It had been a surprise that she'd woken before him, but not unheard of, really, and especially on a day off. The smell of strongly brewing coffee was wending its way up the stairs though and he banked back flat onto the mattress, stretching his bare shoulders into it as he listened for sounds from the kitchen. It was quiet, no movements, no sounds.
She coulda gone for a run. She tended to outrun her frustration with him whenever he bottled up on her, lace on her running shoes and get the hell out for awhile. She'd always circled back relatively quickly, make it a few blocks around and aim her way right back into his stubbornness. She'd wait it out with some previously untapped cache of patience, wiping sweat off her face as she met his eyes with a newly gentled look. He couldn't imagine the conversations she had with herself while she was jogging but, hell, he wasn't gonna question them so long as she kept making herself turn back toward the house.
The house he was pretty sure he'd demanded she move into...
That was... sorta embarrassing. Still, it wasn't like she'd flat out refused.
In fact her response had been anything but negative and especially when she'd moaned near loud enough for the little Italian octogenarian next door to hear.
But he didn't think... she wouldn't leave the house without telling him. Not after the ins and outs of the night before. Not after he'd dragged her below him on the mattress as he'd rubbed his face between her breasts, grasping for some sort of comfort back. Searching back for what he'd given her hours before– she wouldn't have just left without telling him. Not after she'd hummed such a gently made sound of endearment along his ear and started fingertips circling on his temples until he'd fallen into a stuttered half sleep with his face pillowed between her breasts.
Not if she'd obviously made coffee and... toast? Wheat toast?
Christ, the woman had the weirdest love affair with wheat-and-multi-grain-everything.
The coffee smell was teasing at him nearly as much as his curiosity and it didn't take all that much longer for him to shrug from the sheets and the thin throw blanket she tended to keep lingering along the base of the bed for when he was brooding at his boat and she needed a source of heat that wasn't him. She'd brought it from her apartment, looking flustered and completely embarrassed when she'd first tagged it around herself on the couch, her widened up eyes following him from across the room as though she were waiting for a reaction. He'd just dropped his weight onto the couch beside her and enjoyed the smell of her laundry soap instead of saying anything at all.
He was still staring the blanket down with a quirked smile as he pulled on a pair of sweats and scrubbed his hands through his hair. Bathroom, kitchen, coffee, and somewhere in the house was his Katya - just couldn't pin down exactly where yet.
Except, he didn't need to do much reconnaissance to know where he thought she probably was.
He had a pretty damn good idea.
"You still wanna go?" He asked as he slowly took the steps, one at a lazy time and coffee in hand.
She'd moved the table herself, shifted it so its back was flush to the end of the workbench. Her straightly lined back was turned in his direction and the angle her neck was tipping her head in seemed so stark that he figured she'd ache from it later. He enjoyed the figure of her as he finished the last few steps, moving slowly in her direction as he took in the tank and the boxers that had been missing from his floor when he'd woken up. Her legs were crossed up in the seat and he could see the twitchy bounce of one socked foot as her head straightened again, her hand lifting back against the paper. He noted the half emptied cup of coffee and the half eaten toast perched on the flat side of the table, her right hand sweeping long and bold lines along paper. Her hair was tipping a river of dark down over one shoulder and his fingers burned itching against his mug to reach for it.
"You don't have to, Gibbs," she murmured it quietly to the paper, her voice controlled by acceptance and a sort of focused numbness. No bitterness or accusation, just a slight inattention as she made a frustrated noise in her throat and deepened a line farther curving.
He'd sorta figured that he wouldn't exist for awhile when she finally found herself comfortable in that chair.
Watching her was more than worth her obvious lack of attention, though.
Especially as she seemed so curled and comfortably an extension of the table itself.
"Sweetheart, I'll go where you wanna go." Gibbs shrugged it off as he continued his steps past her, snagging the last half of her forgotten toast on his way by and stuffing it in his mouth, hunger having him chew quickly on the wheat and raspberry jam combination. "Just don't expect me to convert, huh?"
"Sure you don't wanna consider it?" Her head tipped aside from the lift of the angled board and he let himself sink onto his own stool at how adorably sleep-mussed but bright eyed she seemed. "My mother frowns upon Protestants, most often over a Bloody Mary while passively aggressively reminding me how much of a disappointment I am."
He blankly chewed past the mention of her mother, swallowing hard on a shrug before he popped the last bit in his mouth.
"Yeah? Bloody Mary wasn't so keen on us heathens either." Gibbs downed the last swallow with a gulp of the coffee she'd made ridiculously strong on his behalf, trying not to smirk into the way one of her brows arched into his sarcasm. "I don't share a bed with your mother."
Kate rolled her eyes before disappearing back into her drawing, her hair still visible and leading him leaning to the right to catch sight of her profile as she squinted back over the drawing. "Frankly, I'm not even sure my father shares a bed with my mother anymore. Catholics don't get divorced, they just stop having sex with each other."
He chuckled at the dry tone she'd used, letting his spine relax as he continued proudly watching how entranced she actually was. "You're not winning me over here, Katie."
"I like you the way you are." Her head shook starkly as she leaned away from the paper and frowned at, no doubt, some minuscule detail that was offending her perfectionism. "Which is why you don't have to go. I'm fine."
"Kate," the hush of his tone, intentionally warm, drew her jaw up even though she didn't look back in his direction. "I'll go where you wanna go. Okay?"
