer." Gibbs lingers back against his counter, fingers gripped up into the damp dish rag as he lets his glance wander down the full stretch of her.
"You said there were shirts in the dresser."
"And followed up with 'top drawer'." He corrects with a low leveled tone.
"Must not have heard you." Her shoulder lifts and he's completely aware that she thinks - correction - she knows she's something akin to adorable when she smirks like that.
Dear Dimples, you stop that shit. Right now.
And she smiles deeper, like she knows he can't help watching it evolve, "Are you aware that there's a Beretta in your sock drawer?"
He launches another grin over the table, leaning forward so that he can toe the chair out a fraction, the scraping sound catching up in the otherwise quiet kitchen, "Can't imagine where that came from."
"Your back-up throw away is a Beretta and not a Sig? Where's the clip?" Kate asks as she watches his hands, his movements, waiting for him to sit.
She's surprised when he aims for the chair and then waves his fingers in her direction instead of shifting into it. She accepts the offer though, curling slowly into it as he tosses the towel to the counter. Her knees draw up instantly into her chest, arms loose against them in a fashion that makes her look even smaller than expected. At least until she flexes bare shoulders and rolls her head back against them with a long breathed groaning. All he wants to do is touch her. Instead he grabs the warmed cup from the counter and settles it in front of her, noting the scrutinizing glance she's tipping on him at the movement.
"Not telling you." He murmurs as he aims it center point to the table directly in front of her, sliding it closer as she lifts her shoulders straight into his downward shifting. "Those are my pants."
"I needed pants." She shrugs her hands around the cup and he watches the curl of her fingers and shoulders and the forward sifting shift of her hair as she groans her face into the steam of chamomile.
"I've seen your legs." He aims over her quietly, letting the words haze down over the crown of her head, lifting his fingers to catch the slope of her hair to wipe it back. "And you don't sleep in pants."
She smiles forward into the edge of the cup like she's sharing a secret with her tea at his expense and he catches it in his peripheral, "I do if they're comfortable."
Keep your damn hands to yourself, Gunny.
"And these are pretty comfy."
Ah, screw it. God hates a coward.
He slopes his palm along the side of her neck and watches the way she lifts her head preening into the full stretch of his fingers, her throat constricting under the pressing as she lets her head lean back long, "You mean you do if it's gonna annoy me that you pawed through my drawers."
She's angling her head into keeping his palm pressed still as he curves up along the back of her and the chair, the other hand flat along the table, "I haven't gone near your underwear, Agent Gibbs."
He growls his smile into the darkness of her hair, catching the subtle shift of her head into his as he lets the sound heat against her. His palm stretches down along her collarbone, keeping her back straight and sure and tight to his front as he angles his head into the turning of hers. She doesn't ask to kiss him, doesn't warn him of it either, just turns her mouth into the shifting of his so strongly that he's slightly unbalanced in his pressing. His other palm curls into a fist against the table as she licks her tongue against his and the taste of tea is startling to him.
Earlier it had been the safety of coffee. Now it's all new.
She surprises him more often than he'd expected she really would.
"Kate." He can tell she likes the feeling of her name kissed onto her lips because the angling of her head goes sharp and steeper, following after him as he lifts his own.
"What?"
He keeps her head up with fingers to her throat, keeps her closely holding to him with pleased eyes and a smile that says she's legitimately enjoying every inch of the situation, "What the hell is going on with you tonight?"
"I'm sleepy." She shrugs at him, her usually widened up eyes slimming farther as she slowly inhales through her nose. "Can't be held accountable for my actions."
"I will always hold you accountable for your actions." His fingers wipe a line on her jaw, voice graveled out. "You know that."
And she looks a little perturbed that he'd be so simply rational, so realistic, so unfailingly Gibbs, "Maybe that's what wrong with me."
"That I expect you to be responsible?"
"Yeah, I guess. In a way." Her eyes are softening in color as she watches him shift back, turning his hips opposite at her side so that he can lean against the table but still face her. "You hold me to a higher standard. Constantly."
"Yeah, I do." There's a shrug in his strong shoulders that is nothing of apologetic, completely assured. "You started out on a remarkably different level."
"We were even once." Kate shrugs back just as evenly, letting her hand shift off the table to wipe knuckles along the worn in denim of his jeans. "Maybe I find it difficult being your subordinate when I know I'm capable of being your equal."
He gives her a patented glance of warning, "I never said you weren't."
"Capable or your equal?" Her wrist stretches back, laying the back of her hand flush to the side of his leg.
She more than just capable. She's been… She's his watchword.
The silent guiding he looks toward and always manages to find the right answer in.
He's grown used to that secondary conscience, that touchstone to balance. Too quickly become accustomed to having her eyes waiting for his glance.
"Capable." He tugs against the watch she hasn't removed, fingers tentatively slow as he lifts her hand loosely, letting her stretch her palm farther onto his leg with a smile.
Her fingers rub into fabric and the very movement seems both unconscious and unstoppable, "Because I'm too young and naïve to be your equal?"
"Sometimes, yes." He's once again completely unapologetic in his loose shrugging and she accepts it as his truth. "You need experience."
"Valid." Kate murmurs into finding the inner seam on his thigh, fidgeting her fingers against it.
"You need the lessons."
She nods a slowly made agreement, "Accepted."
"You need to stop." His hand clasps over her wrist and stalls the taunting of her fingers.
Because I can't fucking think.
She angles her head the same way she does when DiNozzo says something that grates on her, verges offensive. "Okay."
"Not because I didn't like it." He leans over her, keeping the words toned quiet but sure and purposefully gentle.
And there's still a tip to her that has her hair looking longer than he'd realized it had become, "Because you liked it too much?"
"Stop profiling me."
"That wasn't profiling." The grin she gives him is right back to where they started when she'd offered him a short order leave to lay his hands and mouth anywhere he damn well pleased. "That was just being a woman."
"Fair point." Gibbs nods a brief agreement before loosening the grip he still has tethered around the slimness of her wrist.
"No, I don't sleep in pants. I also don't walk around your house in my underwear."
"Damn shame." He hisses down against her mouth, her lips so easily parting under the insistent push of his tongue – she knew he'd be coming back around again. "Come to bed."
She makes a sound in her throat that he knows she doesn't mean to let him hear, "Gibbs."
And he lets himself smile because he knows she can't necessarily see it when he wipes it against her cheek, "You need to sleep."
"So do you."
Now, that's the tone of a woman who isn't all that worried about him walking away.
So damn perfectly contrary.
"Then stop arguing with me, Kate."