Work Text:
Since repainting her office, the eggshell tones and dulcet blue hues gave her a sense of peace in her space. The exposed brick the only soft reminder of the orange that assaulted her every time she stepped into the hall. It was hard to believe how much had happened in the span of a year; since transferring to headquarters it felt like her life was playing at 1.5 speed. There was no pause button to press, but the sanctuary of her office gave her room to breathe if not the time to meditate.
Her calmness was broken by the man most responsible for the high-speed pace. He rapped on the door jamb, but didn’t enter. Apparently he wouldn’t be staying long, not that he ever did. Gibbs rocked forward on his toes, a slight lean into her office and asked, “Didja eat?”
“Is it lunch time already?”
He stared at her in answer, prompting her to turn her eyes to the corner of her screen. She looked at the clock on her computer monitor, “Damn.” It was definitely after lunch time. “Don’t judge me, Gibbs, between trying to build a profile out of nothing on Kohl, Torres’s narcissistic identity crisis, and —”
“Kasie’s toilet tantrum?” Gibbs interrupted Jack.
“Okay,” she said slowly, her brown eyes growing impossibly larger, “I was going to say, the old case reports your team sent my way, but, wow, toilet tantrum,” she repeated, “that's one I haven’t heard yet, you’re going to have to fill me in.”
“Later. Goin’ to pick up something at the diner. Get ya anything?”
“I guess you’d better. A burger —“
“Cheese, no pickle, extra tomatoes.”
Not for the first time that week she’d been impressed with his many talents as an investigator. To know that he turned his powers of observation on something as mundane as her burger order did something to her stomach. Or maybe she was hungrier than she’d thought.
“Anything else?” He knew she wanted fries, she knew she wanted them too even if she wouldn’t admit it. Like everything else between them, it was unspoken. Unlike everything else, they both had a pretty good understanding of how lunch worked.
“No,” she said, all smile looking up at him, tucking her hair behind her ear. She was the picture of innocence. She looked into her empty mug on her desk and frowned, “Actually, a coffee.”
“Hm,” a Gibbs grunt that could’ve indicated displeasure or disbelief or something else altogether.
“What?” If she couldn’t get him to communicate his annoyance at having his fries stolen, how was she ever going to get him to talk about his other feelings. Like she was any better, really. Later, it would all have to be later. Eat some lunch, close the case, deal with her feelings for this wonderfully frustrating, functional mute of a man.
“Nothin’. Back soon.” He flipped open his phone, presumably to call ahead for the order. He tapped the doorframe once more on his way out, an acknowledgement of something unsaid. He was gone without another word: always quiet and often departing.
She hadn’t realized how hungry she was until she started salivating at the thought of a diner cheeseburger. She swallowed down a moan at the thought of the lunch he was bringing her: the brioche bun, a thick and juicy beef patty topped just how she wanted it. It was exactly what she needed, with a taste of Gibbs’s fries on the side.
She hunkered down and began looking over the most recent files in her inbox: details from Fairfax PD on the case, the witness’s original statement and her recanted statement. She made a couple notes in her composition book, and looked over the files on the other seventeen known victims on Anderson Kohl’s so called birthday list trying to find anything to give Gibbs and his team.
Before long the peace of her office was broken again. He kicked through the door, with more force than necessary, always gruff, like he couldn’t control his own strength. She figured he loved in kind — with force, apparently not realizing the strong effect a single look had on her. Like the witness on the way in, she recanted her earlier thoughts: he wasn’t always quiet. Sure, he could move stealthily and silently when he wanted to, yet he was often brash, forceful and loud with her. He was non-verbal, but he wasn’t silent. Like he couldn’t behave himself around her. And for God’s sake why did she find that attractive? Maybe it had nothing to do with her and everything to do with his impatience while in case mode. Maybe she’d get a read if she could spend time with him off the clock, without the pretence of work. Did he want lunch with her or just to work on the case? Was he making sure Jack was taken care of or that their resident forensic psychologist wouldn’t pass out before helping him find a lead?
His hands were large, but even they were full: two coffees stacked in one hand and another grasping two white boxes. He handed her the coffee, but didn’t give up the package. “Got anything for me?”
“Withholding the lunch that you offered to bring me? Nice one.” She came around the front of her desk and plucked it from his hands. Though she did place it on her desk in favour of picking up her notebook.
“It’s a working lunch.”
“Tell me you don’t expense your diner meals.” Is that why he’d been taking lunch with her so often? She was usually so sure of herself, but the mixed signals from Gibbs opened the door for her self-doubt to slink in.
