Honestly, I have been blown away by the intrigue and the premise that this story is taking. All of your reviews have been so positive. Yet this is a story that I thought would totally bomb.
No sooner than Gibbs had closed the door behind Kyle Rigby, he had opened it again, hearing the unmistakable sounds of the German engine, of his youngest agent's Porsche. He watched as the two men, all businesslike, made their way to his front door and straight inside his home. Gibbs did something he rarely did, if ever. He locked the door behind them.
He watched carefully as Timothy McGee exchanged a handshake and half hug with the Senator's aide and Tim quickly and efficiently introduced the Senator's aide to Gibbs, Vance and SecNav Porter. "I think in the interest of full disclosure, Nate and Tim should explain how they began, from the beginning." The aide advised the senator and field agent, looking at the couple standing beside Gibbs, in front of the fireplace. "The bare basics boys, just to get us all on the same page and save us having to backtrack later."
"It's not like everyone isn't going to know everything by the time the dust settles." Tim muttered, bitterly. His tone conveyed how angry and how upset he was. Gibbs leant across Nathan's personal space and placed a comforting hand on Tim's forearm. Gibbs had been hurt to find out that this was the situation. That some soul-sucking reporter was going to out two men on national TV, just to further their career. He understood the premise of a scoop and appreciated the fact that this was going to be huge news. In terms of who Nathan's father was, who Nathan was and less about who Tim was. The problem was that Gibbs didn't trust politicians and hated playing politics. But could he play nice for Tim?
Gibbs had to admit to himself, that up close, Tim and Nathan looked like a handsome couple. Tim's tall, lanky frame and hidden muscles, pale skin and tawny hair against Nathan's taller, broader, muscular physique. Nathan's dark unruly curls, slightly chiseled face, and his skin darker than Tim's. But that wasn't hard, Tim had the Irish pale skin that always burned bright red, whereas Nathan Taylor's looks favoured his mother. With her Mediterranean and Mexican descent looks, an exotic beauty and charming sight to behold. May Taylor, nee Lopez, was an exotic, captivating beauty, still is, with movie star looks and a stellar smile, that her son had clearly inherited. She had been the daughter of a movie star and a politician. One thing Gibbs couldn't deny, was how at ease the two of them were with one another and the love that shined between them.
"Tim and I first met at MIT. We started school the same year and we shared a dorm suite." Nathan smiled, as he took Tim's hand in his own, comforting his boyfriend. Tim was visibly upset with watery eyes and a horrified look on his face. He couldn't believe this was happening. "My father was the Speaker of the House at the time, and he and I, had decided on anonymity, whilst I was in college. My security detail was always dressed to blend in and were made to look the part of the other kids on campus. No one was to know or knew who I was, except Tim. He had been personally screened and vetted, chosen as my roommate, my confidant, due to his father and grandfather's position in the US Navy and presidential cabinet, respectively. It was not until our third year, which was Tim's last year because as we all know, he is a freakin' genius, that we started seeing one another, romantically. It was slow at first and I will not tell divulge how it began, that's our private business. "
Tim tried to school his features into a smirk, but he ended up blushing. Gibbs knew his agent too well and could see the pink around his youngest agent's ears. "I moved onto my PhD at GWU and Nate continued with his final year at MIT." Tim picked up the narrative and both Leon and Gibbs noticed that it was Tim's turn to do the comforting of his boyfriend. It seemed that both men were equally distraught, but on an even keel in their relationship. "We have never met in public unless our positions in life have dictated us to. On occasion, our social circles have overlapped, and we have acknowledged that we know one another, specifically mentioning having gone to school together. But our close, personal, intimate relationship, that has always been behind closed, and locked doors and discreetly at that. He was the son of the Speaker of the House, whose father was running for the Vice Presidency and my father was a Captain, trying to make a Rear Admiral lower half, before his father had. My grandfather, was a highly decorated Admiral, preparing for his retirement and an extremely well-known face on the hill. He was in the Presidential cabinet, at the time."
