Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“...and I’m telling you…”  Senior Special Agent Jesse Boone took a deliberately calming breath, already annoyed with how he’d allowed this new FBI Agent to get under his skin.  “...Special Agent Bambridge, the intel suggests if we went with your plan half of us and the evidence we need would be blown up in seconds.”

Kai, catching the eye of Jesse, correctly interpreted his subtle head tilt as a prompt to try and find out how Lucy was doing, so he quietly peeled away from the ring of startled and surprised Agents to where Lucy was pacing, tapping her phone against her palm.

“Lucy?  Did you…”

“Get hold of Whistler? She’s…” Lucy looked at her phone screen, which had a timer counting down on it, her nervous energy making her doubt her watch was working.  “...less than two minutes out.”

“Yeah?”  Kai moved a couple of steps until he was in Jesse’s eyeline, giving him a rapid hand signal that Whistler was almost here.  “That’s great, but…”  He drifted back to Lucy,  “...I mean, she’s Whistler and awesome, but…”  He looked down at his fellow NCIS agent, seeing her nervousness, nervousness he thought mirrored his own in her eyes.  FBI Senior Special Agent Jackson Bambridge the third had only been on the island a month and he’d already managed to piss off pretty much everyone he’d come into contact with, with his bullish, aggressive attitude only getting worse since ASAC Curtis went to the mainland a two days ago.  

“Yeah…” agreed Lucy, looking back at the increasingly tense stand-off, wondering why today of all days had to be the day they caught this case.  With Curtis off the island, and Tennant literally this moment stood in the witness box giving evidence, Kate had been their only option for regaining control of this rapidly escalating situation.  “...this is...”  At that precise moment she didn’t really know how to describe the mixture of emotions she was feeling, caught between worry for Jesse, anger at Bambridge’s unwarranted arrogance, anxiety for her girlfriend at having to wade into the middle of this and the fluttering of anticipation low in her gut that this was going to be the moment everything changed.

“Big?” suggested Kai, taking in the massive gathering of law enforcement vehicles and people gathered around the parking lot, testament to how huge this rather small, run-of-the-mill traffic stop check by HPD had quickly snowballed into.  And that was before you checked in with CGIS and what they were currently getting into position for around the other side of the island.  “Even for Tennant this is…”

“So big,” agreed Lucy, spotting an HPD cruiser arriving at speed, the squeal of brakes and tyres confirming Whistler was, quite literally, ‘coming in hot’.

“Luce?”  Kai had finally twigged that maybe Lucy’s nerviness was fuelled by anticipation rather than anxiety, causing him to grin and relax - he didn’t know what he’d missed, but clearly Jesse and Lucy both knew what it was that Whistler was really bringing to this powder keg of a situation.  He just hoped that Ernie had Wilbur and or Orville recording this.

“Hmm?”

“Try not to drool.”  

Kai laughed as she blindly threw a punch in his direction, dodging just enough that her knuckles brushed against his sleeve but didn’t make proper contact.

“Bambridge!”  Whistler’s voice was clear and even, audible to every agent and officer gathered in the parking lot despite her seemingly only using her normal speaking voice as soon as the cruiser door was opened for her, barely waiting until her sneaker-clad foot was on the ground.

“Her name’s Whistler,” said Jesse calmly, turning slightly to make eye-contact with Kate as she, now out of the cruiser, strode across the parking lot, her sneakers and half zipped up FBI windbreaker a different look to the heels and sharp tailoring that he was more accustomed to associating with that particular walk.  “Not what you said,” he added mildly, not prepared to repeat the unpleasant language the FBI agent had just used, trusting too that Whistler would be able to fill in the blanks.

“It’s Senior Special Agent Bambridge,” said the furious and frustrated FBI agent, glaring at Jesse and then looking disdainfully towards Whistler, taking in her gym clothes with a rather disgusting leer.  “And this doesn’t concern you, Whistler .  Go back to your yoga class…”

“That, Agent Bambridge,” said Kate calmly, “makes three things you’ve got wrong.”  She looked past him to Jesse.  “Senior Special Agent Boone, are you ready to proceed?”

Kai was puzzled - while Whistler ‘coming in hot’ was familiar (and a damn sight more impressive when you weren’t her target), her use of Jesse’s full title was…very un-Hawaii of her.

“Yes Ma’am.”

“Ma’am?”  Bambridge looked incredulously between Whistler and the dumb Navy Cop who’d refused to step aside - .  “I’m the FBI Senior Special Agent, you’re…”  His sneer as he took in Jesse’s NCIS logo-ed jacket, cap and bullet-proof vest didn’t surprise or trouble Jesse - he was used to newly transferred FBI agents thinking they’d treat NCIS like amateurs and certainly, in some places, NCIS was very much the junior cousin and underdog of the various Federal Agencies, but here, in Pearl?  The FBI played on a level playing-field they shared with CGIS and NCIS.

“The NCIS Senior Special Agent,” agreed Jesse amiably, seeing Whistler sigh and reach for her credentials, preparing to shove it in Bambridge’s face if necessary though she’d hoped her mere presence would see him wind his head in - Curtis had been impressively concise about who was taking the critical decisions in his absence, and as Ernie would say, it started with a ‘W’ and ended with a ‘ler’.  “Thing is though, SSA is senior to both of us.”

“SSA?”  Bambridge looked around, trying to see who this Navy Cop was talking about.  “ASAC’s on the mainland, your SAC’s in court.”  And that, thought Jesse, confirmed that Bambridge trying to take over this joint case this morning, just before the raid, wasn’t a coincidence given it was clearly career making, in the worst possible way if they went with Bambridge’s plan.

“Supervisory Special Agent Whistler’s right behind you,” pointed out Jesse helpfully, rather enjoying the complete loss of colour from the obnoxious agent’s face as he looked, properly looked, at Kate’s credentials which she was holding out, using her slight height advantage to good effect.

“Ah, it’s technically ASAC now Jesse,” said Kate apologetically, realising he’d not caught up with the latest restructuring of the FBI’s Hawaii region, smiling at his wink and mouthed ‘congratulations’ when Bambridge wasn’t looking at him.

“She’s the ASAC?” Kai turned to Lucy, wondering if she was as surprised as he was to hear this.  “That’s…but…wait, you knew?”

“ One of the ASACs,” corrected Lucy quietly, watching her girlfriend with barely concealed adoration as she sent Bambridge to lick his bruised ego in the comms centre under the close supervision of at least half a dozen other federal agents including Pike from CGIS.  Kate was very content working for ASAC Curtis, viewing her own ASAC grading as a piece of federal government red tape and recognition of her years at DOD, rather than being remotely indicative of her FBI career progress.  “And of course I knew,” said Lucy, catching Kate’s eye and giving her a wink, it being the marginally more professional alternative to blowing a kiss.  “It’s Whistler.”

Flashback to the morning after the party at Tennant's...

“Oh.”  Stepping out onto the balcony, Kate froze.

“What?”  Feeling Kate’s eyes on her, Lucy turned to look at the blonde, catching her hair with her hand as the breeze tried to mess with it.  “I’m wearing panties…” she added, wondering if her standing on the balcony wearing Kate’s black silk shirt and nothing much else was the issue.  She’d found it draped over the chair in the bedroom when her question had not only seen Kate get out of bed, but also seemed to signal that she’d exhausted Kate’s capacity for staying in bed now they were awake.  Ignoring most of her own clothes, she’d gravitated to the shirt, clearly discarded there by Kate when she’d changed for Tennant’s party.  

“Good to know,” husked Kate, her mouth drying out at the helpful additional information, the black silk shimmering and shifting in the warm breeze, at times moulded to Lucy’s incredible body, only to then billow, obscuring and teasing her.  Legs feeling rubbery, Kate sank into the cream rattan armchair, immediately regretting she hadn’t gone for the two-seater couch option, presuming Lucy would be sitting on the other chair.  “Oh!” She’d not expected a lapful of Texan, but it only took a split second for her arms to move from resting at her sides to wrapped around her girlfriend’s waist, drawing her close and holding her steady as Lucy worked out how to curl up on Kate’s lap, back supported by the chair’s armrest.  “Here.”  She held out her FBI credentials for Lucy to take, only to snatch it away at the last moment, earning her a pout from her girlfriend who leaned away from her, seemingly withholding snuggles.  “No sticky fingers.”

“Hey!”  Lucy bit her bottom lip playfully, putting her index finger on her girlfriend’s lips, intending to encourage her to be quiet.  “My fingers aren’t sticky.”  She watched, her eyes darkening as her girlfriend’s lips parted, tongue coaxing the fingertip meant to shush into Kate’s mouth, the blonde’s smirk growing as she swirled her tongue over the tip and lightly grazed the pad with her teeth before releasing it.

“Carry on,” said Kate, her eyes sparkling with amusement despite her cool, ‘Officer Whistler’ voice, the dichotomy between the two making Lucy giggle as she took the badge and once more settled into her girlfriend’s long body.  “It’s just a badge Luce…”  A badge that currently had Kate’s heart hammering in her chest with nerves, but she’d been determined to keep her promise to Lucy to do things right this time.

“Nu-uh, it’s your badge,” corrected Lucy, examining the FBI gold badge carefully, taking in the similarities with her own - similar weight and size, the almost familiar feeling ridges and edges of the badge’s details - and attempting to memorise the differences, starting with the eagles on the top.  “Did you have one at DIA? Wait, don’t answer that if you can’t…”  Lucy started to try to turn around, worried she’d already crossed a line and created problems for Kate.

“It’s fine.”  Kate gently drew Lucy back into her body, reinforcing her encouragement with a kiss.  “And ask me whatever you want to,” she prompted, feeling Lucy’s body still, telling her she wasn’t far off with her guess.  

As nervously keen as Kate might be to try to deliver a neatly packaged, rehearsed concise explanation of the major points of her career and how she’d come to have that particular set of FBI credentials, she picked up on Lucy’s own nervous anxiety about learning through such a scripted, composed response.  Letting Lucy take control with her questions, picking up the threads that caught her interest and pulling on them?  Yes, it could be viewed as a form of test that Kate knew she had to pass as part of the process of fully regaining Lucy’s trust.  But Kate saw it was an opportunity to practise sharing details and stories, opening up her compartments and lowering her walls as best she could.  

“I will only not answer on grounds of national security.”  Others might have added that qualification as a joke, whereas Lucy knew Kate was being literal.  

“And to answer your question, yes, I had a badge that I wore everyday before, right when I first started with DOD.”  Kate’s simple answer stilled Lucy for a brief second, but before she could resume her ‘don’t tell me anything you shouldn’t’ request, Kate continued.  “For about a year when I was in D.C.”  She moved her hand from Lucy’s waist to the back pocket of her shorts, extracting a similar looking slim leather case.  “This one actually.”   

She fumbled a little as she opened it, the leather stiff and dry from age and lack of use.  She’d found it early that morning, detouring via the box in the bottom drawer of her home desk to find it on her way back to bed after a necessary bathroom visit.  She’d then moved it from its temporary home in her bedside table to her shorts a few minutes earlier.  

“I’ve never seen a badge like that.”  Lucy looked at the badge first, ignoring the credentials card, its blue on silver looking very strange compared to the gold NCIS and FBI badges she saw daily.  “Defence Investigative Service?  Do they still exist?  Sorry…”  She winced, pressing a kiss of apology to Kate’s neck.  

She knew Kate was a few years older than her, her move to Hawaii coming after she’d already worked for a few years in D.C. whereas for Lucy, Hawaii was her opportunity to grow and develop from a fresh out of FLETC Junior Special Agent.  Most of the time the age difference wasn’t something either of them gave a moment’s thought to, but then there’d be something, like a film’s original release date or a news event  that served as a watershed, putting Kate firmly on one, ‘old enough to remember’ side and Lucy the other, ‘too young’ side.

“Nothing to be sorry about, they don’t exist now, not like that.  You know them as DCSA.”  'Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency' and Kate was still struggling to remember there wasn't an 'and' between Defense and Counterintelligence.

“But you’ve still got your old badge?  Not a DCSA one?”

“Believe it or not, I forgot to request it when it changed…”  Kate laughed at the look of shocked disbelief on Lucy’s face that gave way to her girlfriend laughing with her.

“Kate Whistler not getting her paperwork filed?” teased Lucy, unable to resist kissing the pulse point on Kate’s neck.

“Hard to believe, I know…”  She helped steer Lucy into a more stable position in her lap again, already feeling lighter at how Lucy was taking this in her energetic stride.  “It was all happening about the same time the DIA sent me to Hawaii for a week of meetings…”

“Oh.  Then.”  Lucy’s ears went a little pink as she remembered what else had happened that week Kate first came to the islands.  “Wait, you were here as DIA then?”

