Scandal 13

" ... 'There is nothing I would not do for those who are really my friends. I have no notion of loving people by halves, it is not my nature.' - Jane Austen "

Nate,

I am sorry that I couldn't tell you the truth about where I was and what I was doing. No one could know. It was imperative that no one knew the truth. Plausible deniability. This quote, it cannot begin to explain to you in words what that person means to me. They deserved everything we did for them and nothing of what was done to them. Doing nothing wasn't an option to me. To any of our team. No one deserves that fate, especially no someone as good and kindhearted as that person is. If the roles had been reversed and I had been in that situation, my team would have done the exact same thing to save me, and you know it.

I know you say you get it, but I don't think you can truly get it, unless you're living it. I rely on the people in my team; day in and day out, to watch my back. They rely on me, to watch theirs. Their families and their friends rely on me, to make sure they come home safely to their loved ones. Whether you realise it or not, you rely on them too. You want them watching my back, bringing me safely back into your arms at the end of each day, each case, each assignment. Just as their loved ones rely on me for the same.

There's a team rule, about saying sorry. How saying sorry is a sign of weakness. But it takes an inner strength to apologise. As much as any other rule is, it's always up for interpretation and I believe this rule, is no exception. Saying sorry for shit that ain't your fault, yeah, I get that. But apologising when you royally screw up, yeah, that's when it takes a courageous person to apologise.

We've both said before; that we both love so wholly and fiercely. So why are you surprised and angry, that I would go to these lengths for my friends?

"I have no notion of loving people by halves, it is not my nature."

This quote literally embodies me and all that I stand for. Have you just met me? You of all people know the risks that I am willing to take for those I love. I get you are angry at me and that you're hurt, but I am too. Hurt that you don't think that I am capable of loving someone like that. You know me better, in every sense of the word, than anyone else on the face of the planet, just how much I love the people I do. Why now would you choose to question everything you know about me?

And, in the spirit of that raw honesty, a trait that our relationship is built on, alongside trust; I regret to have to tell you that, I am in a military Hospital in Berlin, Germany. I have three fractured ribs and a moderate concussion, multiple contusions and lacerations ... But, Babe, listen to me. I am OK! G is ok, no injuries. Z - well, that's something we will need to discuss in person and T is ok. Better than me, but worse than G. Please do not be angry at me.

Remember the words you said to me, the night you decided you were going to run for the Senate? "It's something I feel in my bones, I need to do this." Well, guess what? This was something in my bones, I needed to do this.

Please cool your temper before we speak next, I will home in 36 hours. I'd prefer it if we are going to argue, it's better to do that in person.

Tim"

"Was that about the Somalia op?" Gibbs asked sadly. He could feel everything that Tim had written, and it had taken him right back to where they were, back then. The hurt, the worry about his agents. Ziva had been attacked, multiple times, but thankfully, never raped. Tony had lacerations, contusions and a moderate to severe grade concussion. But Tim had been the worst off. He'd had three fractured ribs and a moderate concussion, multiple contusions and lacerations, plus a traumatic lung injury. "You didn't tell him about your lung?" Gibbs asked, surprised.

"He knows now, I ... ah ... told him when I got home." Tim confessed. "The fight about that had been bad. Not coming out, bad. But bad enough."

Tim gave Gibbs a sad, please don't ask any more questions look, and he was grateful, that Gibbs simply looked back at the emails and stared at them. Gibbs could easily see; Tim was attempting to muster the strength to read the next email.

" ... 'Honey, no offense, but sometimes I think I could shoot you and watch you kick.' - Raymond Carver.

Tim,

I love you and have loved you for a very long time now and I am never going to stop loving you and worrying about you. Every time you leave for a case, every time you leave on assignment. As your boyfriend, it's my job to worry about you. BUT, I know you are a more than competent agent. I know you are one of the best and I know that because I know you and I know G, by reputation. G is only the best because he works with the best.

You're right, as always. I will be cooling my jets until you get home. I can't believe you expect me to apologise for worrying about you though.

I am sitting at your writing desk, looking over at your sleeping form and worrying about you. I can see beyond the superficial injuries, into your soul. You have been calling out in your sleep. You've called for G, for T and for Z. I don't know what went down and quite frankly, as a witness to these nightmares, I am not sure I could handle it if you ever choose to tell me. I am glad you have finally found sleep, but I question how peaceful it really is. I am tempted to call someone. But I don't know who, and then how do I explain my presence in your life and in your bedroom to them. I am essentially a stranger to them.

The bandage on your back reminds me how truly injured you are. I really want to go and curl up with you. Reassure my mind, that you are here, and you are safe. But after learning of the full extent of your injuries, I cannot. I won't put you in more pain for my own selfish needs.

Remember that hot summer's night in Baja California, Mexico? Six sheets into the wind and a fresh bottle of tequila? We sat on that private beach that overlooked the rocky coastline. We drank. It was so dark. A million stars littered the night sky. A couple of twenty-year-olds, more in lust than in love. That night was the night, for me. I looked to your sweaty face, drank in your sandy skin and I was hooked. Like a moth to a flame. I looked up into your green eyes, the moonlight and the stars reflected in them, and the water glistened in the background. I kissed your salty skin, and I couldn't get enough. I was like a drowning man clutching to a life raft for survival. That was the moment I knew.

"In vain I have struggled this will not do, allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you." Mr. Darcy to Elizabeth Bennett, Pride and Prejudice.

Eight years later and I am still so much in love with you. I look back on the life and the love we've shared, and I know ... just how much I really care. How I have let you get under my skin and annoy me, in a way that I have never been annoyed before.

"Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less." ― Marie Curie

Please tell me, when our love comes to a close, there will be a proof of it. That there will be evidence of our love for one another."

Nothing was said between the men. Tim figured Gibbs would ask if he had a question and Gibbs figured Tim would explain if something didn't add up in his mind. Tim placed the next page, text down and passed Gibbs the thick ream of pages, bulldog clipped together.

" ... 'For the two of us, home isn't a place. It is a person. And we are finally home.' ― Stephanie Perkins

Nate,

Check your phone, a place we can be, just us. A place for us, just the two of us. A home.
Let's talk at dinner. Love you

Tim."

Gibbs couldn't help but laugh out loud. "You used a quote to sell him on the idea of buying a house."

"Not exactly, I used a quote to tell him I found our home." Tim chuckled, remembering what had followed that evening. "We had been looking for over three years by that point, always finding something we didn't like about the houses we looked at."

"Picky?" Gibbs asked, with his usual trademark smirk. He had never known Tim to be picky about anything before ... except when it came to his technology, his typewriter and the pens on his desk.

"More like 'this house is too small', 'too big', or 'this needs too much work'. Just the little niggly things like that. One house had a broken furnace and we tried to get the seller to have repaired before closing, but the seller refused. Turned out the house was heritage listed and the furnace had been illegally installed." Tim laughed, as he recalled the memory. "Another time, we looked at a duplex and it had a connecting door between the master bedroom and the master bedroom next door. That one was a hard no. "

Gibbs was glad to see Tim laugh about their house hunting journey. He could see that although the hurt and anger still lingered in Tim, from Nathan's outing. He could see that Tim was slowly beginning to uncloak himself from it. "Yeah, that would be a hard no from me, too." Gibbs said in agreement before continuing to read the emails.

" ... 'The Seven Social Sins are:
Wealth without work. Pleasure without conscience. Knowledge without character. Commerce without morality. Science without humanity. Worship without sacrifice. Politics without principle.' - From a sermon given at Westminster Abbey, London, on March 20, 1925." ― Frederick Lewis Donaldson

Tim,

Do you ever feel like you meet someone, and you just know that they're an elitist asshole? I won't go into the particulars but a certain member of congress today, you know the kind, privately suggested that being a member of the LGBTQIA communities is 'an abomination on society'. That perhaps we ought to 'save the government the time and money and set up a mass murder-suicide scheme to rid the world of that evil.' I hate my fucking job; I hate the building too. Sometimes, I even hate politics.

Don't get me wrong, I am proud of myself and of my achievements, as well as my constituents. But fuck, did that hurt!

"Be the change that you wish to see in the world." ― Mahatma Gandhi.

Gandi was great and all, but he didn't have to put up with homophobia in a world where, it should no longer exist. I know you always love a good etymology, so I am going to attempt one for you. At least one of us deserves to be happy today.

Although sexual attitudes tracing back to Ancient Greece – from the 8th to 6th centuries BC to the end of antiquity (c. 600 AD) – have been termed homophobia by scholars, and it is used to describe an intolerance towards homosexuality and homosexuals that grew during the Middle Ages, especially by adherents of Islam and Christianity, the term itself is relatively new.

Coined by George Weinberg, a psychologist, in the 1960s, the term homophobia is a blend of (1) the word homosexual, itself a mix of neo-classical morphemes, and (2) phobia from the Greek phóbos, meaning "fear", "morbid fear" or "aversion". Weinberg is credited as the first person to have used the term in speech. The word homophobia first appeared in print in an article written for the May 23, 1969, edition of the American pornographic magazine Screw, in which the word was used to refer to heterosexual men's fear that others might think they are gay.

Conceptualizing anti-LGBT prejudice as a social problem worthy of scholarly attention was not new. A 1969 article in Time described examples of negative attitudes toward homosexuality as "homophobia", including "a mixture of revulsion and apprehension" which some called homosexual panic. In 1971, Kenneth Smith used homophobia as a personality profile to describe the psychological aversion to homosexuality. Weinberg also used it this way in his 1972 book Society and the Healthy Homosexual, published one year before the American Psychiatric Association voted to remove homosexuality from its list of mental disorders. Weinberg's term became an important tool for gay and lesbian activists, advocates, and their allies. He describes the concept as a medical phobia: about homosexuals... It was a fear of homosexuals which seemed to be associated with a fear of contagion, a fear of reducing the things one fought for — home and family. It was a religious fear and it had led to great brutality as fear always does.

In 1981, homophobia was used for the first time in The Times (of London) to report that the General Synod of the Church of England voted to refuse to condemn homosexuality.

However, when taken literally, homophobia may be a problematic term. Professor David A. F. Haaga says that contemporary usage includes 'a wide range of negative emotions, attitudes and behaviours toward homosexual people,' which are characteristics that are not consistent with accepted definitions of phobias, that of 'an intense, illogical, or abnormal fear of a specified thing.'

Now that you know the etymology of the word and you're all hot and bothered, let me press on and get you in the mood some more. Want to make my day better? With any luck, you will pounce on me the second I get through the door.

' ... I want to fuck and be fucked, to be so interested in them that the sex is interrupted by conversation, and then the conversation by sex. Maybe I just want intimacy, the tactile kind. The getting-to-know-you-from-the-inside-out kind. The three-fingers-deep, mouth-tasting-of-you kind. The I'm-hungry-let's-make-toast-at-three-in-the-morning-so-we-can-keep-going kind.' ― Tilly Lawless

I cannot wait to see you tonight, babe. Thank fuck for a long weekend!

Nate. x"