She didn't turn from what she was doing but the delicate smile she aimed over the paper was appropriately smug as she shrugged. "Okay."
He'd at least been somewhat apologetic in telling her that he had to go, that he'd gotten called back to an investigation while she'd been chatting with one of the clergy members. There'd been a softness in his voice that seemed reverent as he'd dipped his head closer to hers and stroked two fingers down the side of her dress, respectfully drawing her away. And it had caused her fingers to unconsciously lift and rub against the well cut suit jacket as she leaned a nod of acceptance in his direction, her other hand waving toward the large doors.
"I'm ready." She agreed into his quiet.
Gibbs skiffed a dry look over her gentleness, waving toward the confessional, "You didn't - "
"I can come back." She just nodded as she leaned into him, letting her body angle against his arm. "It... I'll come back. I wanna check in on Cassie."
"She shouldn't be there."
"She's there." She murmured it back quietly into him, her face skeptical as she met his eyes. "You wanna place bets?"
"I'm not gambling with you today, Katya. You've got that... predatory look."
She smiled into his shoulder, unfazed and bemused by his teasing as she tucked closer along his arm and wrapped curling around it. There was something simply comforting about the strong warmth of him as she closed her eyes into the fabric of his suit and let him lead her toward the doors at the back of the sanctuary. His lips brushed against her hair as he trapped her still, though. Her head lifted into the way he gently untucked her hands from his arm, extricating himself slowly as she watched with a tipped glance of confusion.
Kate followed the slow turning steps of his body, silently followed how tightly tacked up his shoulders were in the suit jacket as he closed the space between himself and the memorial candles that were tucked off to the side of the back of the sanctuary. She paused her steps, letting her head tip farther as he seemingly ignored her presence and lit two of the small votives.
The look he gave her when his head lifted was oddly perplexed, like he'd startled into realizing what he'd even done and the very fact he'd done it in front of her. Kate lifted her hand enough to stretch her fingers in his direction, a pleading palm turned downward as he moved back toward her with an unreadable look on his face.
His thumb was rubbing her knuckles as she tipped a whisper forward. "Who were those for?"
He looked up at her like she was both his most trusted and his devastation at once and she wasn't at all prepared for how searchingly accusatory and desperate it seemed within the same moment.
He seemed utterly lost and rattled but stalwart all at once.
And his voice, when he finally spoke, was flat, "My daughter."
His... what? "You don't..."
Oh, God...
He was as far from himself as she thought was likely possible. Because his eyes had gone hardened dark and his jaw seemed slack but tight at once. The blank of his features was, undoubtedly, rehearsed and practiced and some intentional safety, a place wherein he kept himself separate from feeling anything beside a complete numbing.
He was still so undoubtedly strong to her, even as he was righteously weak before her.
Her entire body sank a little as her shoulders dropped and her fingers traced the back of his hand with a cautious pressure. "Gibbs."
He shook his head at her, like negating the sympathetic pain of her wide eyed reaction would negate the reality of the truth existing between them.
"I can't tell you. Not everything. Not yet."
She felt a sympathetic noise rise up her throat, "Jethro."
"My wife," his voice was dusted dry as he swallowed and tugged at her sleeve, intently dragging her toward the door as he avoided her searching glance, "and my daughter."
"Okay." Kate curled her fingers back into his sleeve, gripping tightly into the fabric as she tried to swallow and failed miserably, laying a hushed whisper against his upper arm. "Hey... you say enough. Okay?"
He didn't answer her - not that she'd really actually expected him to say anything more, say anything much at all.
But he also didn't push her away - and maybe, with that much truth between them, his silence was as necessary to her as it was to him.
"You're back!" Abby's voice rose up over every desk in the squad room and Kate suppressed a laugh at how far back Tony had to jerk his head as the other woman clapped her hands together near his face. "Kate's back!"
And the entire department had now been informed of it.
She wasn't sure the entire Navy Yard hadn't heard that.
"It's only been a couple weeks, Abs." She tried to swallow and found it suddenly hard to get oxygen down into her lungs as the scientist crushed her into an excited hug, her fingers getting an equally tight squeeze from his before he loosened away from the both of them and headed for his desk.
"You look pretty." Abby surmised (or possibly accused) as she tipped a glance down Kate's front, her eyes thinning in a squint as her lips went pert in smiling. "Where were you guys?"
"You do look pretty suave there, Hugo Boss." Tony gave a subtle wink of a greeting in her direction, his butt rested lazily into the front of his desk as he waved after Gibbs. "We interrupt something important?"
"Your job important to you, DiNozzo?"
Tony was still looking at Kate, sharing a patient half smile with her as he shrugged and then turned his head in Gibbs' direction. "Sorta, yeah."
Gibbs just hummed a grated noise into the air, already shifting the entirety of his focus to his work. "Wanna get back to it then?"
Tony flashed Kate a brief and cheeky grin with an exaggerated shrug before pushing broadly off the desk and letting his body aim toward the other man's. The remote for the plasma screen was already nabbed up in his hand as he followed after Gibbs. "Sure."
She turned her head after him, trapped up by the sullenly still way the older man was watching her from across the space of the desks. He nodded once (as though he only needed the one shift to say everything) when she sought out the color of his eyes and she saw how hard the swallow went down his throat before he turned safely into his work.