“Yes.”  Kate frowned, wondering why that was even a question that needed asking.  “Oh, right.  And I was trying,.." she kissed Lucy's forehead lightly, wordlessly pointing out she'd be more successful if Lucy stopped distracting her with the kisses and lazy touches, not actually wanting Lucy to stop, "...to explain what a DIA Intelligence Officer doing with a DSS Special Agent’s Credentials?”

“Baby Kate is cute.”  Lucy, now comfortably curled up in Kate’s arms, was happy listening to the story in whatever order Kate wanted to share it while she studied the DSS credentials and badge, which included a not-great picture of a very much younger looking Kate.  “Is that why you didn’t request the new badge?  Because you were at DIA?”

“Mmm, almost immediately after I’d started at DSS, I was loaned to the FBI for a joint taskforce.”  

“What was your first arrest like?”

“A disaster, couldn’t get the cuffs on and ended up thrown through a coffee table.”

“But that’s…”  Lucy couldn’t finish that statement, not knowing how to continue.  Andrea Medina had been Kate’s first attempt at an arrest as a Special Agent?  But that was…recent enough that she’d been half expecting to still see bruises and healing cuts as she kissed her way down Kate’s spine last night.

“Back then it wasn’t that sort of task force assignment,” explained Kate, her voice gentle as she started to stroke aimless patterns across Lucy’s bare shins.  “More like what I do with Ernie at the office  than what you guys do out in the field.”

She’d been loaned to the FBI by DSS as a liaison on a particularly messy case of corporate espionage with a side of national security complications, something she’d been explicitly headhunted for by her FBI mentor not long after she’d completed her initial training and was starting to earn her reputation at DOD, nevermind within her own particular Agency.  It was also the first time in her career she became aware of there being some sort of ‘master-plan’ being sketched out for her by nameless ‘superiors’.  

“But as that ended, I was assigned to a DIA project.”  

“Yeah?”  Lucy heard the clear ‘and that’s not something I can explain for reasons of national security’ and for once wasn’t in the least bit interested in pushing for more details.  “I guess I’ve always assumed you’ve only ever worked here and D.C…” Picking up on the total lack of tension in her girlfriend’s body, seeing there was a way to learn about Kate’s time at the DIA while also respecting security clearances.  “Did you ever work anywhere else?”  She tilted her head back, grinning as she tried to picture Kate in a ten gallon hat.  “This is where I learn you worked in Texas and have cowboy boots and a Stetson isn’t it?”

“Would you be turned on if I said yes?” 

“In that voice?  You could read me the washing instructions for this shirt…”

“It’s dry clean only.”  Kate’s brain caught up with itself.  “Oh.”  She felt the flush of embarrassment, started to mentally prepare for the mocking, but this was Lucy, this was…nothing like any moment she’d ever experienced before, as rather than mock or tease, Lucy just snuggled more deeply into her body, a little sigh that sounded contented escaping when instinctively Kate reached around Lucy’s back and caught hold of her fingers, starting to stroke her index finger with her thumb.

“So, did you ever work in Texas?”

“Mmm…”  Kate kissed the outer shell of Lucy’s ear while she worked out how to explain what she could, anticipating her girlfriend’s next question.  “No, never even been to Texas and have never worn cowboy boots or a Stetson.  As for work I have only been assigned to jobs in D.C. and here, but some of my D.C. work saw me spend some time overseas.”  

There were some photographs, somewhere, of her time in Afghanistan and from her one trip to Iraq, though you had to know it was her in the pictures.  To the people in the pictures, she was the obviously codenamed ‘Officer S----’, an anonymous and unrecognisable figure, stood in the back rows of informal Unit photographs, face completely hidden behind the brown litham scarf she invariably covered her head with every time she went outside, so fierce and sudden were the sandstorms.  With her distinctive blonde hair hidden, and body shape distorted by the bulk of body armour, helmet and goggles, the only remaining identification marker detectable from the photograph would then be her height, but by staying in the back row, it was possible for her to disrupt even that.  

“...though you can’t tell from my passport.”  

Or any of the documentation about her that any of the NCIS team, including Tennant, would be able to access.  To this day, most of the people she worked with overseas probably still thought she was CIA even though she’d been there as DIA, and although she never deliberately intended to have people think that, it was a useful misdirect the DIA was always happy to allow, further protecting their various intelligence missions.  

“And apart from that first FBI task force when I wore that badge everyday, the rest of the time I just used my DOD ID, and then, I got that FBI one.”  She chuckled, remembering her flustered first couple of days in the FBI office here.

“What?” asked Lucy, picking up on the amusement and looking at her girlfriend as she opened up the credentials, finding the pinking cheeks far more interesting than a photo ID.  “Did you not look like your photo or something?”  She thought back to ‘baby Kate’ on the DSS credentials, opening them up and putting them in her lap alongside the FBI one.  “Were your FBI ones made up using ‘baby Kate’?” 

“That picture is staying between us…” warned Kate, sounding serious, remembering she didn’t have to be self-controlled, not here, not now, leaning in and kissing Lucy, smiling as her girlfriend responded, extending the kiss and further delaying her explanation.  “First day Tennant called me over as FBI, I got to the Base entrance and I had to immediately drive back here.”

“You’d forgotten your gun?”  Lucy was still trying to wrap her head around the fact her girlfriend had a gun, well, that and Kate was her girlfriend, but back to the gun…which based on how she’d surreptitiously watched Kate with said gun holstered on her hip, it made sense now, why she’d looked so comfortable with it - it might have been a few years since she’d worn it on a daily basis, and wearing wasn’t the same as drawing and firing, but this clearly wasn’t new for her.

“No, I remembered that, and the badge, but I’d forgotten my base ID.”  It was ridiculous really, considering that for the majority of her career, and entire time based at Pearl up to that point, she’d only had a base ID.  In fact, her current ID was almost identical in both appearance and access to her previous one, except where once it said Department of Defense, it now said FBI.  They’d even reused her DIA photograph.

“Did you have to do the reverse of shame?” asked Lucy, referring to the awkward reversing manoeuvre you had to do if you got up to the security barrier and then discovered you were missing the relevant identification.

“No, I was four cars back when I realised.”

“U-turn zone,” confirmed Lucy, nodding her head in understanding - she was familiar with the reverse of shame, and the u-turn zone, having forgotten her base ID on a few occasions, though the ‘scrappy NCIS agent’ reputation probably made it easier to cope with than Kate’s ‘Officer Whistler’ legacy.  “Nice save.”

“Mmm.”  Kate’s eyes were focused on the badge that Lucy was holding, waiting for the moment when she moved on from studying the badge itself to reading the credentials.

“You know…” said Lucy conversationally, turning the leather wallet around so the credentials were the right way up for reading when she eventually looked at them, but currently more interested in studying her girlfriend.  “...I don’t think I’ve ever seen real FBI credentials before.”

“Huh?”  That observation threw Kate for a loop.  “You’ve seen mine before and…”  Didn’t FLETC have a session on all the federal law enforcement branches that included handouts that had details of all the credentials and identification documents?  It had been a while but she was certain she’d spent at least one evening learning all the tiny details like photograph placement (FBI bottom left, NCIS bottom right) and so forth.

“I mean get to open and look at myself, like this,” clarified Lucy, running her fingers over the open credentials again but remaining focused on her girlfriend (that would never get old, would it? She put aside that train of thought for another time, not prepared to let her brain hurtle ahead to what other words could describe Kate), pressing a kiss to the underside of a surprisingly tense jaw.  “When I first got mine, I spent ages just looking at them like I couldn’t believe it was real you know?”  She was holding Kate’s open credentials in her lap now, but still far more interested in looking up at her girlfriend, finding herself lost in thought about her own journey to this point.  “It’s one of those moments when I missed my brothers…” she added quietly, feeling bad as she always did for bringing up her strained family relationships given the brutal way Kate lost Noah.

“Would you have arrested them?” asked Kate gently, smiling at the mental image of her ‘scrappy NCIS agent’ girlfriend tackling the three six-foot plus twenty-somethings she’d seen in the couple of photographs Lucy had shown her one night, months ago.

“No, but I definitely would have burst into the den during a football game and shouted ‘Federal Agent’.  And confiscated Brad’s weed stash, obviously.”  Actually, maybe that was a reason to go visit her family sometime, as by all accounts from her very occasional foray onto social media, he was still partial to a smoke, and not the illicit Cubans her father had favoured.

“Obviously,” agreed Kate dryly, then chuckling.  “Noah would have loved that…not the weed stash, I mean, I don’t think he ever smoked anything, but the ‘Federal Agent’ bit during the football game…” Kate had never actually thought about how her brother might have reacted to such a prank by her, her own thoughts never really getting past the idea of him watching her graduate from college and grad school.  “He’d have loved you.”

“And I love him through your memories of him.”  Lucy slipped her hand behind Kate’s neck, coaxing her to lean forwards just enough to initiate and savour a slow, tender kiss, both failing to notice Kate’s FBI credentials falling to the floor.  “I’m guessing you couldn’t tell him about your work at DIA?”  Kate was still a little dazed from the kiss, and her brain needed a little more help following Lucy’s thought processes than it usually did.  “Like how Tennant worked at the ‘State Department’ before NCIS?”

“Oh.  Umm.  Right.”  Kate now understood the question but still looked confused, finding Lucy’s astuteness about what she might or might not be allowed to share with family about her work unexpected given how things were between them when they were together while Kate worked at the DIA.  “Yeah, no...”  Kate frowned, not liking the ambiguity in her answer.  “I mean..”  What did she mean?   

“You don’t have to answer that, I’m so…”  Lucy’s frantic apology was cut off by warm lips pressed against hers.

“Never apologise for asking me about Noah.  I just haven’t thought about that before.”  Kate kissed confused lips again, partly while she sorted through her thoughts, but mostly because she could, and wanted to.  “At the time I was starting there, DIA I mean, all I could think about was how I wasn’t allowed to tell anyone, how it was important I stuck to the ‘work for DOD’ version, though it’s not like I had anyone really to tell, so that wasn’t difficult…”  She swallowed, not allowing herself to dwell on what the last ten years or so might have been like if her brother had lived.  “...by now he’d probably have been able to know I’ve been at the DIA if he’d stayed in the Marines, but based on what he would have had clearance for when I started out?”  

She tried to remember the security classification of that first FBI task force.  Would he have even known she was working with the FBI then?  She’d have to look it up in the FBI database to be certain, not that it mattered now, but…she blinked away tears at the sudden suckerpunch low in her gut when she realised that even then, right at the start of her career, she’d have been already cast into the shadows of cover stories and half truths that would have seen even Noah kept at a distance.

“Theoretically, he would have known when I completed the DSS Special Agent training, probably just known whatever the DOD explanation for the FBI task force was, then the DOD cover for when I was at DIA.  But as it happened, the only people who knew I was at the DIA when I was at the DIA were people I met through work.”  It was all a bit academic though, as if Noah hadn’t been killed she’d have probably ended up applying to work at the UN or FEMA…whatever was the total opposite to defence and intelligence. 

“So not even your parents knew?” Lucy was familiar with parental disinterest - her own had barely grasped that being a federal agent was different to being a cop, but this deliberate requirement imposed on you by others to not tell your parents who you worked for?  That was something she’d known existed, but not actually connected with being a real part of Kate’s life.

“Mom’s ‘that’s nice dear, make sure you have time to eat proper dinners or you’ll forget how to cook’ didn’t really open the door for much follow-up nevermind wondering what I actually did for DOD, and Dad…”  Kate swallowed, recalling how distant her father had become following Noah’s death, her fingers automatically smoothing Lucy’s hair behind her ear.  “...he had always been more engaged and focused on Noah than me, like he didn’t really know what to do with a daughter, nevermind a younger daughter.”  A sudden parallel occurred to her.  “Total opposite of Jesse and Gracie.  Think he’d have had a heart attack if I even suggested father-daughter time, nevermind waiting to hear it could have been a sailing course.”

“So no parental cross-examination about what you did for DOD over Thanksgiving turkey, got it.”

“Back then Dad’d probably remember I worked ‘in government’ and perhaps add that it wasn’t ‘something political thank goodness’ but beyond that?”  Kate shrugged, any emotions she still felt about how closed off and distant her parents had become were compartmentalised behind many, many layers of self-preservation.  “Mom still gives me a call on Christmas and Thanksgiving.  She tells me about the neighbours and some cousins sometimes.”  Usually if there’s been any marriages or divorces, plus the occasional birth, but only very occasionally, as if it had been only Noah who might have been able to provide grandchildren.