"I graduated from MIT with a master's degree in urban studies and planning, immediately going to work on my father's electoral campaign, whilst Tim went off to FLETC, in Georgia." The two men smiled and mutually remembered the tough times they'd shared, and the long distances between them. "Tim was then assigned to Norfolk office, after FLETC and I was stuck in the middle of the political dogfight that was the '02 election. We didn't see much of one another. Late night burner calls and clandestine emails, that was all that was keeping us together, at that moment in time."
"When Gibbs had me transferred onto his team, reassigned to the Navy Yard in '03, it made life a bit easier for us to be a regular couple, again." Tim grinned at Gibbs, his way of thanks. "That is part of the reason, I lived a place so far away from DC. All the way out in Silver Spring. Away from the possibility of the press or paparazzi seeing us together."
"On one occasion, we did meet up in public; platonically as friends." Nathan smiled, remembering when they had been chasing Ari and Tim had been on a rampage, wanting blood for his teammate's death. Nathan had met him on the footbridge between the Navy Yard and the street access, very late one windy night. Not a lot had been said between the two men, but they had just reveled in one another's presence.
"It was just after Kate had been killed, boss and we were chasing Ari." Tim explained to Gibbs, to try and give his boss the context as to why Tim and Nathan would risk meeting one another in public.
"There's no need to explain why to me." Gibbs managed out over the lump in his throat. He too had struggled to keep it together at that time, desperate to avenge Kate and noted that was when he had seen them together, he had learned of Timothy McGee's sexual orientation.
"We have kept always been the picture of decorum and discretion." Nathan added, with a finality. They were done, discussing this aspect of their relationship. They had given them the barest and basic of facts pertaining their relationship. They were both private people and as such, the rest of it was off limits.
"Very few people are aware of the relationship between them." Kyle Rigby declared. "As Nathan's aide, I knew. Of course, I was aware from almost beginning, as we all went to MIT and socialised with one another."
"My protection detail, of course." Nathan added, supplying the names of Phil Knight and Mark Roberts. "They are the same detail, I have had since I was fourteen, when my father became Speaker of the House. They can be trusted. They have been the sole of discretion in my relationship with Tim. I trust them implicitly."
"Kate knew, boss. Not the true reason, but she knew that the two of us knew one another. I first met Kate, back when she was on Nate's father's detail. Well before she was an NCIS agent. She had been a newbie on the detail and had accompanied him into our dorm room on an unscheduled visit." Tim supplied and Gibbs kept his face neutral. "When we first met, she remembered me as his dormmate. A mutual friend of all of ours, Sam Ericson. A civilian DOD cryptologist over at the Pentagon. We went to MIT with him, he knows. No one else knows. We are extremely careful."
"I knew." Gibbs admitted too, and Tim dropped his jaw, in shock. As did the majority of the room. Tim had no idea that Gibbs had known. Gibbs had never let on that he knew, either. "Not that you were involved with the Senator, but that you were seeing someone. A man of high profile. I saw the two of you, late one night together. On the footbridge between the street and Navy Yard. I think it was the night you mentioned earlier, Tim. It was just after Kate had been killed. We were taking a breather while we hunted Ari."
"I went him for confidential help, boss. We were desperate. We had no leads and we needed Ari and every option imaginable option was on the table, at that point." Tim explained, and the room could hear the pain in Tim's voice. "Nate takes his position in the Senate seriously. He didn't know anything, though."
"Even if I did, I would not have told you, Tim." Nathan admitted softly, letting his fingers tangle in Tim's. "I know it would have killed me to keep it from you, Tim. But we had agreed from the beginning, that our work came first. That we shouldn't and wouldn't use our personal relationship for political gain. The only reason I indulged Tim in meeting me that night was, I could hear the pain in Tim's voice of losing Kate. Like everyone else on the hill, I had heard the scuttlebutt that the terrorist had fired at another agent first, and I just knew in my bones that he had taken a shot at Tim. I needed to know he was ok. To see him for myself."
"The question is, what do we do about this?" Kyle Rigby asked them. "We need to get ahead of the story. We need to be ready. This is going to get messy and definitely ugly."
"Let them break the story." Nate sighed, announcing his idea. "I have always claimed to anyone who would listen that I have nothing to hide, politically. Obviously, I'll keep your name out of it, Tim. It's too dangerous for you, if certain people knew about us ... Call Ethan Gawn. Tell him in exchange for keeping Tim's name out of it, I'll do an exclusive for him."
