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Gibbs handed over two glasses and scooped up the gift bottle with his trademark lopsided smile. Jack accepted the glasses, grinning back and following him to the couch.
“Cheers, cowboy,” she toasted as Gibbs cracked the top of the bottle, not bothering to remove the Christmas bow, and poured a generous measure of amber liquid into each glass.
Gibbs accepted his glass, depositing the bottle on the coffee table, and clinked it to hers, taking a sip, eyes on her as she did the same.
“Mmm. That’s good stuff, if I do say so myself,” she announced, smiling over at him. He smiled back distractedly, blue eyes scanning her face, and she leaned back against the sofa cushions. “What?”
“What?” He replied, swirling the liquid around his glass absent-mindedly.
“You’re looking at me like you’ve never seen me before,” she told him, eyebrows drawing together in the middle. “Actually, no, you didn’t even have that expression when you’d really never seen me before.”
A flash of lightning, the sound of rain pelting outside the window. They were sat together at the coffee table, complete strangers bonding during a hurricane.
“You are… a… carpenter. No, no, I got it - you are a cowboy!”
Gibbs blinked himself back to Christmas Eve. “I…” he didn’t know where that sentence was going to end, so he swallowed it and lifted his shoulders wordlessly. Then he very deliberately looked away, taking a sip of his drink, eyes focused on the empty grate.
A few moments later, a fire was crackling merrily there, and as Gibbs returned to the couch, Jack studied him as he had her, moments before.
“If you’ve got a question, ask it,” she advised. Her voice was neutral but her free hand was picking at the skin around her fingernails on the hand clenched around her glass.
Gibbs set his lips together and frowned. “Not gotta question, Jack,” he replied, eyes on his glass. “You did good, with the kid. Tanya.”
“Thought for a second there you meant the baby.”
“Him too,” Gibbs acknowledged. “But I coulda figured out the baby, with Tim and Palmer. Ellie and Nick were eager. Couldn’ta managed her.”
Jack stared into the depths of her glass. “Yeah, well,” she shrugged vaguely. Then she opened her mouth and closed it again.
“I’m not asking,” Gibbs hurried to tell her. “Just… you did good.”
The elevator’s darkness was uncomfortable, but Jack pushed down the rising panic. She’d flipped the switch herself.
“When I showed up at your house the other day, you knew who I was the whole time, didn’t you?”
“Not the whole time.” His smirk was confirmation enough.
She sighed. “How long did it take?”
“About thirty seconds.”
“Ouch.”
Sloane blinked. “So why didn’t you call me out right then,” she murmured, finishing her memory.
“What?”
She shook herself. “Sorry. No, you never do. Ask, I mean. You just… know.”
Gibbs smiled slightly despite himself. Unbidden, his eyes crept up to her face again.
“Might have to ask you something, though,” she hedged, meeting his piercing blue gaze with deep brown. He lifted a shoulder, still scanning her face, and she took that as acceptance. She took a draught of her drink for a little dutch courage and studied her thumb as she spoke. “Why do you keep looking at me like that?”
The silence stretched, and she didn’t dare look up. She bit her lip and added hurriedly, “You were doing it at the house earlier, when we delivered the baby, and I don’t… I can’t…” she trailed off and glanced up.
Gibbs was still studying her.
Eventually, she sighed. “So, what’s for Christmas dinner?” She asked, changing the subject.
Gibbs shrugged. “Steak?”
“How much is something like that worth to a collector, you think?”
“Not much.”
Their bottles clinked as she passed one over, and she dared push a little further.
“How about to you?”
Her eyes darted across his face, taking in the expressions that cycled over his features. He half-opened his mouth and she thought he was going to answer her, until his eyes narrowed in thought and he swallowed.
“The steaks are burning.”
“Huh,” she replied. “You ever eat anything else?”
Gibbs pulled his trademark smirk and shrugged, sipping surprisingly delicately at his drink.
“Wait, you know I was kidding, yeah? About Christmas dinner?” she checked.
“You got someplace better to be?” Gibbs asked.
She stared at him. “Nope…” she admitted slowly. He shrugged wordlessly at her, and dropped his eyes. They landed on the crib he’d dragged down for his impromptu house guest and he swallowed, hard.
Jack studied the movement of his adam’s apple, followed his gaze. She reached out and laid a hand on his forearm.
The sounds of war faded, and the blinds let in some light. Gibbs sat forward, taking a deep breath and hoping the moisture in his eyes would let up before Jack leaned forward too.