“Depends if you got anything for me,” he said again and dropped into a chair while she leaned on her own desk.
“How has Leon put up with you all these years?” she allowed herself to wonder aloud to keep from voicing her real doubts.
He got straight to work scarfing down his club sandwich, while she slid her glasses on and got down to her own work, offering her opinion on what tactics were most likely to get the witness co-operating. Lettuce and mayonnaise dribbled down his mouth, dropped out of the sandwich and slopped off the side of the takeout box in his lap. For a man that should’ve had order and discipline drilled into him by the service, he ate like one hell of a slob. Too many years of living on his own undoing whatever table manners he may have once had. She wasn’t much better taking lunch at her desk most days of the week, but not everyone wore black polos that could forgive food stains so easily. She had to at least make sure her drippings ended up on something other than herself if she wanted to keep her white outfits crisp.
“This witness is your best lead,” she summed up. “Your gut was right, the murder of the pawnbroker’s girlfriend looks like the one to crack. We have little more to go on for the others, considering the geography, lack of jurisdiction…” she see-sawed a hand back and forth, “I’m not saying I’ll have nothing for you, but it’s going to take some time to come up with something worth anything.”
“Time’s not something we have. Already got one dead petty officer. Next target could be anyone.”
“Right, so make this one count.” Whatever else was going on between them, she could openly admire his skill and dedication. She kept her cheeseburger waiting to give him a little confidence and stroke his ego. “You’ll get him. You’ve managed a lot with little to go on in only two days. We’ve come a long way from, what was it? The murderer floating away?”
He rolled his eyes at the reminder of the ghost theory. “Got a good team doing good work. You came to the hit man conclusion too.”
“We were pretty in sync, weren’t we?” She smiled at him, at the memory of him coming into her office the previous day only for her to steal his thunder, having both reached the same conclusion by different routes. She with her keen profiling and he piecing it together from the evidence. He returned her smile with a brief and faint one of his own and looked away from her back to his lunch.
She took his cue and opened up her lunch. Boy, did her burger look lonely sitting in the big cardboard package all by itself. Given the dearth of gym time she had while working through these profiles, she’d been thinking about her waistline and not her cravings for more greasy carbs. She’d find the time to work in a round at the gym downstairs. She paused amidst squeezing the fourth mustard packet onto her burger to steal a look at Gibbs with his fries and suddenly regretted not getting her own serving. He was looking back toward her, but it wasn’t the expected eye of judgment for her poor condiment choices. No, his eyes were lower, locked on the lines of her bare calf. She kicked her ankle, the stiletto heel slipping from her foot slightly, to get his attention and levelled a gaze of her own near his belt.
His steely eyes tracked the movement as she reached toward his lap. She plunged her hand into the box and stole a french fry.
“Thanks!” she said biting off half the fry. She waved the remaining half at him, “Barely seen you this week, Gibbs, and now you’ve got time for lunch. I know, I know, working lunch,” she said, not quite in imitation of him. “What changed?”
“Gotta wait on the witness, gotta eat, ’less you’re holding back on me?”
“We already went over this. I’m good, but I’m not that good. You’re gonna have to give me some time.” How was one man both so patient and impatient at once? He would surely be fascinating from a clinical perspective, yet she found the mystery of him far more appealing. She wanted to figure him out, but only so much to find a happy coexistence. To latch onto a thread of his inner workings and weave her way into his complexities, not tug on his strings and have him unravel.
Gibbs’s cellphone sounded out an alert, interrupting her wandering thoughts. He made a put upon sound, pulling it from his pocket and flipping it open with one motion. He made a show of squinting at it before holding it out to Jack silently. She accepted the phone without much choice. It was a text from Bishop.
“Your people work fast,” she related the message to Gibbs, “the witness is here.”
He stuffed the last triangle of his sandwich into his mouth and wiped his face with the napkin while standing up from his chair.
She flipped his phone shut with a dramatic flourish and held it back out for him. “That never gets old.”
He dumped the remainder of fries into her takeout box, his leftover fries snuggling up with her burger. He stood so close she could feel his breath on her cheek. “Next time I’m not gettin’ the fries.”
There was nowhere to go to regain her personal space, so she pushed him back with a verbal barb. “Please, the day you order a salad on the side is the day you retire.”
He retreated, not to give her space, but to get to the conference room where the witness would be arriving. “I’m a simple guy Jack, you know what you want you just gotta ask.”
Left alone with her burger and his fries, she blew out a breath and threw her hair back from her face. Simple, really? If only that was the truth. All she could be sure she wanted — and was going to get — was that burger.