Scandal 18
Gibbs' attention was shattered from reading the contents of Nate and Tim's email and he looked up, surprised to see that alongside Keith from security stood none other than Admiral John McGee, in the flesh.
"Agent Gibbs, I apologise for startling you." The Admiral smiled. Gibbs felt like it wasn't a genuine smile. It seemed smarmy and forced. "Thank you, Heller." He dismissed their own security, who the hell did this man think he was? Coming into their office and dismissing their own security. Luckily, for the Admiral, Keith Heller knew not to listen to anyone but the NCIS staff, no matter what their insignia was. "Agent Gibbs, may we speak in private?"
Gibbs locked the emails in his desk drawer, immediately. He didn't want the Admiral to know what he had been reading. Right in that moment, Gibbs had been thanking his lucky stars that he had covered his copy of the emails and disguised them in a case file. No one else in the office needed to know that he had been reading the leaked emails between the Senator and his agent. It was bad enough that the headlines of every media outlet in the tristate area had been regurgitating them for days now. The rest of their office didn't need to know wither.
"Follow me." Gibbs ordered, as he stood. Seeing his aide-de-camp make no move to follow, Gibbs assumed that the Lieutenant had been ordered to snoop around. He couldn't help but be suspicious of the Admiral. He had added up the little information he had known about the Admiral and combined it with what he had read in the emails, and he didn't like what it had added up to. "Lieutenant, you too. Come!"
Gibbs didn't miss the way that the Admiral and the Lieutenant exchange a glance that could almost have been described as panicked. "Yes Sir." the adjutant replied, hastily following behind.
Instead of leading the Admiral to the conference room, as he would have expected Gibbs to do, Gibbs lead them up the stairs, to the mezzanine level and into the Director's office. There was no way he was having a conversation with Tim's father, without the Director of NCIS presence.
Seeing Gibbs hold his office door open, and an Admiral and Lieutenant enter, Leon Vance had been surprised. It wasn't until he took a glance towards the MCRT team leader and realised that he lo0oked tenser than usual. He mentally tried to calculate what Admiral would garner this kind of reaction from his agent, before it hit him. McGee. "Admiral McGee? Pleasure to finally meet you in person. Welcome." Leon smiled, offering a handshake to the man. All he wanted to do weas strangle the man. But he had to play the political game. A game he hated, but a necessary one.
"Director Vance, hello." John's tone of voice was barely concealed. He was not amused at being brought into the Director's office to have this conversation. He was not amused that his adjutant had been made to accompany them. "Lovely to see you, in person too. This is Lieutenant Carson, my adjutant."
Both Gibbs and Vance nodded to the Lieutenant. "What can we do you for, Admiral?" Gibbs asked, as Vance wordlessly offered everyone a seat at the conference table in the middle of his office. The conference table that just two days ago, the Admiral's son had sat at, and came out to his colleagues.
"I have come regarding my son, Gibbs." He stated calmly. He gave them a firm smile. But neither Gibbs nor Vance was buying it. Both of them had read enough of the emails to know how the father felt, in regard to his son. "Surely, two smart men like yourselves have worked out that my idiot son is obviously the other party to the Taylor scandal that's plaguing the White House right now."
Neither man confirmed nor denied the Admiral's suspicions.
"This is how is going to play out." the Admiral continued, ignoring the raised eyebrows between the NCIS staff members. "I am sure somewhere in your code of conduct crap, this is a drastic breech on Timothy's behalf. Rather than publicly terminate him, I have come to offer up an alternative. Let me talk to him, I will show him the error of his ways and allow him to resign with dignity. I have already organised a cushy desk job for him at the pentagon where he can wallow away privately, get his life back on track and marry a girl of our family's worth. I am sure that the Secretary of the Navy would love to be rid of this scandal in an election year."
Speechless. That's what both men were. Neither man missed the way the Admiral and the Lieutenant exchanged grins, as if they'd won the lottery. Suddenly, Leon flinched, causing the Admiral to jump, slightly. Gibbs took a perverse kind of pleasure in seeing the Admiral squirm.
"Absolutely not!" Leon snapped. "There is no hard evidence that my agent Timothy McGee is involved in the Taylor scandal. The Naval Criminal Investigative Service is a LGBTQIA friendly workplace. There is no room for discrimination of any kind. The United States Navy values diversity and recognizes that through inclusion we are a better military and stronger nation for it. This means that, like all other qualified citizens, Sailors who are gay, lesbian, bisexual, and/or transgender shall be evaluated based on individual merit, fitness, and performance. It is the policy of the Department of Defense to treat all Service members in a professional and neutral manner.
Perhaps this is something you best keep in mind, Admiral McGee, before that mouth of yours gets you into trouble any further. As for you, Lieutenant, you best adhere to the inclusion policy also. It would be a shame, if two highly respected officers such as yourselves were to be brought up on insubordination charges as a result of your agenda here today, gentlemen.
As far as your accusation against Agent McGee, Admiral, hypothetically if Agent McGee is the mystery party, then that's his business. We are a non-discriminatory agency. We are also a civilian agency and as such, we do not answer to the Navy itself, or to the members of the armed forces. We will not be submitting to your demands."