“Not birthday?”  Lucy was trying to remember if she knew when Noah’s birthday was, wondering if there was an unfortunate collision of dates that meant Kate’s was now forever overlooked to avoid a painful reminder of the son lost by parents who clearly put their son’s everything ahead of anything to do with their daughter.  “And no cards?”

“Not since I went to college.  And before then, all my memories start with Noah singing happy birthday while we ate our cereal for breakfast, or meeting me after school with a cupcake.”

The more Kate elaborated on quite how isolated she was from her parents, the more determined Lucy became to make sure that going forwards, every work move, every surfing achievement, every birthday and anniversary would see her shower Kate with love and appreciation.  Her determination, when she was their DIA liaison, that she could cope with whatever the world threw at her on her own, behind a stoic facade that projected how ‘in control’ she was?  It was starting to make a lot more sense and leave Lucy with a lingering resentment towards Kate’s parents for making their amazing, incredible daughter think that was how she had to be.

“I did email them my address when I moved here, but I don’t think they’ve ever used it.  I haven’t spoken to Dad since…”  Kate mentally counted back through the years.  “...since I last went home, which was just after I got back from my first visit here.”  It was when she’d learned about her father’s Alzheimer's diagnosis that they’d decided ‘not to bother her with’ three years earlier, learned too that he was already experiencing memory loss before the mild stroke that had seen her rush home.

“Not even on the phone?”

“Mom rings me when he’s out…says he’s chopping wood or clearing snow usually.”  Kate picked up the increasing tension in her girlfriend, and rushed to defend her parents, childhood instincts tough to forget.  “Dad didn’t really do phone call chats even before he was diagnosed…and now…”  She buried her face in Lucy’s hair, inhaling the distinct scent of her own shampoo that Lucy had used that morning, smiling at the warm bubble of joy that spread through her at the memory of waking up with Lucy here, with her, curled up in her arms and mumbling ‘I love you but not before 9am’ when she’d felt Kate starting to wake up.  “...I wrote to them about my assignment to FBI when I sent them a card for their Wedding Anniversary.”

“When was that?”  Lucy thought it a bit strange that, if the wedding anniversary was something to commemorate at all, it was only done with a card and not a call, but she was not going to judge as clearly, Kate’s relationship with her parents was as strained and complicated as Lucy’s was with her own family, if not more so.  At least she didn’t have a father whose memories now extended to remembering he had a son but not that he’d died more than a decade ago, whose only reaction when Kate had last seen him in person was to constantly look past her wondering where Noah was because ‘you’re your brother’s shadow’.

“Late April.  Noah was a honeymoon baby, so…”  Kate searched for the word to describe what that anniversary meant for her parents as Lucy wrapped her arms around her, feeling the need to hug as well as snuggle her girlfriend, a hug Kate was immediately returning as she continued.  “...bittersweet I guess? But as difficult as it is to remind them of it because of the connection with Noah, it feels rude to ignore it so…I started sending a card when I was in grad school, like I do for their birthdays.”

Lucy blinked away tears as she listened to Kate’s matter-of-fact explanation of more of the detail of her relationship with her parents, feeling her heart break for the hurt she’d stoically endured even before this latest blow with her father’s condition.  She had already  understood that not only had Kate lost her best friend and brother when Noah died, but she now saw that she’d also effectively lost any relationship she’d had with her parents years before her father’s health made any sort of attempt at reconciliation impossible.  

“Hey…”  Kate squeezed Lucy tight when she felt the wetness on her shirt, letting her know that what was for her a matter-of-fact recounting of history was something her girlfriend found upsetting.  “...I got two more congratulations on my transfer to FBI than I did when I transferred to Hawaii.”

“Yeah?”  Lucy picked up on the levity in Kate’s voice and tried to smile and share in her girlfriend’s amusement.

“You and Tennant.”

“Well obviously.…wait, didn’t the boys say anything?”

“Not really, and there’s no need to go tell them off either.”

“Fine.”  Lucy huffed in mock exasperation, knowing it was probably a little too late to pick them up on their lack of manners.  “Wait, how many people said congratulations when you transferred here?”

“Umm…”  Kate’s hesitancy saw Lucy shuffle again, wanting to see her eyes as soon as she realised which compartment she’d just opened.  “...given most people didn’t know what I did in D.C., nor were cleared to know what I’d be doing here…do superficial remarks about the weather and lei count as congratulations?”  For most of the people she worked with, the idea that there were jobs worth doing outside the Beltway was about as probable as them spying for Canada - D.C. people were D.C. people, locked into their own ‘fast track to the top’ tunnel vision plan that definitely didn’t include the West Coast of the mainland, nevermind Hawaii.

“Would I have known?” asked Lucy, the real question ‘did Cara know?’ hanging in the air between them.  “I mean, if we had not worked together?”  

She’d done a lot of thinking since they’d broken up, fuelling and fuelled by late night internet browsing sessions, trying to understand a little more about the life on the edge of the shadows that Kate’s DIA career had forced her to live amongst.  The whole situation with Maggie Shaw had helped Lucy to see that intelligence officers survived through their ability to compartmentalise and separate.  She’d started to see that, while DIA wasn’t CIA, the world Kate worked in was coloured with very different shades of grey to Lucy’s world of NCIS, despite their overlapping workloads.  It hadn’t made forgetting about how badly Kate hurt her any easier, but it had helped her find forgiveness.

“You are the only person I’ve kissed who knew I was assigned to DIA rather than just at DOD.”  Kate’s answer was firm and prompt, not wanting Lucy to have any lingering doubts about her significance to Kate, even then.  “And even if I hadn’t been working directly with you, your security clearance means I could have ultimately told you I was at DIA.”

“Wait, I congratulated you didn’t I?  I mean, I know you’d already arrived and all but…”  Lucy’s brain had stalled at the news that whatever Cara had been to Kate, it wasn’t enough to know the limited truth about what the blonde did for a paycheck.  Unsure what to do with this information, an inner automatic pilot that sounded suspiciously like her grandmother kicked in, with a worry that her southern manners had failed her when she’d first met Kate after her transfer. 

It took Kate a second to pivot from being prepared to lay bare everything that was the monumental mistake that was Cara to remembering that particular conversation Lucy was clearly thinking of.  It was the first time she’d found Lucy by her car at the Base, waiting for her, their conversation stiff and stilted, first week nerves combining with the transition from whirlwind romance to colleagues as she and Lucy both tried to let logic lead their hearts and agree that they’d have a ‘strictly business’ relationship.  

“You did, said it had to be a double bonus for getting a promotion and better weather all in one go.”  Kate laughed at the cringe on her girlfriend’s face.  “I think I asked how you’d known it was a promotion, then said it was just a shame it had been the wrong season to go suit shopping otherwise…”

“...otherwise it would have been perfect.  I remember.”  Tracking her fingertip over a delicate cheekbone now healed from Andrea Medina’s bruising and along a strong jaw no longer clenched, Lucy shared a secret from that night that she couldn’t stand to keep any longer.  “You looked pretty perfect standing there and I wanted to kiss you so badly…”

“Me too.”

“Did I imagine it, or was your lip cut?”

Chapter Text

Continuation of flashback to the morning after the party at Tennant's...

“Did I imagine it, or was your lip cut?”

“Mostly healed, but yeah, you didn’t imagine it.”  Kate saw the question in Lucy’s eyes, picked up on her hesitancy and decided to just rip the band-aid right off.  “The bruising was hidden by makeup but…”

“Cara?”  Lucy felt a tight ball of anxiety in her stomach seconds before it dropped heavily as she realised once again her instinctive reactions had denied Kate the opportunity to explain anything at the time.  “She hit you?”

“Only once, the night before I left D.C.”  Kate rushed on, knowing the investigator in Lucy would want to know all the facts, not wanting to prolong this detour into what was now definitely ancient history.  “When she realised I’d not been joking when I’d texted her the previous weekend that any clothes she left in my D.C. apartment would be sent to Goodwill as I wasn’t shipping them to Hawaii with my things.  Which sounds harsh I know, but I’d barely heard from her since she’d stayed with me for New Years…”  Stayed was an exaggeration, Cara had turned up after 4am, relying on Whistler’s preference to watch the midnight countdown on TV to avoid a cold and expensive journey back to her own place.

“So when you said you were scared of breaking up with her it was literally you were scared about what she might do?”

“She’d ghost me, I’d work crazy hours, then we’d somehow end up arranging to meet up for a weekend.” Usually when Cara had friends visiting D.C. and Kate’s apartment was more convenient to crash in while the friends were at some hotel somewhere in the District, but that was a detail too humiliating to share.  “I knew, right before I came out here the first time that she was seeing other people, men and women, in between when she remembered about me.  It never felt…I mean I never thought I was someone who did the friends with benefits thing but looking back, I am not sure I paid enough attention to meet the friend threshold." And based on what the sex had been like with Lucy right from the very first time, Kate wasn't sure she could classify what happened with Cara was all that 'beneficial' either.

“So she was never your girlfriend?”  

Guilt and shame was starting to build as Lucy replayed the conversations she’d never let Kate finish, realising that she’d allowed Cara to frame her relationship with Kate as ‘girlfriends’.  Not that Kate had corrected Lucy’s use of the word at the time, but then, Lucy was starting to realise that Kate’s life had mostly prepared her for the resigned acceptance of isolation and loss, when as far as Lucy was concerned, the blonde deserved all the happiness the world could muster.  For someone whose job seemed to permanently cast Whistler as the bad guy, Lucy already knew Kate well enough to know she would do almost anything to avoid a conflict or row in her personal life.  Except eat pineapple a second time with Lucy, but only because the consequences were embarrassing, possibly painful though Kate claimed otherwise, and really ruined the next date night.

“At first, maybe?  There was, like, a two month period when I think she wasn’t with anyone else, then I had to go overseas for a few weeks…”

“DIA stuff?”

“DIA stuff,” confirmed Kate, hugging Lucy tighter for a moment in wordless appreciation for her understanding about what Kate couldn’t talk about.  “I think I was supposed to tell anyone in my personal life I was preparing for and accompanying a congressional tour as one of the DOD staff if anyone needed to know or asked.”  Over the years she’d lost track of every last cover story she was supposed to use in the various situations she might find herself in, but congressional tour prep was one of the most frequently used when her actual job had required travel.

“But she never asked?”

“No.  She had a spare key because my apartment block was having its once a decade repaint, and I needed someone to supervise a painter a couple of times.”  Kate’s frown intensified as she tried to remember the specifics of that situation.  “I’d planned to make arrangements with the building super but she saw the letter and offered…after I got back I was busier than before, working longer hours…whole weeks went by when I wouldn’t see my apartment and was showering at the office.  She still had the key, for all I know she was using my apartment instead of her own, it was nearer her work…” And Cara’s favourite hookup bars, but again, Kate wasn’t going to revisit that mortifying detail either.

“What did you wear?”  Lucy deliberately ignored the rapidly forming list of suggestions as to what else Cara could have been doing in Kate’s apartment while the work-focused Whistler was absent, all too easily able to picture how this... bitch had used socially shy, nervous Kate, knowing that the blonde’s blindspots didn’t just extend to international assassins.

“Three suits, six shirts, mixed and matched based on what wasn’t at the dry cleaners.”  Kate blushed, her hair tumbling forwards as she tried to hide her face in the crook of Lucy’s neck.  “My assistant had a better idea of my underwear preferences than Cara…she’s the only person other than you and my own Mom to buy me things…and Mom stopped when I went to College.”

“Was she cute?”  Jealousy, Lucy knew, was never attractive, and she was doing her best to metaphorically look before  she emotionally leapt.  Or really unpacked the significance of Kate being senior enough in D.C. to have 'an assistant'.

“Mom?”  The confusion on Kate’s face was so cute that Lucy briefly lost interest in her question, preferring to kiss baffled lips.

“No, your assistant in D.C.”

“Oh.  Right.”  Kate’s brain was struggling to restart after the kiss, which was further confusing her as it was far from synapse exploding passionate, but gentle and soft and wonderful, so wonderful she decided to see if she could recreate it before answering.

She could.

“Umm, she was…”  Kate thought for a long second, trying to mentally review everyone Lucy knew to try and find someone to draw a parallel with.  “...kind of like the desk clerk at the Secure Records Archive here, only with pictures of her cats on her desk instead of her grandsons.”