Her voice sounded from behind him. “Huh. Boy. Kasie wasn’t messing around with this presentation.”
He didn’t reply. He didn’t trust his voice, and her hand on his forearm came as a surprise. He glanced around, lips set firmly together.
“You alright?”
He sat back a little, taking her hand as his arm slid out of her grasp.
"Yeah,” he replied a little hoarsely, but he didn’t avoid her gaze. If anyone knew what he was feeling, she did.
He linked their fingers together, and he knew, by the intensity in her eyes, the set of her mouth, that she needed it as much as he did.
“Different war. Still, it’s…” he wasn’t sure how to put what he felt into words, and so - like with Doctor Grace, much to her annoyance - he substituted with a sound.
Jack’s mouth twitched at the corner, but she squeezed his hand.
“Yeah, me too,” she murmured.
Their eyes dropped to their joined hands. Gibbs loosened his grip and she pulled hurriedly away, standing.
Gibbs sat back against his couch cushions as his living room came back into view, his arm sliding out of her grasp. He turned is hand over to hold hers, and after a moment’s pause, she laced their fingers together.
“Stay,” he suggested. “Steak, bourbon. Beer. Boat. Not a bad Christmas.”
Jack smiled slowly. “I mean, it’s not skiing in Vermont,” she teased lightly, but she squeezed his hand. “If you’re sure.”
Gibbs rubbed his thumb over the back of her hand. “I got a couple stops to make in the morning, but yeah, Jack, I’m sure.”
She smiled at him and held up her glass. He touched his own to it, and their eyes met above the drinks. This time, she held his gaze.
He swallowed, and then pulled his hand from hers and wrapped it around her, pressing a kiss to her hair just like he did at the house earlier, pulling her against his chest. She shifted her glass to her other hand and rested her spare one on his chest, sighing as she felt his heartbeat below her fingertips.
She didn’t need protecting. She didn’t need someone to look after her, and if anyone else had pulled her in like a frightened child and held her, she might have punched them.
But Gibbs seemed to draw as much strength from it as she did.
Jack stirred as something was plucked gently from her fingers.
“What?” she mumbled sleepily as she became aware that she wasn’t in bed.
“Merry Christmas, Jack,” Gibbs whispered beside her. “Couldn’t let you spill good bourbon.”
Jack blinked herself awake blearily. Weak sunlight was filtering through the window behind the couch, which she was half-laid on, her head on Gibbs’s chest. One hand was beside her face, and the other was jammed between them, pins and needles tingling down it, her newly-liberated glass set on the very edge of the coffee table.
She realised that was as far as Gibbs could reach with her laid on him.
“Oh, god. I’m sorry, I slept on you,” she murmured, reaching to scrub at her eyes. “Merry Christmas,” she added, shifting to heave herself upright.
Gibbs’s arm tightened around her shoulders, keeping her in place. “It’s early,” he told her. “Kick your feet up. We didn’t get in til late.”
Jack, who had yet to wake up properly, protested half-heartedly. “I can’t keep lying on you, you can’t be comfy there,” she groused, but his hand was running softly up and down her arm and she sighed contentedly, shifting her hips and pulling her feet up onto the sofa.
Gibbs hummed, a sound she heard all the way through his chest. “Used to sleep on the couch every night,” he told her. “Didn’t go upstairs for months at a time.”
Jack mumbled an incoherent response and he smiled down at her, eyes tired but alert, tracing the angles of her face with the same intensity as the night before.
“You are the monster. We’re the good guys.”
Jack gestured grandly, and let her hand fall into her straightened hair, watching as the object of her nightmares was led away in handcuffs.
She turned to Gibbs, dropping her hand, and he half-smiled at her - his eyes locked to hers. He poured everything he felt into that look - pride, in her restraint and her bravery, and understanding that this wasn’t the closure she really wanted.
She half-smiled back, a brave, painful smile that was a thank you and a broken heart and relief and bitterness and grief and a thousand unnameable emotions in one.
His eyes dropped to her roll neck sweater, the chain he knew she no longer wore beneath it. He pressed his lips together.
Last Christmas, she was in Afghanistan.
He was determined, now one of her demons was as close to dealt with as he could be, to make sure she enjoyed herself as much as possible.
He pressed his lips to her hair again in an action that was quickly becoming familiar, comfortable, and sighed.
“Not gonna sleep if you keep doing that,” she murmured, and Gibbs started slightly in surprise. “Moving pillows don’t work so well.”
