Scandal 17

The drive over from the Navy yard to the Waldorf Astoria Hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue NW was quick and easy, taking barely ten minutes in traffic. With the Secret Service in the front of the town car and Tim and Nate safely regaled to the back seats, they drove directly into the underground carpark and were quickly taken up a service elevator to the Penthouse.

The Penthouse consisted of two apartments. One was a smaller one-bedroom apartment, tastefully decorated with sturdy, functional pieces. The larger apartment was also a one-bedroom apartment. Much grander, both in furnishings and space. It consisted of a sitting area, a large sofa, bedroom with a king size bed, as well as a full ensuite bathroom and guest half bath off the sitting room. The room was decorated in an opulent colour scheme of navy blue, white and gold hues, with heavy block out drapes adorning the windows in a navy blue and gold jacquard pattern.

Tim was quickly ushered in, and the door was swiftly closed, leaving the secret service agents to their own devices. "There is a small, obscure door that connects the two apartments." Nate explained in a hurried tone, desperate to get it out of the road and focus on their evening ahead. "We can't open the door to anyone and anything we order has to go through their room. Phil booked the rooms under his name. No one knows where we are."

"Sounds heavenly." Tim murmured, reaching up to kiss Nate's lips softly. He couldn't remember the last time he had kissed his boyfriend behind closed doors and there hadn't been someone around. They were rarely truly alone and now that they were, the two men were excited.

Their shared kisses quickly grew heated. It had felt like a lifetime since the two of them had been intimate and truly alone. But in reality, it had been about five days. When they were in Silver Spring, at Tim's apartment. The Secret Service usually loitered in a car from the resident lot. They would escort Nate to and from the apartment, do periodic security sweeps for any signs of intruders, bugs, etc. But generally, they stayed hidden for anonymity purposes. Of course, when word of the leak had come through, Tim and Nate had been at their beach house and the Secret Service had been in the security quarters, one floor below them.

The two men were exhausted, but sated, and their clothes littered the apartment floor of the hotel. As the two of them lay naked, intertwined on the plush king size bed, basking in the afterglow of their love making. After the craziness of the last seventy-two hours, both men had been feeling the pull towards one another. They had been missing one another dreadfully. After all, prior to the leak, they had scarcely spent fourteen hours together and ten of those fourteen hours, had been spent in a deep sleep, in their respective dreamlands.

"Your speech was beautiful. It made me very proud to be your boyfriend." Tim praised him softly. Before his curiosity got the better of him. "Tell me the truth, babe? How are you really doing with it all? How did your family take the news?"

"It all feels freeing, if that makes a certain type of sense." Nathan admitted. Even though the two men were alone in the apartment, he was worried about being overheard and whispered, by a sheer force of habit. "Kind of like that a weight of fear has been lifted off my chest. However, I have also noticed that I have been feeling highly anxious of late. I am worrying more than I ever was before. Like I am back to looking over my shoulder for the paparazzi, again."

"I suppose that is to be expected." Tim murmured in agreement, shimmying himself closer to Nathan. "Your anxiety was never that great to begin with. Not that I can talk. But you need to remember that your control over your story was taken from you."

"Our control, it's our story, Tim." Nate soothed his lover, kissing his forehead as he corrected the man. "You need to realise that you're entitled to feel however you feel, as well. You do realise that you were outed too."

"I know and I am feeling kind of numb." He confessed. "Not like I am in denial, but like I haven't sat still long enough to process it, yet."

"Mom and Dad suggested that we should see a therapist." Nathan said tentatively, not sure how Tim would take the suggestion. "Oh, and mom wants you to come for dinner on Sunday. They want to meet you, as my boyfriend. Not the former roommate from MIT."

"Oh?" Tim asked, surprised. He had not honestly been expecting that kind of reaction from Nathan's parents. Even if his father was the leader of the free world. "Ah..."

"It's OK, if you don't want to, or you're not ready to." Nate reassured Tim. "They can be a handful. I think mom's just over-excited because this is the first time, she has heard of me having a partner."

"Can I think about it?" Tim asked, hopeful. He had felt like he really needed to get a grip on his emotions.

The following morning found Tim getting dropped off at the diner, in a black town car with federal plates on it. Behind the tinted windows, Tim looked out to see Gibbs' truck, Tony's mustang and Ziva's red mini already parked in the parking lot. Smiling into each other's mouths, they exchanged a few sweet kisses. "You better get going. That Tony is a character, I wouldn't put it past him to come out here and haul you out of the car." Nate chuckled, before kissing Tim again.