“Mrs Dreeman?” Of course Lucy knew her name, despite probably only meeting her a handful of times for barely a minute or two each time.  “She’s so sweet, and kind of cute, in a bake your favourite cookies for your birthday kind of way.”  Lucy took a deep breath, hoping her desperate attempt to avoid the word ‘motherly’ hadn’t seemed obvious to her girlfriend, who clearly hadn’t had that much motherly affection from her actual mother in recent times.  “I’m sorry.”

“For my workaholic tendencies when I’m left to my own devices?”  That was hardly new intelligence for Kate, and something her bosses had taken advantage of for the last decade or so.

“For not letting you explain, and taking her word over yours.”

“Nothing to apologise for,” said Kate simply, not wishing to dwell on the past.  “I didn’t explicitly tell Cara whatever the thing was between us was finished.  I didn’t imagine she’d think there was something still between us once I’d left D.C. given we were basically a one-night-stand that happened more than once.  The slap across the face when she realised I’d sent her Nationals Jersey to Goodwill felt…”

“Final?” suggested Lucy, feeling even more awful the more she learned about how badly she’d misunderstood the situation, and how normal it seemed to feel to Kate to minimise her own hurt and pain in the face of Lucy’s assumptions, rather than defend herself.

“Something like that.”

“Why did she get in touch again?  The Nationals have Spring Training?”

“I don’t know what that means.”  Being confused by any references to the ‘big four’ sports was not a new phenomenon for Kate, but feeling confident enough to say as much, knowing Lucy hadn’t, nor ever would lecture or mock her was a first for her, having lost her chief explainer and translator when Noah died.

“Not important.  Why’d she look you up after all that time?”

“Because she was accompanying the Senate Arms Services Committee Delegation that was visiting Hawaii.  She’s got a job working on the staff for one of the Committee’s Senators now.  She’d changed her number at some point but kept mine otherwise I’d have never got her text as I’d blocked her old one.  When I tried telling her I wanted nothing to do with her and there was nothing to ‘reconnect’ over, she sought me out at a reception on Base that afternoon.  Rather than give her the chance to…”

“Slap you in the face again?”  Lucy remembered now, thinking back, complimenting Kate on particularly a devastating pencil skirt and silk blouse combination that had her seriously contemplating trying to delay their departure for work, but Kate had mentioned something about a D.C. visitation being the reason for her wardrobe choice, not deliberately tormenting Lucy.

“Something like that, yes, I gave her my address and left the reception.”  Kate still knew that was a really stupid decision on her part, but she’d been panicking, not just about Lucy’s reaction but about what damage to her professional reputation and potential risk to her security clearance Cara was now causing.

“Did she?”

“Did she what?”

“Slap you again?”

“No.  Threw a mason jar and that damn pizza at me after...”  Kate tilted her head back towards the living room, drawing attention to its subtly different layout compared to that morning before everything went to shit because of her.  “Why’d you think I got a second couch?”  Lucy sat up a bit straighter, so she could see past Kate’s shoulder into the apartment, mentally comparing the furniture layout now to her memory from that morning.

“Wait, where’s the rug?  And those weird gold ball things you had by the candlesticks?”

“She threw the mason jar at me - it missed me completely, but was full of red wine, and did you know pizza lands tomato sauce side down if you throw it right?  I sent it to be cleaned, but it came back pink.”  Despite everything, Lucy’s grimace made Kate smile.  “Yeah, not my favourite colour.”

“Pink looks amazing on you…”  Lucy’s point was made beautifully by the blush that stained Kate’s cheeks at the compliment.  “...but the only pink that works on your floors is your shirts when I’ve taken them off you.”  She dodged Kate’s lips, knowing how easy it would be to get lost in incredible kisses, but she wanted to finish this conversation about Cara once and for all, so it never had to be revisited.  “That doesn’t explain a second couch.”

“I’d put it into store when I moved in here.  Seemed a bit excessive for just me on my own.  Throwing the rug out, I decided to try the second couch for a bit…”  She’d already had the idea the night before the disastrous visit by Cara, when she’d come back from the bathroom to see Lucy stretched out on the one couch she’d had at the time, dutifully catching up on her DoorDash and Uber star ratings.  In an unusual moment of daydreaming, Kate had wondered about lazy Sundays spent together, stretched out on a couch each, reading or catching up on the inevitable paperwork.  “...and I donated the gold ball things as soon as I remembered I had bought them one day when I’d been shopping with her in D.C.”

“Compromise purchase?” guessed Lucy knowingly, able to see now why they’d always jarred for her - the clean geometry was definitely Whistler, but the polished gold finish was wrong.  “Let me guess, you wanted them in brushed steel or wood?”

“Wood,” confirmed Kate, marvelling at how well Lucy could read her.  “But only because the brushed metal ones were out of stock.”

“I can’t believe she threw a glass at you…” She ran her thumb lightly over soft lips, relieved that Cara’s aim wasn’t that great, even if it had cost a rug.  “...did she accept it was over peacefully after that?”

“Not exactly.”  Kate caught her lip, a rare nervous tell at work but something Lucy was very familiar with when it came to Kate in private, another clue about how she felt she was still the weird, nerdy girl rather than the incredible, brilliant woman she saw at work every day.

“Bitch!  What did you do?”

“Quite literally marched her out and told the doorman to call the cops if he saw her again.  That was after explaining to her that I’d stopped thinking of her as my girlfriend years ago and I’d blocked her old number before I left D.C..”  At that point, it had been years since she’d had to walk a suspect out of a building as part of FLETC training, but muscle memory kept current through annual skills refresher courses hadn’t let her down and, by the time the elevator had arrived, Cara had accepted Kate wasn’t going to let her back inside, and they’d been able to walk more normally to the parking lot.  

“Was that enough? I don’t mean…”  Lucy tucked some loose strands of blonde hair behind an ear, wanting to try and reassure Kate she wasn’t questioning the directness of her message to Cara, but whether or not it had been properly understood.  “...about what you said to her, I mean whether she’s understood you’re not joking.”

“Oh, she understands.”  There was a finality and confidence to Kate’s words that had Lucy’s eyebrow twitch, sensing there was a story here that Kate was actually looking forward to sharing.  “I reported her visit to my DIA bosses in D.C., because of who she works for now.  It…wasn’t a fun afternoon, having to go through all the details of my relationship with her.”  

“Like an HR interview? Or Professional Standards Investigation?”

“Technically the former, but if I could describe what happens you’d probably think it sounded more like the latter,” hedged Kate, better able to see what she considered ‘normal’ when she was at DIA from Lucy’s perspective now she had her own FBI experience, and it was far from ‘normal’.  “Not because I was in trouble.”

“So why’d you go through it?”

“Because she was…in trouble I mean.”  Kate couldn’t stop the smile forming when Lucy frowned, not because she was amused by her girlfriend’s confusion, but because of how cute she looked trying to puzzle it out.  “She was already a person of note in my file, because of our past relationship and access to my apartment in D.C. and how she reacted as I was leaving there, but that was before she worked for a Senator on the Armed Services Committee.”

“Because she got to see you on the Base?”

“Because she now had limited security clearance, enough to potentially find out the DOD version of my job that I’d always told her was just a cover.”

“And that’s a problem?  I mean, clearly it’s a problem as far as I’m concerned because she’s obviously obsessed with you and…”  Lucy’s animated rambling was interrupted by a kiss before it could turn into a rant.  “...sorry, I just really don’t like her.”

“Noted, she’s not someone I want to ever meet again either.  And yes, her sudden attempt to restart any sort of relationship with me, nevermind an intimate one, was a problem.”

“What happened?  I mean, do you know what happened after you told DIA?  Can I know what happened?”  

It had never occurred to Lucy to try and find out exactly what Whistler did for the DIA when she wasn’t working with NCIS, nor to ask exactly how high her security clearance was relative to Lucy’s, but if the apartment, car, clothes and a federal contact for every crisis wasn’t enough of a hint that it was high , this conversation about how seriously the DIA seemed to take Cara’s intrusion in Kate’s Hawaii life was a pretty big neon sign right now, despite Kate’s typically understated way of explaining.

“I don’t know, specifically, but I imagine she was warned that further attempts to contact me against my wishes would see her security clearance reviewed, which wouldn’t help her career with the Senator.”  Kate cleared her throat.  “Certainly I haven’t heard from her since.”

“Good.”  As much as Lucy didn’t really like the idea of the DIA being as informed about the details of Kate’s private life as it seemed they had been, when dealing with a potential ‘bunny boiler’ for an ex, the intrusion was starting to seem like a godsend.

“In case you're wondering,..”  Lucy shook herself from her musings about where the ‘bunny boiler’ reference came from and whether it was a cultural reference Kate would know when she’d seen three of her nervous tells.  Surely that was the end of the Cara bombshell?  “...I never told the DIA about us.”

“Oh?”  Lucy didn’t know how to interpret that, but with what she’d learned still fresh in her mind, she willed herself to allow Kate the chance to explain.

“That first weekend, I never even told you my last name, nevermind the DOD cover version of my job and it was so special I…I wanted to keep it as something magical and not something I had to dissect and discuss wearing a polygraph.  When I transferred here, that omission no longer mattered as you had enough clearance to know I was assigned to DIA, but, if we’d not..that is, there would have been a point when I’d have had to tell them.”

“Did that worry you?”

“Yes.”  Kate felt Lucy stiffen a fraction, and she froze, uncertain whether reassurance was best conveyed through a hug or giving space, the latter tricky considering Lucy was sitting with her legs draped across Kate’s lap, her head millimetres from Kate’s shoulder.

“What worried you?”  Lucy’s voice was quiet, gentle like the voice she used when was coaxing details out of a victim or witness, encouraging Kate to continue rather than panic and shut down, gently catching hold of nervously twisting fingers.

“That no matter what happened I’d lose you the moment I told them.”

“Lose me?  The interview isn’t that bad is it?” Her joke fell flat, Kate lost in her own thoughts and fears.  “Tell me?  Please?”

“Either I’d be reassigned, at best still here in the islands but not allowed to work with you, but more probably back on the mainland.”  And probably see her loan to DIA ended, assigned to a DCSA field office somewhere, totally out of date in terms of what the job entailed.

“Or?”

“Or I’d be encouraged to break off contact and remain as Liaison.”

“Could they do that?  Tell you who to love?”  Lucy was done pretending that falling in love with Kate Whistler was a recent phenomenon, when deep down she knew she’d been half in love with her since that very first weekend, falling deeper still when they kissed in the car park after Lucy had told her she was amazing.

“No, but…it’s a very isolated working environment.  It suited me, initially, having no one interested in me outside of what I did at work…then, when I saw the strain the cover stories and compartmentalisation put on people I’d started with who still had a relationship from college, it made me believe it was an advantage that I had no interest in having any sort of relationship.  As natural as it is for Tennant to encourage you all to take a break, at DIA my bosses expected another review of the intel, another run at the…”  She cleared her throat, blinking as she refocused on Lucy, returning to the here and now, interrupting herself before she said too much.  “It is incredibly easy for the work to stack up in such a way that even the most resilient and committed relationships fail.”

“Acceptable losses.”

“Mmm?”

“Isn’t that intelligence speak for the outsiders, the civilians and the innocent that suffer for the mission?”

“And our own,” confirmed Kate hollowly, eyes watering at the memory of her brother’s death, brought about by mishandled intelligence, hers and her parents’ ability to understand and grieve forever undermined by the need to protect the intelligence in spite of the breach, in spite of their loss.  “I wasn’t prepared to let them hurt you, I was…”  Her snatched breath turned into a hiccup, the carefully compartmentalised feelings from months ago breaching their dams and overwhelming her.

“That was why you were wanting to keep everything quiet…” realised Lucy, the truth hitting her like a sucker punch in the gut.  “...you were already trying to move to the FBI?  To get there before we…before they…”  Fragments of their conversations, stiff and stilted yet loaded with emotion assaulted her.  “...and the D.C. big job you turned down?”

“Career sabotage of the highest order as far as the DOD was concerned.”  Kate remembered the worried phone call she’d had from her mentor when he’d heard through the grapevine that she’d said no so quickly, wanting to understand what her strategy was, relieved when she laid it out for him.  “Turning it down was the only option as far as I was concerned.”

“Why?  I mean, why the only option?”

“Because it was expected I would turn my back on the ‘distractions’ I had found in Hawaii…”

“Me?”

“You, your team…surfing…it was like I was 16 again and coming home to find my life had been planned out for me with the early enrolment acceptance already written for me.”

“Not by you?”  It was a struggle for Lucy to stay calm and still, listening as yet another layer of Whistler’s necessary armour was peeled away, aware that for all her steely determination to lay bare the demons that stayed hidden during their previous attempts to be together, Kate was not a natural sharer and could shut down, fast.