"That's not going to work, Senator. They have the leaked emails between the two of you." Sarah sighed, trying to make the Senator see reason. "I know they're from burner accounts, but they came from a private server. We need to find out who leaked them and where the leak came from."
Tim and Gibbs seemed to be having a private, silent conversation. Which had amused Nathan. Tim had told him that he and Gibbs knew how to communicate in silent conversation, but he had never seen it before. "What about your father's campaign, Nate?" Tim asked, rubbing his boyfriend's hand. "What about your own campaign? This is going to be a shit show. Jackie Allen is going to take this and run with it. She is a dirty fighter. She will stop at nothing to win. You know her? Hell, I know her! She doesn't care about anyone, as long as she makes it to the top."
"Fuck it, Tim!" Nathan snapped, frustrated at the situation. He ran his hand through his dark, curly hair. "I need to protect you at all costs... Don't you get that? I don't care if my constituents demand my resignation. I will happily resign today; I will do whatever it takes to keep you safe, Tim." Nathan pulled Tim closer to him and leaned down into the agent's ear. "You're the one for me, you got that? We haven't been through everything we've suffered through, to throw it all away now."
"Who's the threat?" Sarah Porter demanded to know, and Tim was the first one to react, shaking his head firmly. Gibbs heart dropped, he knew enough about the McGee family to know that McGee and his father didn't speak, and only communicated through his grandmother. "Senator, please ... if we don't know, we can't help you protect Tim."
Nate and Kyle looked at Tim, expectantly. "I don't care, Nate. He's not worth it. I'm not scared him anymore, let him come at me." Tim muttered and Sarah gave Gibbs a glance that said help me. But she was on her own.
Gibbs would only back his agent's play, there was no question of that. If Tim wasn't saying anything, he wasn't forcing him to. As soon as the emails got out and they would get out, Tim knew he would have come out, to not just his co-workers, but to his friends and his family too. There in laid the problem. The McGee family were naval royalty, written in the history books. The ones that weren't naval, they sat opposite Nate and his father on the great political divide. Two families, both intrenched in US history, at loggerheads and the youngest generation were in a decade long, secret relationship and had been building a life together for the last decade, in complete privacy. This was a prime example of a political clusterfuck.
"Agent McGee, you are pretty handy with a computer. Have you attempted to trace the source of the leak?" Leon asked. When he had come to DC on a permanent basis, the first thing he had done was tear apart the MCRT and put Tim on a top-secret project. His job had been to decipher a laptop encryption to find out who was trying to sell Domino and take down the USA. Tim had a reputation in technical circles, and he was one of the best white hackers in the country, if not the world. If anyone could find the source of the leak, he had no doubt that Tim could.
"I set up our security protocols myself, Director." He sighed and Gibbs knew the look that graced Tim's face. He had seen it on occasion when he would get frustrated with code, when trying to hack something. "The coding from this hack is next level, completely untraceable. Whoever did this is way better than me."
"Which eliminates millions of hackers, worldwide." Nathan grinned, proudly at his boyfriend. "You're a freakin' genius, Tim. There is only a handful of people in the world who can do what you do, better than you. That has to narrow down the suspect pool."
"This isn't helping the situation." Kyle grumbled, concerned that time was getting on and they weren't achieving anything. He wanted to hurry up and get back to his regular Sunday.
"Director? Do we know which emails in particular were leaked? Like a ... date range?" Tim asked, looking sideways at Nate. Tim knew why he was asking, as did Nate. If they were recent, like in the last seventy-two hours, Tim was going to have to do some damage control, as well as Nate. Tim had bitched and moaned, whining about the lack of teamwork between the MCRT core team. Even though he had used code names for each of the members, anyone remotely close to the team would easily be able to decipher it. Or was it last month when they had sent sexually explicit and suggestive content to one another before Nate had slipped into Tim's apartment, just after midnight and they hadn't left Tim's bed for the following thirty-six hours.
"I believe it is all of them up to and including Saturday night." Leon sighed and Gibbs watched Tim wince, then blush red and look at the floor, before he had stepped away from the gathered personnel and headed towards the kitchen. "I personally haven't seen them, nor read them."