Breaking the kisses off with a nip to his boyfriend's bottom lip, Tim sighed in a mental brace. Yesterday had certainly been a revelation, he had been surprised with everyone's reactions. Especially Tony. What had surprised him more, was Gibbs sending him with Nate for the evening. The least surprising was Tony and his display of machoism and bravado. "I really have to go." Tim told him, as they exchanged more details about the day. "I am still under investigation, so I will be stuck in the office."

"I have a bill to read, so i will be stuck in the office too." Nate grinned at him. "Beach house tonight? If you get out at a reasonable hour?"

"God, yes." Tim grinned at Nate. "But for now, I am going to go. The Spanish inquisition waits for no one."

Tony had seen the town car pull up in the lot, as soon as he and Ziva had taken a seat with Gibbs in their favourite booth. The one that afforded them with a view of the whole street. He had caught Ziva's eye and the two of them had exchanged a grin. After they had left the bullpen that night, Tony and Ziva had gone to Tony's apartment and had ordered a pizza from the closet pizza place and split a pizza, while trying to come up with a plan of how to get Tim out of trouble with SecNav. Although they had been unsuccessful in their planning, Tony and Ziva had discussed Tim and the new revelations at length.

It had made a lot of things fall into place for both of them. Like why Tim always insisted on prior notice before either of them visited him. How when, in the past, if they had showed up unannounced, Tim had rarely let them in. Tony had wondered out loud, if Gibbs had already known, prior to this. But Ziva had shut that thought down, claiming that Gibbs would have made one of his dry, yet sarcastic remarks he makes, when he learns something personal about one of them. the next ponderance had been who would have the biggest motive to out one of them, before Tony declaring that politics in DC is like a New York City sewer system in summer, it was rotten and stank at the best of times.

Tim let himself take the empty spot in the booth, before Tony and Ziva's eyes were upon him. Tony grinned at him gleefully, while Ziva gave him a small, playful coquettish smile. "Good morning." Tim greeted them, looking up.

"And a good morning to you too." Tony grinned at the man. His eyes had landed on Tim, as soon as he had emerged from the black town car. Tony had taken in every ascertainable detail about his teammate this morning. He had a small grin on his face, his lips were red, and plump, like he had been engaged in some serious kissing. He was wearing a soft grey single-breasted suit, with an onyx-colored shirt. The suit was a slimmer cut than they had ever seen on him, before. "You look ..."

"Do not finish that thought out loud, DiNozzo." Gibbs had growled, wordlessly telling Ziva to rein Tony in. Gibbs had said he would not tolerate any comments from anyone, and he had meant it. Especially from DiNozzo.

As they ordered breakfast and their coffees were delivered, Gibbs and his team discussed some of the pertinent facts of what they had learnt so far about the break in at McGee's apartment and the shooting of Gibbs' house. None of them were any closer to a lead, than what they had been at lunch time yesterday by the time.

At the Navy Yard, Ziva was the first one to be called into the IG investigation as a witness, and Tim made the trip to the CCU in the basement. He had received an email from the team leader, looking for Tim's expertise in the search for who leaked their emails. But first, a meeting with legal to make sure that Tim was allowed to participate in the investigation in that way. After getting an all clear from legal, Tim went back to his desk and rifled through his drawers looking for his spare RAMS, to bolster his system down there.

Gibbs sat at his desk, seeing his bullpen empty. Tim was in the CCU, Ziva was being questioned by the IG investigator and Tony was with Balboa, following a loose lead that they weren't sure if it would pan out. It had been born from a theory. But they were making sure to cover their bases and checking it out, anyway.

Gibbs took the moment of peace in the bullpen to get further into reading Tim and Nathan's emails. Pulling out the thick bundle of pages that were bulldog clipped together and marked at the point they were up to with a post it is sticking out of the page. Gibbs opened them up and spread the document out on his desk.

' ... "You should eat a waffle! You can't be sad if you eat a waffle!" ― Lauren Myracle

Baby,

I know days like this are hard for you. There are all but a few days of the year when we cannot be together because of the familial pressures we have on ourselves. I know you loved your mom. I know you miss her. It is ok to grieve her loss, yet still be angry at her. Grief is such a fine line between the seven stages, and it is ok to teeter back and forth between the stages. Some people don't even get out of stage one. Some people never get passed anger. Some people are fine. Grief is private, it is personal, and it is yours. We each have our own and our own way of dealing with it.