“My Dad.”  

It was one of the last facts about her life he remembered the last time she’d seen him - he’d not retained the argument and her own chosen path, just the moment, in the kitchen, when he and her Mom had sat down to watch her open the letter.  It didn’t matter that it was a decade or more ago now, his first question to her had been ‘how’s George Washington treating you?’ like she was stuck, forever 16 and about to start following the path that they had chosen for her.

“It was that big a job? Wait, sorry, you can’t tell me, forget I asked.”

“It was that big a job, if what they kept promising in terms of people working for me and how swanky my office would be were true.”  The exact number of people who’d worked for her directly at Pearl was something that, like most of the operational detail of the DIA, was classified and definitely not something she could share with Lucy.  “Usually you expect to transfer back to D.C. at the same job level, then get promoted once you were already there, but…”

“This was a transfer and promotion all in one?” guessed Lucy, seeing why ASAC Curtis had been so free with his praise of his injured agent whose fieldwork had left quite a bit to be desired that day.  “Wait, those phone calls and texts, they were D.C. trying to get you to agree to the job?”  Despite Kate saying she’d only received one text from Cara, Lucy knew she’d mentally attributed the texts and calls Kate had been clearly stressed by in the days before to the ‘Cara situation’, but clearly that was not correct.

“Yes.  First was the calls sounding me out, assuming I’d automatically say yes.  Then they shifted to trying to make sure I really understood what I was saying no to.  Then they tried to make me say yes by pointing out how badly I’d ruined my career by asking to stay here.  It went on for weeks”

“Wow, they really wanted you to take it.”  This job that, despite Lucy throwing her anger in Kate’s face at every opportunity she had, Kate refused to consider because she wanted to stay in Hawaii, stay near Lucy.

“Mmm, but it wasn’t a good job.”  It was, in fact, a spectacular job, and she’d had far too many video calls with D.C. trying to get them to understand that staying in Hawaii was not a ‘psychological red flag’ requiring all her clearances be reviewed.

“Why not?  It sounds like something you’re supposed to have thought was good…”

“...aside from the nearest surf spots to D.C. being two and a half hours away and the waves being the best in the winter…” joked Kate, sobering when she felt Lucy go rigid at the thought of the North Atlantic in winter.  “...which is not an ocean I’m prepared to go into…” she assured, kissing Lucy’s temple when she felt her relax again, “...nothing was a good job if it meant you were an acceptable loss.”

“Even when I was hating you for hurting me?”

“Even then.”

“I love you Kate…”  Lucy was turning around in her lap, her heartfelt admission interrupted by an incredibly ordinary thought.  “...wait, are you a Kate? Or a Kathleen?”

“Katherine.”  Sure hands manoeuvred Lucy so they were facing each other, the crouched perched position giving Lucy the extra couple of inches so they were literally nose to nose.  “Katherine Marie, but only when I was in trouble at home.”

“I love you, Kate Whistler,” said Lucy deliberately, stroking her girlfriend’s cheek, wanting to do everything she could to convey that the blonde was definitely not in trouble.  “So much.”  Feeling Kate’s long fingers sinking into her hair, Lucy leaned in, repeating her assertion with kisses, first short and playful, nipping at amused lips and blushing cheeks, then slower, and longer, tongues dancing in perfect harmony.  

Finally, when heads were spinning from lack of air, Lucy reluctantly eased back, shifting her weight back onto Kate’s thighs as she settled once more into her favourite snuggling position, noticing the cooling breeze on her bare legs, but comfortably warm tucked securely against Kate, her movements languid as she shifted and adjusted to Lucy’s new position.

“That was…”  Kate licked her dry lips, still somewhat dazed from the intensity of the kiss.  “...I mean, kissing you is always incredible but wow, I…”  She rested her cheek on soft dark hair, watching Lucy tangle their fingers together.  “I love you so much it scares me sometimes,” said Kate honestly, so quietly that it took Lucy a beat to realise she’d actually heard her say it.

“Scares you?”

“In a good way, a great way…like…I can’t imagine a world without you in it.”

“Not in a I might throw a mason jar at you?” There was a nervous uncertainty underpinning Lucy’s question that caught Kate off guard, and then she connected the dots.

“You’re not the only one with trust issues Luce, and while it might take me a while to offer you a spare key, I promise I’m not at all worried about you assaulting me…and I promise that I’ll always answer all your questions as long as we don’t have to arrest each other if I answer them.”

“Arrest each other?”  It was Lucy’s turn to take a minute to follow the logic.  “O-hh, you mean I arrest you for breaking national security, and you arrest me for…possession of classified intelligence?”  Interpreting Kate’s kiss to her hair as confirmation she was right, Lucy began to play with Kate’s fingers, her mind now trying to scramble to less emotionally draining topics.  “That’s got to be a lot of red tape though?  I mean, could you even arrest me once I’d arrested you?  How does that even work?”

“A lot of red tape…” agreed Kate sleepily, the warmth of Lucy’s body and their conversation, coupled with a very short night’s sleep all starting to catch up on her.  “...can we move inside?” she asked, the wicker chair starting to feel less than comfortable.

“Sure!”  In an instant, Lucy had jumped up, sensing without needing further explanation that she was getting the more comfortable sitting experience than Kate was.  “Mustn’t leave this out here…”  As Kate concentrated on restoring circulation to her leg, Lucy’s sudden departure from her lap triggering a nasty dose of pins and needles, the Texan bent down and picked up Kate’s FBI credentials.  Dusting them off carefully, mortified that she’d let them fall out of her lap in the first place, Lucy remembered she never actually got as far as looking at Kate’s current credentials picture, too distracted by 'baby Kate' in her old DSS one.  “I look like a zombie in mine…” she continued conversationally, opening the ID and turning it around so she could see the picture the right way up.  “...whereas you look amazing, FBI Supervisory Special Agent Kate Whist..”  She’d been reading without really thinking about what she was seeing, until her ears caught up with her mouth and her brain stalled.  That wasn’t what Kate’s vertical ID, that she wore clipped to her clothes around the FBI offices and Base said.  Like Lucy's, and Tenant's now she thought about it, those just said 'Special Agent'.

“...ler,” finished Kate helpfully, thinking Lucy’s stalling was because she’d just stood up, feeling rather flattered that her bare legs continued to have such an effect on her girlfriend.  Then she saw that Lucy wasn’t looking at her, she was looking at her credentials.

“Luce?”

“Supervisory Special Agent?”  Lucy’s eyes were wider than Kate had ever seen them as she looked up from the credentials to Kate’s face.

“Technically…”  Kate chewed her bottom lip nervously, then started talking quickly.  “But only because the government rules mean I get to keep the same paygrade when I get loaned from DOD to DOJ…actually, bonus point to DIA - there they just called us all Intelligence Officers until you made some sort of Director.”

“You’re an SSA,” repeated Lucy, mentally reviewing the agent hierarchy that she’d learned during FLETC, drawing in the gaps between Jesse and Tennant and putting Whistler in the appropriate box, a box that was crucially a long way up from Lucy’s Junior Special Agent one.

“It’s more a paperwork thing…” dismissed Kate, cautiously reaching for her girlfriend’s hips, worried by the distance between them and Lucy’s struggle to just move past what to Kate was a genuinely minor detail.  “...I’m very much the junior, most inexperienced special agent here.”  

That had become quite literally painfully apparent when she landed on the coffee table, her cracked ribs making it very clear to her in the two weeks she was off work that a decade of intelligence work was little to no help in those situations, even if she had kept up her fitness levels and done annual refresher courses for both her firearm certification and self-defence skills.  Unlike the recoil of her gun though, suspects who didn’t want to be arrested behave very differently in the field compared to on those courses.

“But when I was yelling at you for getting hurt, I was yelling at an SSA…”  Lucy dropped bonelessly into the second balcony chair, looking somewhat shellshocked as she remembered that Saturday morning when Andrea Medina had very nearly taken Kate from her for ever.  “No wonder your boss thinks of me as the ‘scrappy one’.”

“You were right to yell at me,” said Kate quietly, crouching down in front of Lucy, trying to be close but not crowd.  “I didn’t check my blindspots.”

“But…”  Seeing her girlfriend’s credentials, remembering her own first few days out in the field, all the mistakes she made despite excelling at FLETC, she found herself with a whole new raft of questions, starting with how her girlfriend, brilliant as she was, had managed to transfer from DIA Intelligence Officer to FBI field agent so quickly, nevermind be an SSA to boot.

“But nothing.  I…”  Kate wobbled slightly, her legs not overly impressed with the crouch she was holding, her loose shorts also not providing much protection for parts of her ill-equipped to experience the on-shore sea breeze directly.  “...promise you this isn’t me hiding something, but could we move to the couch?  I’m…”  Kate risked a glance down at herself, making her wobble even more as the breeze ruffled her shorts - penthouse floors gave fantastic views but also brought windchill, even in Oahu.

“Oh, sure!”  Now she’d had her attention drawn to how the air was cooling now the sun had moved round, Lucy was also noticing how cold she was in just Kate’s silk shirt when she wasn’t wrapped up in Whistler.  “Actually, could we get something to eat too?”

Chapter Text

'Present' - later same day

“Wait, so I was the only one who didn’t know?” asked Kai, looking around the table at his friends and colleagues, taking advantage of Whistler going to the bar to get the next round to ask about earlier in the day.  It did interrupt the retelling of the day’s events they were currently providing for primarily for Tennant, though Ernie was just as eager for the extra details he’d not been able to get from the video feeds on Wilbur and Orville as he was to contribute to the story.

“Know what?” asked Jesse, draining the last of his beer.

“Whistler, being…”

“Big Fed?” said Ernie, his dry delivery of the nickname that Whistler begrudgingly tolerated so long as he only used it when the NCIS Major Cases team was around, taking on a new meaning.

“I thought that was just a nickname.”

“And like the very best of nicknames, it is grounded in a grain of truth,” confirmed Ernie, biting into the pineapple garnish his drink had come with.  “Of course I knew.”

“I didn’t know,” said Jesse, taking pity on Kai when Ernie’s revelation and Jane’s nod had Kai thinking he was on his own.  “Not at first.”

“When did you find out?” asked Jane, understanding why Kate generally went by ‘Special Agent Whistler’ unless it was absolutely necessary to lean into her seniority.  Plus, in day to day work with Whistler, it didn’t actually matter to her or NCIS what Kate’s specific seniority was - she was their FBI Liaison, and that was all that mattered.

“The case with the counterfeit IDs?” It had been one of their more routine, straightforward cases that was mostly memorable for its total non-memorableness, something that clearly showed in Jane’s expression.  “Yeah, dull case, but you asked me to drop the counterfeit IDs off with Whistler on my way home, so she could add them as references to the FBI files?”  He saw Jane nod, clearly remembering asking him to do it only a few weeks after Kate had started at the FBI.  In fact, if memory served, Kate was still on desk duty following her encounter with Andrea Medina.  “When I got there she was in the lobby, waiting on some files from…”

“The DIA, ironically,” volunteered Kate, returning to the table and putting the numbered wooden spoon in the holder on the table, so the server knew where to deliver their order.  “Wait, that was why you were weird?”  It hadn't needed an ex Intelligence Officer to work out what they were talking about given the morning’s events. 

“I wasn’t weird,” scoffed Jesse, trying to play down her observation, though when she merely raised her eyebrow as she waited for Lucy to stand up, he caved.  “I just…”

“What did you do, salute?” joked Kai, trying to imagine how Jesse could be ‘weird’.  “No way…”

“More like stood at attention…” corrected Kate, sitting down on the chair Lucy had been sitting on, wrapping her arms loosely around her girlfriend’s hips when she sat down on Kate’s lap.  They usually weren’t this ‘couply’ when out with the team after work, but this was a popular bar and finding any table was difficult, nevermind a table large enough to accommodate the sixth chair they’d needed when Kate had finally made it after wrapping up the FBI side of things from thee morning’s case, so they’d improvised.  Plus, funny as it was to watch Kai and Jesse argue over who sat on who, given it wasn’t surprising that Kate was in the spotlight, she was more at ease being able to literally hold on to Lucy for moral support.

“This I have to see,” said Ernie, reaching for his phone.

“No.”  Kate looked pointedly at the cyber specialist, although Lucy in her arms did rather lessen its potency.

“But…”

“Ernie, you are not hacking into the FBI building’s security archive to find the camera footage of Jesse being weird when I had to confirm I was SSA Whistler to Mundez.”