"I see." The Admiral smirked, looking over his shoulder at his adjutant. "We shall just see what the Secretary of the Navy has to say about this." He sneered, preparing to take his leave. As he reached the doorway, he looked back at the Director and the Team Leader and grinned. "I am that boy's father; you cannot keep him from me. Sooner or later, Timothy will listen to me. To my reasoning and fall in line, even if I have to make him. Good day."
Both men looked at one another, then without another word spoken between them, Leon picked up the desk line, dialing for his assistant. "Yes, Pamela. Get me SecNav right away." Leon tapped his finger on the desk and looked over at Gibbs who was closing the office door. "Can you believe the nerve of that guy?" Leon snapped to his subordinate. "Threatening McGee like that in front of us."
"I don't know if he is really arrogant, or really stupid?" Gibbs pondered, smothering a tightlipped smile of his own. "As if this office doesn't record every conversation that takes place in here? You're the Director, for Pete's sake. You have to be transparent in everything you do."
As soon as Sarah Porter had been filled in on the Admiral's visit, and Gibbs had Pamela send over footage of the meeting, Gibbs was relieved to be dismissed. Sarah had been ropable, and Gibbs was glad to see it. The last time he had seen her, she had been harsh with Tim.
Back at his desk, Gibbs let himself take a moment to sigh and finish his now stone-cold coffee he had been drinking before the Admiral showed up.
' ... It is a good rule in life never to apologize. The right sort of people do not want apologies, and the wrong sort take a mean advantage of them." ― P.G. Wodehouse.
Dear Nate,
Do you ever get the feeling that no matter what you do in life, it is never good enough? You're not good enough. I am not good enough. Today, I ran into my father on a case and although I tried to remain indifferent, he knew exactly which buttons to push. The ones that had me feeling like I was a kid all over again. The feelings that no matter what I do, I will never be good enough.
I graduated early. I went to not one, not two, but three prestigious schools. All on full ride scholarships, that I earnt on my own merit when I could have gone to school on the Navy's dime because of my father's career. But I chose me, to do it my way. Mostly so my father would never be able to claim that I rode his coat tails to my education. I have five degrees and what it all gets boiled down to is; I'll never be enough. I'll never be a good enough son; a good enough person for him to deem worthy.
So why bother trying? Well, it's not because of you. Let me be clear though, with you, I will always try. Try my very best to be the best me I can be.
I know I said I have cut him out of my life, and I have. But why does he still seem to have this power over me. He feels that I owe him the apology. An apology for who I became. Apologizing for my identity, my sexuality ... why should I? He was the one who berated and belittled my choices at every single fucking turn. He broke my wrist, when I was four. At fourteen, he slammed the laptop screen closed on the same hand. Three fingers were broken. At twenty-four, it was the infamous Thanksgiving and we both know what that resulted in.
"Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible." ― Frank Zappa
So, I called him out on his shit. And I did it in front of my boss, after he once again tried to belittle my choices and reducing the fact, I referred to him as 'Dad', rather than 'Admiral' as 'common tendencies'. Under that Marine tough exterior beats the heart of a softie, much to his dismay and that look on my boss' face will remain with me to my dying days. My boss looked fatherly and proud. Proud of me. On occasion, he has looked at me like that before, but never as strongly as he did in that moment.
It leaves me with this - two quotes from two men. Each quote reflects a figure in my life. I don't need to be explicit here, you know whom each is for. Why couldn't I have been blessed with the other man as a father? Both men are similar in character, in size and strength. Both men are militant and know their worth and live for the duty to their country. Though, only one of them is worth their weight in gold, in terms of a parental figure and it's not the man who makes up my genetic DNA. I even think that sometimes, one day, I could be honest with the man and tell him the truth, about who I really am. What's that saying they say? The one about embarrassment?
"You can pick your friends, but you can't pick your family."
That's not entirely false, though. Whilst I pick you to be my friend, to be lover, my partner, my companion ... you're also my choice to be my family. To slip into the non-heteronormative role of whichever I happen to need. We don't need a ring and piece of paper to make us happy. We're happy without it. We never have.
Do you remember what I told you the night we moved into our first place? We could never be anything more than what we are right now. Relationship wise. I wasn't doing what I am now, and you weren't doing what you are now. But it didn't matter.
Scars matter. Being scared matters. Being scarce matters. Being safe matters. If I am not safe, I am scared. If I am not scarce, I will be scarred. There's something I never told you... about that night. Something matters more than all of that... YOU! You are sacred to me!
I love you and I might even be conceited enough to think that you love you me, too. Whatever storms we have to weather, we can weather together. Better together, Taylor!
'In this story. I am the poet. You're the poetry.' ― Arzum Uzun.
Love Tim.
Gibbs looked back down at the page he had read and reread the words again. The timestamp of them email stood out in his mind. Not just because they seemed to jump in time, but because the moment the email referred to only happened five months ago. Double checking the timestamp, Gibbs wondered why this email was out of place. Surely whomever had leaked the emails would have leaked them in chronological order.
Gibbs smiled when he reread the email a third time. he was a grown ass man, fairly intelligent. He was initiative and insightful. More than capable of reading between the lines. Tim was done with his father, done pleasing him and done apologising. But he was still afraid of him. Afraid of the actions and of his fears.
Gibbs promised himself, when all this was over, he and Tim were going to sit down and discuss this very email. It was important to the both of them.