He chuckled softly. “You weren’t complaining a few hours ago,” he pointed out.
“Yeah, well, spent the night before with a newborn,” she returned, stretching her arms. “I need coffee.”
Gibbs sat still, waiting for her to move. She didn’t.
“Uh… coffee?” He asked, bracing to stand.
“In a bit,” she sighed, and he relaxed again, smiling fondly down at her.
She twisted slightly so she could look up at him, tired eyes taking a moment to focus. “You sleep at all?”
“Sure,” Gibbs nodded. “Sleep anywhere, me.”
Jack smiled. “Marine corps trick,” she acknowledged, “We’re not so bad in the Army either.”
Gibbs smirked down at her and lifted a hand, brushing hair back out of her eye in a gesture so intimate, so caring, it brought a lump to her throat.
She swallowed.
“Let me help.”
Seconds ticked by in utter silence as Jack froze. Bits of his personnel file trickled through her mind, though, along with memories of the last few months.
She dropped her roller and sighed.
For everything she’d been through, he had his own story to tell. For every loss she’d sustained, he’d felt another.
Who else but him?
“Okay. Why not. We’re both adults here.”
Something - fear, she thought - passed through his eyes as she reached for the buttons of her shirt. He cocked his head, eyes narrowed, and she spoke again, to reassure him it wasn’t what it looked like, but the words got lost and instead she said - quietly, brokenly -
“Help me with this.”
She turned her back, pulling her shirt away from her scars. The skin pulled as the ropey tissue stretched to accommodate the new position. The sound of whiplashes echoed in her mind.
Gibbs stepped forward, rested his hands on her shoulders and squeezed, then tugged her shirt back up. She almost sagged in relief.
He led her silently to her own sofa.
“You weren’t uncomfortable,” she blurted, and then stopped and took a steadying breath. To his credit, his only reply was a raised eyebrow, and he waited patiently for her to carry on.
“When… when Masahun turned up, and you… I was… painting.”
“Like a mad woman, but I like the cream.”
Jack laughed, relaxing as Gibbs’s fingers threaded into her hair and began to detangle it rhythmically.
“The… the scars, you covered them up… but you…” she trailed off again and Gibbs silently squeezed her shoulders. “Yeah, that. And that was to show me they didn’t bother you, wasn’t it?”
Gibbs went back to carding his hand through her hair, which had fallen into its natural waves overnight. “Yep,” he agreed easily, and Jack shook her head as she realised he wasn’t going to say any more than that.
Then he shifted, and pushed gently at her shoulder, and she half-sat up, and apology on her tongue, until she realised his hand was working at his shirt buttons.
“What are you…”
She trailed off, frowning as his shirt fell open and he reached for the hem of his tee, pushing herself off him onto her elbow.
His lifted shirt revealed a long scar up the middle of his chest, not new but not old either. Over the side of his ribcage, just a few inches below his heart, a bullet wound.
Before she realised she’d moved, her fingers were dancing from the circular scar to the surgery mark that rectified the damage, and Gibbs shivered.
“Sorry, I-” she snatched her hand away and sat up, hugging her knees.
“It’s okay.” He reached for her, hand open, and when she slowly put hers in it, he pulled it back to his chest. “It’s okay.”
“What happened?”
Gibbs chuckled humourlessly as her hand came to rest over his heart, feeling it beating strongly beneath her fingers just as it had overnight. “Little kid shot me in the knee and here. Part of a nasty group called The Calling. Thought I could get through to him, but…” he trailed off, shrugging. “Got lucky. Didn’t think so, for a while. Wished the surgeon had let me be.”
He avoided her gaze.
“I hunted him down, and I shot him in the head, and I really thought that that would ease the ache in my heart.” Gibbs pressed his lips together, and slowly shook his head. “Nope.”
Jack wasn’t sure whether her surprise was visible on her face, but she hoped not.
“Not to this day.”
She couldn’t bring herself to judge his actions, given the stakes. A tear escaped from her eye, but she didn’t know if it was for him and his family, or because her hope of closure with killing the man who’d destroyed her was fading.
“And you’re the only one I’ve told.”
He nodded, a quick bob of the head, and she understood. He’d sacrificed a long-held secret, a confession that would cost him his freedom, to stop her from making the same mistake. He’d risked everything to save her conscience.
She sighed, letting go of as much of her anger as she could, and tried to smile at him.
Of all the people he’d met, hellbent on revenge… why did he choose her to save?