“I was not being weird,” mumbled Jesse, soothing his bruised ego with a healthy swig of his bear as Ernie continued to hold everyone’s attention.

“You wound me.”  Ernie took a loud, pointed mouthful of his drink through the straw, smirking around it when Kate relaxed a little.  “Goran owes me like a million favours.”

“Ernie…” warned Jane quietly, knowing he was mostly messing with Kate, who was admittedly significantly more laid back now than when she’d been with their DIA Liaison, but there were limits.

“I jest, Big Fed. ” Ernie tidied up the empty glasses on the table so it was easier for the server when their next round arrived.  “And seriously, congrats on the latest upgrade.”

“You make me sound like a missile system.”  Ernie and Lucy chuckled at that, making her smile in relief that her at times stilted attempts at humour hadn’t backfired in this instance.  “And thanks...”  Kate, uncomfortable with the spotlight, tried to duck behind her girlfriend’s shoulder.  “But don’t call me that…” she muttered, it by now an almost automatic reflex every time she heard Ernie’s nickname for her.

“Grain of truth ba…”  Lucy delivered a swift and effective swat to his shoulder, reminding him who she considered eligible to call Kate ‘baby’.  “..adass brilliant FBI Special Agent?”

“Better.”  Lucy reached for her beer and settled back into her girlfriend’s lap as the guys shifted back into their blow-by-blow review of the events that led up to the day’s excitement, only to be not-so-subtly pinched by her girlfriend who now couldn’t reach her own drink which she hadn’t quite finished.  “Oh, sorry…here you go.”  She turned back and kissed the underside of Kate’s jaw then whispered “ Big Fed”, making Kate splutter and cough, her sip of beer going the wrong way.

“Behave,” she whispered back, certain her cheeks were bright red though hoping if anyone had noticed it, they would assume it was as a result of the coughing fit.  But despite her embarrassment, she was also in a near-giddy state of joyous relief that, in spite of all her entirely understandable trust issues both in general and with Kate specifically, explaining her seemingly sudden transfer to the FBI to Lucy all those months ago had gone well, well enough to now tease her about it amongst their friends.

“Right, my round, same again everyone?” asked Jesse, already standing up, his beer having disappeared rather quickly.

“If you’re buying, definitely!” agreed Kai immediately, prompting a conversation shift to when Jesse last volunteered to buy a round.

“Doing ok?” whispered Lucy, taking advantage of everyone being preoccupied with something other than her girlfriend’s brilliance for a moment, knowing this was rather a long way from Kate’s preferred quiet observer with occasional contribution approach to team drinks.

“Perfect.  Promise.”  And, with a kiss to the side of Lucy’s neck, they rejoined the conversation, just in time for Lucy to protest the collective memory that Jesse had bought coffee one particular week.  Smiling, Kate rested her chin on Lucy’s shoulder and let the conversation wash over her.

“No, he definitely did not buy coffee that week!  I remember the lines, and the stupid pumpkin shaped hats the staff were wearing!”

“Oh, right…I was wondering why I got pumpkin spice, he refuses to buy it, and Dad refuses to do it…”

“Okole Maluna!”  

Fresh drinks delivered and distributed, they’d all raised their glasses and bottles, clinking glass when in range and generally ignoring the bumps and bruises accumulated during a week filled with surprisingly energetic bad guys.  Toasting complete, Kai resumed the pre-drinks-arriving conversation about what had happened that morning, not letting the subject of Whistler’s actual title drop.

“So is that why Conway glares at me everytime I call you Whistler?  Because I just call you Whistler?" 

"Hmm?" Kate was slow to zone back into the conversation, having been preoccupied by Lucy’s fidgeting to get extra comfortable on her lap after the toasting, reminding her of their conversations about this topic on her balcony months earlier.  Right now, she wasn’t sure if she was relieved or frustrated that she was wearing a pencil skirt and silk shirt instead of shorts and a tank top.  "No, he just doesn't like you."

"Us, NCIS, not you specifically Kai," explained Lucy quickly, seeing that her team could otherwise misunderstand her girlfriend, having heard Kate’s summary of Conway's thoughts on the hierarchy of law enforcement branches more than once.  “He thinks we're not proper Feds.”

"He does know you're the Liaison?" asked Jesse, sending a commiserating look in Kate’s direction. "And, you know…" he nodded at Lucy.

"Why do you think he only glares?" asked Jane, mostly rhetorically, having had to endure FBI Agent Conway for her entire SAC tenure in one capacity or another.  "He used to say what he thinks.  This is him playing nice."  His thoughts on women in leadership roles were almost as unpleasant as his thoughts on allowing ‘Navy Cops’ to ‘pretend’ they were Feds, and her respect and admiration for Whistler had increased even more when Jane worked out how effectively she was keeping Conway silent and in line.  What she might lack in terms of field experience, managing arrogant, opinionated egos was experience Whistler had by the boatload, but then that didn’t surprise Jane in the slightest given her own career in Intelligence.

"Very nice," corrected Kate, letting Lucy claim her beer and put it on the table while Lucy rearranged them both so she was more stable and comfortable in Kate’s lap. "And me bringing him the minimum is me being exceptionally nice."

"To him?"

"To us," explained Jane, unsurprised that Kai was finding this insight into interagency cooperation confusing. "Not bringing him at all would be like rewarding him."

"Plus since most of my cases that he could work are with you or CGIS…." She accepted her beer back from a now steady Lucy and sipped it, oblivious to the affectionate smirks their behaviour was earning from Jane, Jesse and Ernie. "It's kindest to me if I bring him along for your cases."  She saw Kai frown and headed off his inevitable question. "If I take him with me to CGIS I have to listen to him complain about how they’re lifeguards not cops. Him glaring at you doesn't give me a headache."

“And he still works with you?  Given his views on NCIS and CGIS?” asked Jesse, finding it hard to understand why Kate had to work with him still.

“He’s harmless,” shrugged Kate, or tried to, given Lucy in her lap.  “Noisy sometimes, but harmless.”  And trying to get transferred to the mainland, something Kate was doing everything she could to facilitate and support, utterly baffled as to how and why he’d even accepted a transfer to Honolulu given his apparent loathing of the Navy and Coastguard.  But there was a transfer to Nebraska that he’d applied for, and the total lack of maritime access had Kate cautiously optimistic he’d never have to deal with NCIS or CGIS.

“Office politics are her ‘jam’,” teased Tennant, remembering the case with the hiker deaths when Kate had managed to get FBI BAU to share their insight without stealing the case.  Not to mention she knew from her own limited experience of working within the DIA circles Kate had to navigate that a grumpy FBI Special Agent was child’s play for her in terms of workplace conflict.  “Did Bambridge really tell you to go back to your yoga class?” 

“While checking her out!” protested Lucy, infuriated on her girlfriend’s behalf.

“And you weren’t?  I heard Kai on comms,” said Ernie, rearranging his straw, cocktail umbrella and fruit garnish so he could start on his fresh drink without losing an eye.

“I might have told her to not drool…” explained Kai, unequal to the twin raised eyebrows from Whistler and Tennant.  “...but that was before you got out of the cruiser with the…”  he self-consciously gestured somewhere around his waist.

“Abs…” sighed Lucy happily, her second beer starting to confirm she’d not had anything to eat since a very early breakfast.  “Wait, why did you turn up only wearing your sports bra?”

“I had a windbreaker over the top,” corrected Kate patiently, amused rather than embarrassed by Lucy’s reaction, knowing also that Kai saw just as much if not more of her when they surfed together.  “It wasn’t yoga,” she added, primarily for Jane’s benefit, knowing if she didn’t attempt a straightforward and succinct summary of the morning’s events for the NCIS SAC, Jane would probably still be missing details by final call.  “Whenever I can, I join in my team’s training sessions.  My t-shirt was back at the FBI gym helping to stop a nose bleed.  This morning’s was on-scene self-defence.”  While the tech and forensic specialists didn’t go into field unless the scene had been secured by agents and HPD, there was always the chance of something going wrong, and certainly Kate’s experience with Medina had her not wanting anyone to ever be surprised at a scene, but were it to happen, the forensic and tech specialists all had some basic skills to fall back on.  Except this morning, one of them took that a little too literally and broke their nose.

"How did Bumbridge not know?" asked Ernie, not having witnessed the chaos this morning, but hearing about it from many, many sources.

“About the training? Not his team.”

“No, not that.”  Ernie’s focus on Kate meant he missed the looks exchanged between Jesse and Jane that said they were circling back to this training session reference later.  “About Bumbridge not knowing you are Big Fed?”

"Same reason Kai didn't," said Kate simply, letting the nickname’s repeated use slide, starting to feel a little awkward again with the sustained focus on her. "And it's Bambridge."

Ernie’s long, noisy draw on his straw had Kate roll her eyes at him in amused despair.

"It's not like I am constantly introducing myself as the SAC," observed Jane, knowing that it wasn’t always necessary or helpful, especially with the civilians on the islands.. 

"Yes, but we still aren't disrespectful…" muttered Kai, making Kate see his frustration was on her behalf, rather than with her.

“It’s fine, I’m used to it.”  The weary fatigue in her voice saw Lucy shifting again, abandoning any attempt at subtlety and instead outright snuggling into Kate.  “And it’s not like…”

“Like?” prompted Jesse when it became clear that Kate had lost her train of thought, distracted for the better by Lucy kissing Kate’s neck and whispering something that made the blonde FBI agent smile.

“Like it’s the whole team this time.”  Kate nudged Lucy to stand up, whispering the quiet assurance that she wasn’t excusing herself because of emotional discomfort, but more the rather literal discomfort that came from being unable to ignore the need for a trip to the restroom, regretting not making a stop when she’d been up ordering the next round of drinks.

“What she means,” said Lucy as she sat down in the seat Kate had vacated, seeing all their friends looking at her expectantly, wanting to understand what Kate was alluding to once her girlfriend had set off for the restrooms, “is that Bambridge and Conway are just two guys who don’t respect her and what she does, but she has a team that has her back.”

“Teams,” amended Jane, smiling when she caught Lucy’s eye, understanding the point her Junior Agent was making, but wanting to make it more explicit for the boys.  “Not just at the FBI, but NCIS too.”  And beyond, but this wasn’t the place to mention that, or for anyone other than Kate to share.

“To Whistler!” said Jesse, raising his beer.

“Wait, shouldn’t we wait for her to come back?” asked Ernie, finding it a little weird they were toasting her in her absence.

“It’s the thought that counts,” reassured Jane, sharing a look with Lucy, a look that confirmed her hunch that Kate would hate to still be in the spotlight when she returned from the restroom, but that at the right point, and in the right way, Lucy would let her know what happened.

“To Whistler!” echoed Kai, raising his own beer and tapping the neck of the bottle against Jesse’s.  “Wait, shouldn’t it be ASAC Whistler?”

“Only on paperwork,” explained Lucy, knowing Kate hated to be called anything other than ‘Special Agent’ unless she absolutely had to use her full title, and she managed in the main to only have to do that when signing forms and files.  “And she’ll tell you just Whistler’s fine.”

“You sure?”  Kai was sufficient beers into his evening that his ‘inner Marine’ was starting to resurface just enough that the boot camp indoctrination to address the hierarchy correctly was starting to resurface.

“Whistler’s mighty fine,” said Lucy, her facial expression suggesting her thoughts were starting to drift in the direction of Kate’s abs and other, less, work-appropriate attributes.

“Ok, time for someone to order Lucy some fries…” began Jane, only to trail off when, as if conjured by magic, a server arrived with a tray of snacks, including fries.  “...thank you Whistler,” muttered Jane, relieved that Lucy’s tendency to overshare a little when not entirely sober was no longer an imminent threat, thanks to her girlfriend’s anticipatory ordering.

“Ooo, fries!” Lucy reached for one of the pots of fries, grabbing and immediately dropping one.  “Hot!”  Hearing familiar laughter she turned in its direction, absently picking up another fry and eating it, only to quickly cough and down a good third of her beer.  “Hot hot!”

“Whistler or the fry?” asked Jesse, strategically helping himself to a nacho before his brain caught up with his mouth and saw the look Tennant was sending him, also aware of Lucy’s over-sharing tendency. “Wait, don’t answer that.”

Fortunately, Lucy had just taken a large mouthful of beer to cool her mouth down, enabling Ernie to ask the question that had been on his mind most of the day.

“What’s Bumbridge’s problem anyway?”

“Heatstroke.”  Lucy paused mid-fry when everyone looked at her, expecting her to elaborate.  “He’s from North Dakota.”