I wish I had of known you when you had her. Everything you have told me about her, makes me wish that more. It sounds like she was so full of life and full of love. I can't imagine the pain you must feel, you lost her when you were young, and one doesn't get over a pain like that easy. If ever. Seeing as how you and Admiral McGee have so little in common, one can only deduce that you are indeed very much like your mother. Or was it Penny who made you the man you are today? Perhaps a combination of the both of them.

Mother's Day cannot be an easy day for you and I know that you and Penny always try to do something together. However, this year, she is not in the country, and I can't help but feel like I have all but abandoned you. I really wish that you had of considered coming with me today. My mom would have loved to meet you. We could have just told her that you were my friend, but I understand why you didn't want to.

Honestly, it is probably a good thing that you're on-call and unable to leave the office. Sink into your work, my beautiful baby and when I get home, allow me to make it up to you.

Nate. x'

To my beautiful, ever-loving Nate,

"See, the problem is that God gives men a brain and a penis, and only enough blood to run one at a time." ― Robin Williams.

After last night, I want to write you a love letter of the most epic proportions. Last night, of course, was far from our first time. Many times, we have shared our love with one another, as well as made love to each other. Last night, if I may, seemed to reach that other level, yet again. It was sweet, tender and needy. It was hot and loving, EPIC! It was us, in a nutshell. Why is it you can drive me to such planes of ecstasy, yet still function enough to make me blissfully ignorant of everything around me but you. My mind, it is usually so sharp and focused, yet you managed to make it a pile of liquid goo, beyond anything resembling a normal functioning brain. Of course, only you can make me feel like this. Wanted. Desirable.

"Kissing - and I mean like, yummy, smacking kissing - is the most delicious, most beautiful and passionate thing that two people can do, bar none. Better than sex, hands down." ― Drew Barrymore.

Clearly, the delightful Drew Barrymore has never had an experience quite like what I have. And has never taken you to bed. But she isn't one hundred percent wrong. "Yummy, smacking kissing - is the most delicious, most beautiful and passionate thing that two people can do, ..." But bar none ... yeah, I will pass. When our bodies and souls intertwine, joining as one. It is beautiful and passionate. It is us. The kind of us, we crave.

"We have reason to believe that man first walked upright to free his hands for masturbation." ― Lily Tomlin.

And now, my day has gone to hell in a hand basket. And it isn't even 0800. Thoughts of nothing but you have lingered in my mind, since I woke at 0500 and I cannot seem to do much of anything, let alone focus. I am thanking my lucky stars for cold cases. How am I supposed to focus knowing you are only a fifteen-minute walk from me or a five-minute car trip away.

"Have you ever thought that 'the blind leading the blind' is about two people? The former assumes that they know where they're going. The latter assumes that the former knows where they're going. And that neither end up in either place." ― Craig D. Lounsbrough

So, who is who? Am I doing the leading or the following? These are the questions that plague me while I sit at my desk and contemplate my life. How I ended up where I am now. Perhaps, I should do some work. But I feel truly wretched, it has been a long nine days, on duty consecutively and I cannot wait, once again to have a day to ourselves. Just us.

But I must press on, crime waits for no man and the victims of this heinous case deserve justice and their day in court. I will make headway on this case, come hell or high-water. It is sink or swim time. When my arms get tired, will you rescue me from drowning?

Counting down the days until we are truly alone again.

All my love.
Tim.

Gibbs sat back in his chair, at his desk and sighed. He had to commend Tim. He hadn't described the case, so Gibbs didn't know what case his youngest agent had been working on. But Tim had been passionate and fierce in his declaration of finding justice for the victims. Despite his distractions. He had pushed on through it. The obvious distraction Tim had been feeling had not distracted him completely from his work. He was sure that if he had asked Tim what case he had been working on, he would have been found the case solved. Because Tim was good like that. He was their puzzle-man. He could piece together random clues, into a plausible theory that generally panned out.

The love that Nate and Tim shared together, had leapt off the pages and into his heart. Although it was a gay love, and he was far from homophobic, it was mostly sweet and loving. Occasionally vulgar but loving.