Chapter Text
Prologue
“You lock your door now?”
Gibbs blinked in the early Monday morning sunlight, and then again as he focused on the dark shape that was his senior field agent standing on his doorstep.
“6 am, McGee. Thought we agreed on 7.” There was a question somewhere in that statement, but inflection was something he didn’t really have the energy for at this time of day.
Is this what getting old felt like, he wondered absently.
“What? No,” McGee pulled his phone from his pocket, thumb skimming over the messages until he found the one from his boss. “Oh.”
“Yah,” said Gibbs, rather mildly considering the circumstances. His eyes were adjusting to the sunlight, allowing him to catch the bags under McGee’s eyes. “Coffee?” He stepped back to allow McGee to step through the front door.
McGee followed him to the kitchen, where a pot of coffee was already brewing.
“Sit,” invited Gibbs, gesturing to a stool as he pulled mugs out of the cupboard, smoothly slipping a used mug marked by a lipstick stain into the sink as casually as he could.
“Sorry boss,” an oblivious McGee nearly groaned as he dropped onto the stool, hands coming up to rub at his face. “Delilah’s out of town and both twins are sick. Hell of a weekend.”
“Shouldn’t you be with them, then?” Gibbs poured a steaming mug to set in front of McGee, who reached for it immediately.
“Delilah’s mom came into town for a few days to help out. She got in last night.” McGee raised the scalding liquid to his mouth and drank it gratefully. “Anyway, we’re both trying to save up vacation time for something nice around the holidays,” he explained, with a shrug before gulping down more coffee.
Gibbs leaned his hips back against the counter, sipping at his own mug with more caution and significantly less desperation.
Companionable silence reigned for a few minutes, broken suddenly by an echoing thump from the upstairs.
McGee was on his feet in a flash, coffee on the counter and reaching for his service weapon before it sunk in that Gibbs hadn’t budged.
“Uh, boss?”
Gibbs looked at him over his coffee, raising an eyebrow, but said nothing.
“Did you… get a new pet?” McGee tried, unwilling to remove his hand from his sidearm.
He would have sworn Gibbs smirked in that moment, but then it was gone, perhaps a trick of the sunlight streaming through the window above the kitchen sink.
“Nope,” was the only response.
McGee resumed his seat, gingerly, as another thump rang out.
Realization suddenly sunk in for him, a dawning horror that was nearly perfectly synchronous with a woman’s muffled voice calling from the upstairs, “Jethro, have you seen my ivory heels?”
Gibbs shook his head, laughing an almost silent breath that broke McGee out of his choked silence.
“I- I- I am so sorry, boss, I-”
“S’fine, McGee.” He shook his head again, casting his eyes up in the direction of the upstairs before pushing himself away from the counter and walking lazily over toward the front door without relinquishing his coffee. “Ya got some kind of shoes down here,” he offered up the steps.
It was in that moment that McGee noticed what his sleep deprivation had cloaked — a mauve hand towel tucked beside the sink, a suit jacket with a distinctly feminine cut hanging over one of the kitchen chairs, a purse tossed carelessly on the countertop.
Deciding it was more than time to leave, McGee gingerly set down his coffee on the counter and followed Gibbs toward the front room, where there were at least two pair of women’s dress shoes beside the door and a small black rolling suitcase with another purse resting on top.
But as he stepped into the kitchen doorway, the unmistakable clatter of someone coming down the stairs stopped him in his tracks. His gaze went up, automatically, to the woman rushing past in a flurry of blond hair and black sheath dress.
His jaw dropped, and his eyes locked on those of his boss, whose expression was some combination of resignation and bemusement.
“No, those are white,” muttered Jack Sloane dismissively, missing the younger man entirely as she focused on the shoes by the door. “Maybe the basement…” And in another burst of motion, she was around the corner and down the other set of stairs.
“She’s not great at mornings,” Gibbs murmured, almost apologetically, to his agent.
There was a sharp cry of victory from the basement — “Got ‘em!” — followed again by the creak of the basement steps. She reemerged with one shoe clutched in either hand. “Gonna miss my damn flight,” she groused, stopping when she saw the look on Gibbs’ face. “What?”
He tilted his head in McGee’s direction, where he remained frozen in place.
If it were less mortifying, it would almost be funny, McGee noted with an almost out-of-body detachment, as they stared at each other in silence.