“Ooo, the second coldest state on average!”  Ernie drained a good third of his new drink while he mulled on that fact.  “After Alaska obviously.  Minnesota’s next, only point one of a degree warmer on average through the year, but that’s the problem with averages.”

“And Minnesota…hey!”  Jesse looked at Lucy in surprise, not sure why the Texan was defending Minnesota with a feisty punch to his shoulder.  He really needed to make sure Tennant was on Lucy’s right in future - Lucy’s right was her stronger side but everyone knew she’d never land one on Tennant.

“Whistler grew up in Minnesota.”

“Why are we talking about Minnesota?” asked Kate, returning in time to hear Lucy’s comment.

“Because it’s only slightly warmer than North Dakota.”

“On average.”  Kate missed the smirk Lucy shot Ernie at her girlfriend knowing the same statistics he did.  “And Special Agent Bambridge will be returning to his preferred climate in three weeks.”  She had no idea why he had even been in consideration for the temporary assignment to Hawaii, but knew better than to question either him or the inner workings of the FBI personnel department.

“Once an Intelligence Officer…” acknowledged Ernie, impressed with how she’d joined the dots and not missed a conversational beat.

“Finish that sentence and I might just have to arrest you,” joked Kate tentatively, hoping she’d not embarrassed herself too much, but more confident making jokes with Ernie and the others after spending more time with them in social situations while Lucy was away as Agent Afloat.  “And I’m only the FBI DOD Liaison now.”  It was a minor detail, but given her history, one she was quite particular about.  “I’m no more DIA than I am CGIS.”  She helped herself to a nacho while waiting for Lucy to stand up so Kate could sit on the chair they  were sharing once more.

“Can we get back to your nose bleed?”

“Not interested in talking about your BFF Pike?” teased Lucy, catching the fry Jesse threw in her direction before sitting down on Kate’s lap again.

“Whose nose bleed?” asked Kate, looking at Lucy in concern, the fries and nachos fortunately starting to counteract the Texan’s second beer and enabling logical conversation once more.

“Not my nose bleed, the one your t-shirt was stopping this morning.”

“Oh, that.”  Kate opened her mouth and crunched down on the nacho Lucy was holding out for her to eat, oblivious to the frustration she was causing for Jesse and Ernie, Jane too though she was rather more skilled at concealing it.

“Was it Chang?  I bet it was Chang!” decided Ernie, dismantling his drink’s garnish and passing the cocktail umbrella to Lucy.

“It wasn’t Chang,” said Kate, just as Kai asked who Chang was.

“FBI evidence specialist, does brilliant things with fingerprints.  Old school forensics, but sometimes you’ve got to get physical.”  Ernie finished eating the pineapple slice his drink had come with, then became aware of Whistler’s questioning look.  “We message.”

“You and Chang?”

“And some of your team.  Bam Bam and Boom Boom are in it too, we have a group chat. Chase too.  And I really want to come to the session Boom Boom’s going to do please, wait, he is still doing it isn’t it?”

“Yes, but not for a few weeks.  He’s back on Kaho’olawe with his unit just now.”

“Did you know about this?” asked Jesse, looking to Jane for an explanation.

“About Boom Boom being on Kaho’olawe this month? Sure.”  His grimace told her she’d misunderstood his question.  “No, no clue.  But maybe if we ask a question, you know, like the investigative agents we’re supposed to be…”  Jane had a feeling she could make a reasonably informed guess about what Kate had been doing that morning, but that wasn’t the same as knowing.  “...hey Whistler?”

“Yes?”

“Could you explain about your team training session?”

“The team or the training session?”

“Both,” said Jane and Jesse, accepting Ernie’s call of ‘jinx’ with good humour.

“Please and thank you,” added Jane, reaching for her drink, knowing hearing about the team Kate led would fill in some blanks for Jesse and Kai in particular, while she was keen to understand what this training session had been.

“Oh, umm, sure.”  Kate took another mouthful of her beer, murmuring her thanks to her girlfriend when she took the bottle from her hand so Kate could once more wrap both hands around Lucy’s waist. “FBI Field Office is structured a bit differently to NCIS.”  

“There’s like ten times as many of you,” said Jesse, earning him a not-entirely friendly shove from Jane.

“Hardly,” corrected Kate with amusement, knowing that the agencies were closer in manpower size if all the Pacific Fleet Agents Afloat were included, but it wasn't like Jane could use them at a big scene here in the islands, though by the same logic, the FBI agents in Guam wouldn’t be much help either.  “But it means there’s enough for people to not know everyone all that well.”  Not that was an excuse Bambridge could use, as he knew precisely who she was, ASAC Curtis having made it clear to all the field agents that throughout his unplanned emergency trip to the mainland, Special Agent Whistler was in charge and had the final say, unless she deemed it necessary to get the FBI SAC involved, though he was also on the mainland this month, just to complicate things.  

“When I transferred to the FBI, prioritising which agents’ investigations get tech and forensic assistance wasn’t working, causing problems and delays.  Bit like the problems I had to sort out with intel briefs when I got here.”

“Everything was so slow before you took over,” confirmed Jesse, primarily for Kai’s benefit since he hadn’t been a part of the team, though Lucy’s memory was hazy about the details as she’d been too new to get too involved in the intelligence-dependent parts of their cases.  “Like four days after the second murder slow we’d get a ‘nothing to tell you’ update.”  He picked up his beer, only to discover it was empty.  “Least you would tell us you weren’t helping quickly.”

"I…”  Kate had been about to protest that she was never deliberately slow to help when she was at DIA, but then she saw what he’d been trying to say, realising it was intended as a compliment about how quickly she’d tell them whatever she could, even if it was telling them she couldn’t tell them anything.  “...well yes, thank you.”  She momentarily lost her train of thought, not having ever expected to have a ‘Jesse compliments DIA Whistler’ on her bingo card.

“So you’re like the tech liaison for the other agents?” asked Kai, never really giving any thought to how tech support might need to be prioritised, as Commander Chase, Ernie, Boom Boom and Bam Bam were always there whenever they needed them for their cases.  “Do we have something like that?”

“What do you think I do?” asked Jane mildly, not surprised he didn’t know too much about what she did as SAC, though compared to the FBI field office, she was juggling a smaller number of cases albeit with a significantly smaller number of agents and specialists.  “It’s more complicated at FBI though.”

“Don’t sell yourself short boss.”  Jesse, ever the faithful lieutenant, was quick to jump to her defence with the ego boost.

“Thank you, and I don’t.  But all the rest of us agencies, when it gets too specialist…”

“...like forensic botanists…” added Ernie, reminding Jesse of the case they’d worked with the mainland teams.

“...we ask the FBI to help us, and here in the islands, that means Whistler.”

“She’s their boss,” added Lucy, recalling the ‘tech squad’ barbeque she’d gone to with Kate the day before she’d left for her Agent Afloat stint, finding the twenty or so analysts and specialists overwhelmingly friendly and generally either tongue-tied or rambling in her girlfriend’s presence, all promising to make sure she didn’t overwork in Lucy’s absence.  

As a mostly-former Intelligence Officer,  Kate was not only rather more tech literate than most field agents, but also far more appreciative of the importance and complexity of the processes and techniques the techs used, apparently making her much easier to work for, as she definitely knew her missiles from her microbes, and wasn’t afraid of reading up on new forensic tests or equipment so she understood their options.

“Wait, what now?”  Jesse hadn’t known that, although judging from Tennant’s ‘proud Mom’ smile, she clearly did.  “I can barely manage Ernie, and Kai’s scared of Boom-Boom and Bam-Bam!”

“Hey!”  Ernie shot a dirty look at his friend as he reached for his drink.  “We’re as much use as twenty of those…ow!”  He looked up at Lucy, whose innocent expression fooled no one.  “Ten?”  Lucy’s eyes narrowed, indicating he needed to go lower.  “Some?”  Lucy relaxed, her smile returning to everyone else’s amusement as Kate kissed her neck, muttering ‘easy Tex’ in her girlfriend’s ear.  NCIS Special Agent Tara was incredibly proud of the federal agency she worked for, but Lucy, girlfriend to one FBI Special Agent Whistler?  She was incredibly proud of her girlfriend’s job and team.

“Seriously, all the FBI tech division report to you?”  Jesse let out a low whistle at her nod.  “Was it always like that?”

“The ones in the islands do, and no, part of why Curtis was so excited to get her.”  Jane raised her glass in wordless tribute to Kate's achievement.  “As before that, trying to make us all play nicely together while each being determined to solve our cases without any delay was his headache once his SAC worked out he could just duck our calls.”

“All the techs love her,” said Ernie proudly, assuming an almost parental pride, like he was partly responsible for her reputation.

“SACs too,” teased Jane, knowing how much Kate hated to be in the spotlight like this, but deciding her friend deserved ‘to have her flowers’ as a teacher at Jane’s school had used to say.  “Even if we don’t always like it when she tells us to be patient and wait our turn.”

“Sporogenesis happens on its own timeline.  We’re the FBI, not time lords.”

The sudden silence had Kate worrying, and asking Lucy in a whisper if she’d got it wrong.

“That was perfect,” promised Lucy, turning her head so she was whispering, covering her motivational pep talk with a rather more thorough kiss than she’d otherwise normally go for in the middle of a team drinks night, knowing too that would enable her to redirect the focus of her friends a little.  Reaching for her drink after finally, and with genuine reluctance, ending the kiss, she rolled her eyes at her still silent friends and colleagues.  “What? You didn’t seriously think the FBI would have the Tardis in their building did you?  Or did none of you do fungi in high school science class?”  Admittedly, she’d only learned that sporogenesis had something to do with fungi when she asked Alexa, and only after hearing Kate muttering about idiots who didn’t understand it happened on its own timeline about ten times.  But her team and friends didn’t need to know that.

“Technically it would be DOD, or NASA’s jurisdiction, not DOJ,” added Kate, wondering whether or not even that was incorrect and it would be FAA or another part of the Department of Transportation.  A good question to ask Gemma next time they exchanged their annual ‘are you going? Hell no.  How are you? Work still classified?’ texts when the alumni reunion invites went out.  If anyone would have an opinion on the relevant jurisdiction for the Tardis, it would be a NASA lawyer.

“Dr Who now your thing?” asked Ernie, quickest to match the reference to the fandom, not wanting to explore how and why spores were relevant just now.

“One of many, I’m a fan of the genre,” countered Lucy quickly, flashing him a smile, only to sigh dramatically when he looked knowingly at her.  “Fine, yes.  I’ve joined in with some of Chang’s rewatches, but only for a couple of episodes.”

“You’re in his rewatch group?”  Ernie was genuinely upset - he’d been only expecting her to admit to listening to the fingerprint specialist’s passionate discourse about Doctor Who when she’d gone to some of Kate’s own after work socials.  That she was in the rewatch group?   “How’d you score that invite?  And then not tell me!”  It was, in terms of the federal agency forensic and tech specialists wider group social scene here in Hawaii, one of the two holy grails of invites, the other being Boom Boom’s July 4th fireworks display, and a sign of being firmly ‘in’ the inner sanctum of geekdom and tech.  “And why didn’t I see you online for last week’s episode rewatch?  You’re not a lurker are you?”

“She only goes if the episode matches her criteria.”  

Kate was not a sci fi fan - she managed to be confused with one by her team because she had watched, thanks to Noah’s determination his sister wasn’t to grow up ‘girly’ unless it was an informed decision, Star Wars films, some Star Trek episodes (though don’t ask her which series the episodes were from) and various other classic films like 2001: A Space Odyssey and Planet of the Apes.  That Lucy was able to help fill in some of her gaps in knowledge so she could at least keep tabs on her team’s latest obsessive rewatch-fueled conversations and even participate with some of them, only made Kate love her girlfriend even more.

“Not the important part of this conversation,” said Lucy quickly, anticipating Ernie’s next question and not feeling now was the right moment to have him tease her for now, very definitely, having a ‘thing’ for blondes.

“Don’t look at me, I have no clue,” said Kate honestly.  “I’m just glad she helps me not upset them by confusing Pokemon species and Game of Thrones languages anymore.”

“That was one time.”

“Why’d you worry about this stuff?” asked Jesse, earning himself a glare from Lucy and Ernie.  “I mean, I can barely keep track of Jake’s games, nevermind the characters…”

“It’s not stuff!” protested Ernie, preparing to revisit his long-running good-natured but ultimately never-going-to-end debate with Jesse about the importance of fandom culture as a potential way of forming social groupings and connections.  But that was ok, as long as he never judged Jake for it, which he didn’t.