Just as he’d chosen her, so his surgeon had chosen him. Just as she didn’t want him to, at the time, so he had wished to die.
The visible evidence of a literal ache in his heart had Jack’s jaw clenching. His hand was still on hers, holding it to his chest, and she studied it, considering its skill with a weapon, the lives it had taken, one not in the name of the law but as an eye for an eye.
She was surprised to find the thought didn’t repulse her.
An hour later, she was sat on her feet on the sofa, hands wrapped around a sugar-filled coffee, watching the door to the basement through which Gibbs had disappeared, freshly washed and dressed, a few moments ago.
He reappeared with a huge bag - a bag she’d almost consider calling a sack, in fact. She couldn’t see exactly what was in it, but a wooden horse’s head and a set of handlebars poked out the top, teasing at the rest of the contents.
“Are you Father Christmas?” She asked, a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. Gibbs let the sack rest gently onto the kitchen floor, leaning it against his fridge, and shrugged.
“Kinda,” he replied with a smile. “Take these to the children’s hospital every year. Shoulda gone last night, but…”
Jack shook her head, grinning. “But you were helping another child. I know.”
Gibbs shifted from foot to foot. “You could come. If you want,” he suggested hesitantly.
Jack stared at him for a moment. “Really?”
“Yeah, it’s still early.”
She stared at him for a moment, and took in the way his eyes stayed fixed on the toys poking out the top of the sack.
This is his thing, and he’s letting me in, she realised. It’s not all about the kids. He’s nervous, because he’s showing me himself.
“Yeah, Gibbs. I’d like that,” she agreed softly, standing and walking across to him.
She slid her hand in his and he glanced at her, a smile creasing his eyes but not touching his lips.
“You wanna shower?”
Jack shrugged. “My place is on the way. Could do with a change of clothes,” she suggested. Gibbs nodded and reached for his mug, swigging his tepid coffee.
Jack was quiet on the way back from the children’s hospital. The staff there had greeted Gibbs like an old friend, and expressed their thanks that he was there, for they’d been worried when he hadn’t arrived on Christmas Eve. They’d unpacked the sack, cooing over his work, and Jack had watched as incredible handmade toys, beautifully painted and all with moving parts, had been revealed one by one. They’d sorted them into piles by ward, suggesting children who might like particular toys, and Gibbs had laughed with them, smiled more than she’d ever seen him smile, but there was a pain within him that she was sure was to do with the daughter he’d first learned to make these toys for before her death.
Then he’d taken her hand and pulled her into one of the wards, high dependency long stay, decorated like kids’ bedrooms, where he’d greeted a teenager with a familiarity that surprised her, and chatted about the last year. On his bedside table was a large, beautiful wooden sail boat, and Gibbs produced, this time, a new, personalised sail and fitted a pulley system so the flag and sail could be raised. He’d ruffled the boy’s hair and checked his chart as they left.
“Who was…” Jack had asked, and Gibbs had replied before she’d finished her sentence.
“He’s been there for nine years. His first gift from me was that boat. He’s grown up in there.”
And that was the last thing either of them had said as they pulled themselves into Gibbs’s truck, back on the road before eight in the morning on Christmas Day.
Eventually, Gibbs chuckled. “I delivered a baby one Christmas,” he announced. “Marine pregnant with an Afghan’s baby. Family weren’t happy, hunted her down. Weather got real bad. Got stranded in a convenience store and I delivered the kid while Tony shot at her in-laws.”
Jack stared at him, trying to decide if he was joking, and then shook her head, laughing. “This job is ridiculous,” she decided. Gibbs chuckled along with her.
“Gotta make a stop,” he announced, pulling over.
Jack glanced outside and saw graves. She swallowed.
“I’ll, er, sit tight,” she told him. He shrugged as he reached for his door handle.
“You don’t have to be at the right grave to be with the people you miss,” he told her quietly.
Jack reached for her necklace and undid it, looking at the pendant like she’d never seen it before. She pulled the tin from her handbag, studying the names and numbers scraped into the surface, and kissed the pendant before she lowered it in to nestle amongst their Wingos patches.
A respectful distance away, Gibbs watched as she quietly buried the tin before Anshiri’s grave, flanked by King’s and Hale’s.
When she stood, bag still on the ground, and stared at the sky, he began to walk, slowly, towards her. Giving her time to walk away if she wanted.
He remembered, after Shannon and Kelly’s funerals, after he’d killed Pedro Hernandez, after it all, how empty closure felt. How heavy the grief still weighed, but how little was left to do.