Jack's good humor quickly reasserted itself, “Good morning!” She eyed the man next to her, “This is a bit of a surprise,” she prompted.
Gibbs didn’t appear embarrassed in the least, “Told ya McGee was gonna give me a ride while my car’s in the shop. But, uh, this weekend got the better of him.” His eyes glinted in amusement.
She grimaced apologetically, “Ah.” Her hands moved on auto-pilot, dropping her heels to the floor and stepping into them. “Well, I really do need to catch this flight, and it’s all the way over at Dulles, so…” she turned to Gibbs, not sorry at all, “Guess I’ll leave this to you!” She said brightly.
“I would never, uh,” McGee broke in with a rush, “You know, assume or, uh, any- anything,” he swallowed hard.
The look she gave him in that moment was almost pitying. “You’re a good man, Tim. But hopefully a better agent than that.”
Gibbs stifled a chuckle. There was no mistaking it, McGee finally realized: His boss found the whole situation funny.
Jack met Gibbs’ eye and stood for a moment, awkward with their unexpected audience, before recovering herself, “Anyway, I’m back Thursday,” she said breezily, walking around Gibbs and toward the front door.
She wasn’t sure which of the two of them was more surprised to find his hand clamped around her wrist. A stuttered heartbeat later, he let go of her wrist to lay his hand along her jaw, guiding her to him and kissing her gently on the mouth as her eyes closed. “Call me when you get there,” he said quietly against her lips, rewarded by a dazzling smile before she grabbed her suitcase and purse and ran out the door with a hasty “Bye, Tim!”
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“Hey Torres,” McGee asked, hours later, with as much casualness as he could hope to muster. “What day was it, again, that Gibbs’ had his windshield shot up?”
“Eh, like, last Tuesday maybe?” Torres responded absently without looking up from his desktop computer.
“Oh. How did he get to work last week?” His voice cracked halfway through the question.
Torres looked up at that, “I dunno. You alright?”
“Yup,” McGee replied, burying his face in his own computer screen. “Just, uh, how much longer do you think it’ll take to fix it?”
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Her cellphone rang into the 10 pm stillness of a Boston hotel room, and Jack couldn’t help but smile at the punctuality.
“Hey,” she murmured, unsurprised when there was no response beyond the scrape of a wooden beam being planed.
Faint pop music in the background meant that he had turned on her favorite station of his own accord, though he habitually complained about her taste in music. It was soft enough that either he thought she couldn’t hear it, or he knew she could barely hear it and would recognize the effect of him missing her for what it was. Both options were equally delightful.
Turning her attention back to her laptop, they worked for several minutes in relative silence — her sprawled out on a hotel bed, and him in his own basement.
But because she could never leave a theory untested or stone undisturbed, she had to ask.
“What’s that you’re listening to, Cowboy?”
The tiniest huff of air — something like a laugh — slipped through the phone lines. “Shoulda known I can’t get anything past ya, Sloane.”
She would never, ever get tired of the warmth he spoke into her name.
“But, uh, still don’t know the difference between ivory and white?” she teased.
He paused, a moment too long. “Oh I know the difference.” His voice was lower this time, deliberate in its confidence. “And I knew where they were, too.”
She bit the tip of her thumb, heat flooding her cheeks as she relived the series of events that had led to her heeled shoes flung into opposite corners of the basement the night before.
She cleared her throat, hard, “Yes, well. You had to spare McGee any additional torment.”
He chuckled at that.
“I think McGee was the last,” she said thoughtfully, finally shutting her laptop, setting it on the table next to the bed, and turning her full attention to the phone beside her. “We said six months to figure us out before we tell them. What’s it been, four, and they all know?”
“They’re good agents,” he said simply, and she bit back a smile at the pride in his voice.
“Or we’re just … not subtle.”
She could feel his smirk from 500 miles away.
“Don’t know that Torres knows though.”
“Oh, he knows.” Her tone was definitive and thoroughly embarrassed.
“Hasn’t said anything.”
“Yeah, he wouldn’t. Plausible deniability. But he, he knows.”
“Gonna share?”
She laughed. “In person. Not over the phone,” she parried, unsure whether her hesitance was due to caution or still embarrassment.
“Hold you to it.” She loved when his voice became night-soft, slower.
“Of course. Good night.”