And as he reached her, she turned into his chest, muddy hands in front of her face, and wept.
Jack’s eyes refocused and she nodded shortly. “Sure you don’t mind?”
Gibbs just looked at her, unguarded and open, and reached for her hand, squeezing it. She smiled half-heartedly and nodded, reaching for her door handle too.
Gibbs, who had produced a red wreath from somewhere in his truck, led her through the stones in the small graveyard, faultless and unthinking, until they arrived at a low, wide grey marble headstone. Jack was surprised to see that Gibbs had a space on that headstone, ready and waiting. She lowered her head, taking a moment, and then stepped away to let Gibbs have some time with his family.
She paced slowly around the headstones close by; two were flat to the grass, one was a white pillar with a flower-filled urn on top, and many were traditional stone. She reached for the necklace she no longer wore and sighed. Merry Christmas, boys, she thought to herself, staring blindly around the graveyard at the various memorials that shimmered into uniform white headstones stretching as far as the eye could see.
Pulling herself back to the present and turning to face Gibbs, she watched his lips move - no doubt wishing them a Merry Christmas - and saw him lean his flowers against the marble. She knew, from talking to Ducky, that Gibbs hadn’t told any of them about Shannon and Kelly. When he told her about Hernandez - she’d looked him up - he’d said, you’re the only person I’ve told. But Jack had felt the weight of the words and she understood that he didn’t just mean about the murder.
She was the only person he’d spoken openly with about his dead wife and child.
Minutes passed in silence, until finally he took a hesitant, stumbling step backwards.
Jack paced towards him, reaching his side and wrapping her arm strongly across his back. He turned to her and rested his chin on her head, folding her into an embrace. Jack stared nervously down at the headstone, wondering how Shannon would feel about her being there, wondering if Kelly would like her.
Not that it mattered. He’d only invited her for Christmas lunch so neither of them were alone.
They were back at Gibbs’s by half past nine, and Gibbs’s eyes had lost some of their redness. As he unlocked his front door, he held out his hand, and she put hers in it, a question in her eyes.
“This is your first Christmas in DC,” he pointed out. “You ended up being away last year. So… what do you want to do?”
Jack smiled up at him, shaking her head slowly. “You will never stop surprising me,” she announced, and his eyes crinkled with the grin he returned to her.
“Come on.” He pulled her into the house, closing the door behind him and turning the key. “Got beer, bourbon, coffee, steak, TV, books, couch, basement. Poker chips and cards.”
Jack laughed and leaned her head on his shoulder, their hands still entwined. “Let’s save the alcohol and gambling for after the steak,” she suggested. “How about coffee and that boat of yours.”
“Yeah?” Gibbs raised an eyebrow.
Jack smiled softly at him. “Yeah,” she confirmed, nodding. “Yeah, if I can… if I can help.”
He looked surprised.
“What do you think about my cabinet?”
“I think you’re trying to distract me with a hand-crafted piece of furniture.”
“My, um…my dad made it for my mom before they were married. He was this great craftsman.” Jack knew where she was going with this story, but she wasn’t quite sure why she’d had to make it so personal. Gibbs, too, looked surprised at how much she was revealing.
But Jack was truly intrigued. She’d seen two new sides to Gibbs today already. She wanted more.
It was a side effect of being a profiler, she thought ruefully. She profiled her friends in her spare time. She had lied to Abby about that - sweet, affectionate Abby. Nothing formal, of course, but once you knew how… it was like trying to read a book after watching the film and not picture the actors as the characters.
“Hello?” Jack’s voice echoed around his kitchen. Gibbs glanced up.
“Basement,” he called. “Beer’s in the fridge.”
A couple of moments of quiet passed before the stairs creaked.
“I’m flattered, Gibbs,” she called as she bounced down the stairs. “I finally made it to your inner sanctum.”
Gibbs glanced over at her as she stepped almost hesitantly off the stairs onto the concrete floor, taking in her jeans and the two beers in her hand.
“It’s a basement,” he grunted in return.
“Not even gonna ask about that,” she mumbled, gesturing at the boat. “Unless that’s what you wanted to show me?”
The muted excitement in the lift at the end of her question had him smiling inwardly.
Didn’t profile her friends, yeah, right.
As they headed down the stairs, each with a coffee in hand, Jack dared to ask about that first basement moment.
“Why did you show me that razor?” She asked, setting her coffee on the counter.
“I know Ducky told you about the handle section,” he told her, shrugging. “Knew you’d be driving yourself crazy trying to analyse it.”
“Jacqueline, could I have a word?”
“Sure, Ducky, but if it’s about Kasie and Abby I’m already on it.”
“No, no, they’ll figure out their differences, or lack thereof. No, it’s… it’s about Jethro, actually. Earlier, at the scrapyard, Eleanor bought herself a stapler, and I was of course fascinated by all the things stored there, but Jethro… he found a single tiny item in a jar, extracted it, and asked the owner if he could buy it, before he mentioned the case. He bartered up from one dollar to five. I have absolutely no idea what it was.”
Jack blinked. “And you’re worried?”
“No, curious,” Ducky admitted. “To barter upwards, it must have significant value to him, if not to anyone else. To take precedence over a case… well.”
Jack shook her head, smiling. “Well, thank you for sharing your curiousity, Ducky; now it is a joint plague.”
He smiled apologetically at her and headed for the lift.
Jack smiled at him as he placed his coffee beside hers. “I was,” she admitted. “Think he still is.”
Gibbs shrugged, and Jack reflected that it didn’t really answer her question. She didn’t know he’d overheard her and Ducky’s conversation, but now that she did… she still didn’t know why he’d invited her over to show her the razor.
He could have just told her.
He hadn’t told Ducky.
She very deliberately stopped thinking about it, before her mind ran away with her. He handed her a sanding block and beckoned her over to the steamed and set planks creating the boat’s curved sides. She took a deep breath as he stepped close in behind her, reaching around her, taking her hand and running their fingers over the wood, feeling the smooth become rough, tracing the direction of the grain, then laying the sanding block atop it.
Minutes passed in silence but for the rasp of the sandpaper as they made stroke after stroke, Gibbs’s chest pressed to her back, until finally he let go.
“Coffee’s getting cold,” he pointed out, and stepped away. Jack ran a hand thoughtfully over the now-smooth plank and smiled.
Much later, they sat in companionable silence on the sofa, empty plates and full glasses on the coffee table. Gibbs was staring blindly at the wall, and Jack followed his gaze, seeing nothing.
“Butterfly.”
Jack followed his gaze to her newly-installed ink blot canvas. “Come on, Gibbs, you can do better than that.”
“Big moth.”
She smiled to herself and turned, pulling her feet up onto the couch and leaning against its arm, studying his profile.
“You worked well with the team.”
Jack could tell that saying those soft words aloud was alien to him. She tried not to show how much it meant to her.
“Most of them,” she agreed easily, and turned in her chair to follow his gaze, which was on the canvas behind her once more.
“Ladybug,” he suggested around his red lolly.
Jack took her own lolly - a yellow one - out of her mouth. “You’re really not very good at this, are you?” She asked resignedly, an amused smile pulling her mouth up.
She was pulled back to the present by Gibbs’s voice. She didn’t realise he’d turned to face her, pulling one knee up.
“What do you see, in that ink…thing?” He asked quietly, unknowingly echoing her thoughts. A chill shuddered down her spine.
“I see… I don’t even remember any more, to be honest. I’ve used it for analysis so many times, I know what all the most common answers are… but I can’t remember my own.” She shrugged uncomfortably. “Why?”
Gibbs had that intense look in his eye again. He shrugged. “What does it mean? What you see in it?”
Jack chuckled. “It’s not that simple, Gibbs. But you saw the pattern in it, the fact that it’s symmetrical, and the fact that it radiates outwards from a vertical ‘mirror line’ into more delicate edges. The closest thing we have to that description is a winged insect. You used the evidence and gave a plausible, logical answer, just like you do to a case.”
“So… it wasn’t a bad answer?”
Jack was surprised at the vulnerability in his voice. She re-ran the conversation through her mind again and laughed. “No, not at all. It was a very you answer. But it wasn’t at all artistic or psychologically worrying and as a psychologist and a fan of the abstract, I kind of like those answers better.” She grinned over at him, and he shook his head, amusement in his eyes. “I’ve got a whole book full of splodges if you fancy flicking through,” she added, and his amusement quickly faded into a look of almost-concealed worry. It tickled her, that he would find the prospect so unsavoury given his line of work, and she doubled forward, laughing with shaking shoulders.
He stared at her for a moment, confused, and then wrapped his arms around her, letting her laugh into his chest, resting his chin on her head and smiling in contentment.
They might not have had a particularly interesting Christmas, but she was laughing, and that’s all he really wanted. To make this year a happy holiday.