“I feel bad for not thinking about what else you did, besides being our liaison…” admitted Kai honestly, “...now or before.”

“Don’t worry about it.” Kate really wasn’t bothered by people not having an idea what her day job actually entailed - she’d spent too many years operating within the DIA’s compartmentalised ‘need-to-know’ world, usually as the person in the room that everyone else was cleared to know the least about.  

“So you’re the FBI tech whisper?”  Jesse had finally found his fresh beer amongst the empties on the table raising it in salute to her: it had a harder challenge than he’d expected between Ernie’s cocktails, Kate’s weird Japanese beer and Lucy’s low alcohol one, a sign she was expecting to drive the couple home.  “Cool.”

“Well, that and being Liaison for us and CGIS," added Jane, raising her glass too.

“Technically I’m FBI DOD Liaison, so get DIA too,” said Kate quietly, not sure if Jane was omitting that part of her job out of diplomacy or lack of knowledge.  And the Army, but that was less of a day to day thing and generally just involved making sure the paperwork kept moving.

“Really?”  Lack of knowledge.  “But I thought Mundez…”

“Was FBI and NCIS Liaison?  On paper at least, but he only deals with me at FBI.” 

 Kate sighed when she saw Jane’s sympathetic expression, knowing the experienced SAC was having the same issues with Mundez that Kate had, but at least she was a little more able to cope with him than Curtis had been.  It wasn’t until she’d sat in on him having his briefing with Mundez that she realised quite how bad the DIA Officer was at sharing the intelligence he was supposed to, nor how difficult it was for someone like Curtis who didn’t have DoD clearances to discover the intelligence they should have been given from the outset. “Saves unnecessary bloodshed.”  Didn’t do much for her cellphone bill however, as in most cases she had to follow-up after Mundez had given her the briefing with a call to her own contacts in D.C. to check that he’d actually given her the whole briefing that her clearance permitted her to receive, and not just the parts he decided to share.  It was a completely pointless and stupid game he was playing, as she knew for a fact her clearances were still higher than his, even if his were higher than those of her FBI colleagues.

“But not your blood pressure,” grumbled Lucy, not as quietly as she’d intended, though she missed the affectionate smiles her comment drew from Jesse and Jane.

“Umm, can I ask you another question?”  Kai had been quiet for a few minutes, clearly trying to either work something out, or as was now the case, work up the courage to ask Kate a direct question.

“Sure.”  Kate nudged Lucy so she was leaning the other way, making it easier for Kate to look at Kai while she waited for his question.

“Umm, so, and I mean this respectfully, but how’d you transfer so quick?  I mean, we were at FLETC for weeks when we started out…”

Chapter Text

“Umm, so, and I mean this respectfully, but how’d you transfer so quick?  I mean, we were at FLETC for weeks when we started out…”

Flashback to the morning/early afternoon after the party at Tennant's...

“It’s not much…” announced Kate, stopping by the couch, carrying a tray with some iced water, fruit and crackers.  “...I, um, should probably have gone to the store,” she added, putting down the tray on the low table, uncertain whether she should join Lucy on the couch or give her space.

“Hi.”  Lucy leaned forwards, reaching for the plate of fruit Kate brought over, missing the quiet groan and swallow from the blonde as seeing Lucy wearing her shirt did things to Kate, her sleep shorts and tank t-shirt doing little to help keep her arousal in check.  “Open?” requested Lucy, holding an apple wedge in front of kiss-swollen lips, laughing as Kate tried to claim both the apple and Lucy’s fingers in her bite.  Pulling her down onto the couch next to her, Kate’s seating anxiety dismissed with a kiss, Lucy set about getting comfortable again.

Two apples and countless teasing kisses later, with hunger temporarily sated, Kate noticed Lucy’s thumb had shifted from tracing aimless strokes across her hand to repeating the same path across her palm and down her fingers over and over.

“Luce?”

“Mmm?”  Blinking back into the present, her thumb temporarily pausing, Lucy lifted her head up from where she’d rested it on her girlfriend’s shoulder.  “Oh!  I should…”  She began to try to move, presuming she was starting to outstay her welcome on her girlfriend’s oh so comfortable lap, only to be wrapped up in Kate’s arms again as she shifted them both to be lying down together on the couch, Lucy on top of her.

“Is this ok?” asked Kate shyly, wondering if she’d pushed it a little too far when probably just hugging Lucy while they stayed sitting up would have been enough to provide assurance that she liked having Lucy so close.

“Mmm, you ok?” Lucy was very comfortable, her head resting on Kate’s chest, feeling the gentle weight of her hands resting on her lower back, able to hear the steady thump of Kate’s heartbeat through her chest.

“Perfect…and you can ask me about when I did FLETC,” she nudged, feeling Lucy lift her head a little, clearly surprised at Kate bringing it up.  “Nothing classified there."

“Umm…”  Lucy’s thumb began to move again, tracing its soothing path across Kate’s palm, her body relaxed once more even if her words were still somewhat stiff and frozen.  “...it’s silly…I’m just…”

“Wondering whether I even did FLETC?” guessed Kate, trying not to groan when she got an inadvertent elbow in the ribs and a rather firm push against her groin as Lucy tried to sit up in surprise at Kate’s accuracy.  “That’s your question, right?” she continued, relinquishing her hold so Lucy could at least right herself into a slightly more upright position if she felt more comfortable doing so, although Kate was hoping she’d stay lying down, enjoying the intimacy of their current position.

“Yes, but how…”  Lucy relaxed, letting herself sink into Kate’s body, adjusting to the increasingly familiar contours of her body as she registered the total absence of tension, reassuring her that Kate was genuine in her desire to be as open as she could be with Lucy.  Not that any of that explained how she’d suddenly become a mind reader and seemingly managed to pluck her question, well, almost her question but close enough not to matter, out of her brain like that.

“Your thumb.”  Kate slid her hand up Lucy’s back and down her arm, presenting her right hand palm up to Lucy, enabling her to see and feel the smooth undamaged skin on her fingers.  “Did you get blisters when you did FLETC?”

“Yeah, but you…”

“Got awful blisters,” promised Kate.  “And bruises in some really strange places.”

“But I don’t…”  Lucy closed her eyes, picturing the sun-kissed skin she’d explored last night and this morning, not recalling any bruises, faded or fresh.  “...wait.”  The pieces of the puzzle started to form for her, making her wonder if she’d made some bad assumptions.  “When exactly did you do FLETC?”

“2013.”  Kate had suspected that Lucy’s question was really about how she’d managed to transfer from DIA to FBI so quickly, and from doing the day-to-day work of an intelligence officer to field agent, but once again let Lucy set the pace.

“But that’s…”  Lucy lifted her head, resting her chin on Kate’s chest so she could look at her, not sure what she’d expected to hear, but definitely not expecting that.  “...you really did your FLETC almost a decade ago?”

“And had my first proper day in the field almost a decade later, getting my ass handed to me by a trained assassin that you took down,” clarified Kate, her pride in Lucy’s skills and achievement evident.  “And on the beach, in the waves no less.”

“Well, little bit of wave and yeah, but…”  Lucy frowned, trying to fit together all the pieces of the puzzle she knew.  “...wait, weren’t you still in grad school then?”

“I should have still been in grad school,” corrected Kate gently, relieved when she felt Lucy settle against her again, relaxing after that latest mini-bombshell.  “Noah, he was five years older than me…” She felt Lucy start to protest that she didn’t need to know, not if it was difficult for her.  “...ssshhh, it’s fine, I want to tell you.”  That Kate’s heartbeat seemed content in its steady, slow rhythm served to reassure Lucy she was genuinely comfortable sharing this part of her story.  “...but by the time we were both in high school, there were only two grades between us.”

“You skipped grades?”

“A couple yeah, and there was something about our birthdays…”  Kate closed her eyes, trying to remember Noah explaining it to her when she must have been about seven.  “His birthday was February 7th, mine’s…”

“August 5th,” said Lucy promptly, earning her a bonus kiss to her hair and a chuckle from her girlfriend that rumbled seductively through Kate’s chest, under Lucy’s ear.

“Indeed.  School cut off dates are usually September, but I was born when our parents were living in Connecticut, and they are...”

“Not September?”

“January.”

“But you didn’t go to school there?”

“No, because by then they were living in Virginia, so Noah was one of the oldest kids in 5th grade and I would have been the youngest but…”  Kate shrugged, deciding not to dwell in the past.  “By the time I’d been skipped a couple of grades and the year we were in Canada…not important,” she said firmly, sensing Lucy’s curiosity at this sudden piece of news.  “Dad’s work meant we spent a year there…then we were in Minnesota  but while I just started the next grade up, Noah had somehow lost a grade and we were only two grades apart.”

“And Noah didn’t mind?”

“If he did, he never let me see,” said Kate honestly, wondering where the question had come from, and then she remembered Lucy’s middle brother was five years older than her.  “Would Brad have given you grief?”

“So much grief,” agreed Lucy, once more wishing she could have known Noah Whistler.  “He refused to speak to me or share a ride to school when I got to high school and that was when there were five grades between us.”

“What did your parents say?”

“Nothing, they just got Brad his own driver so he didn’t need to ride with me.”  It was, in hindsight, one of those clear memories that Lucy could reference as the beginnings of her ‘rebellion’ away from her family’s wealth-driven way of life.  “I can honestly say I never thought of Brad as a friend, never mind a best friend…”  Lucy lifted her head again, so she could look at Kate, using her toes to shift herself a little higher up Kate’s body.  “...I mean sure, he’s my brother, and that’s something , but it’s not friendship you know?  That’s something separate, something special and I’m glad you had that with Noah.”

“Mmm.”  Kate distracted herself from her memories for a moment by losing herself in the kiss Lucy initiated, correctly understanding it served in part as a temporary stop sign on the detour into Lucy’s family relationships.  “Me too.  He was…”  She swallowed, remembering his easy smile and friendly call to her when she came out of class and passed him in the hall.  “...unafraid of people knowing the weird, nerdy girl was his kid sister.”

“I’m sure you weren’t the weird, nerdy girl…”

“Luce, I’m still the weird, nerdy girl…” joked Kate, time and professional success enabling her to come to terms with how she was seen by many.

“You’re my girl Kate Whistler…” declared Lucy firmly, kissing the underside of her girlfriend’s strong jaw, trying not to distract herself with attempting to picture her incredible girlfriend as a probably even more socially awkward baby giraffe than she sometimes was now, because right now, as she settled once more, contentedly resting her head on Kate’s chest, she was feeling loved and in love in a way she’d never dreamed possible.

It was, thought Kate, savouring the feeling of being at peace, of feeling Lucy so relaxed and at ease here, right now as they lay together, that it was tempting, so tempting to scoop Lucy up in her arms and take them back to bed, leaving the memories and questions in the past.  But Kate had been serious in her promise to answer any questions Lucy had and managed to resist temptation, for a few more questions at least.

“When I went to college Noah made me promise not to sprint through it.”

“Extra credit?” guessed Lucy, starting to understand how her girlfriend’s phenomenal focus and commitment to her work had perhaps been forged.  She could see how the little kid who was skipped ahead might see college as an opportunity to ‘go big’ with her ambitions.  “Or early start?”

“Both.  My parents had made me apply to GW for early start while Noah was away doing ROTC…he’d wanted me to…”  Lucy heard Kate’s voice catch and, appreciating that whatever she was trying to say was difficult for her, kept quiet, though she once more tangled their fingers together, stroking aimless patterns with her thumb, hoping from how Kate squeezed her tightly that it was helping.  “...to drop out for a year or two and go be a surfer bum in Hawaii.”

“You’re kidding me?”

“No.  He’d taught me to snowboard without our parents knowing, but that was because we lived near some slopes.  He thought Hawaii would be far enough away from our parents for me to…”

“To be out?” guessed Lucy, knowing from the odd comment she’d heard Kate make that her parents had not been completely supportive of their daughter’s preferences.

“To give myself a chance,” clarified Kate, not allowing herself to investigate the potentially major cosmic coincidence that fate and island spirits might have orchestrated in order to bring her and Lucy together.  That was probably a conversation for Jane with lots of tequila.  

“How was he when he found out you’d applied and, knowing you Kate Whistler, been accepted straight off?”  Although the question was serious, there was a teasing, flirtatious sing-song quality to Lucy’s voice, making Kate smile.

“He was pretty pissed with Mom and Dad.” Although determined to be honest with Lucy here and now, she refused to allow herself to remember the tension in the house for the three weeks Noah was home back then, hating seeing him upset on her behalf.  “But he was happy I had already decided I was going to go transfer somewhere I could snowboard and he made me promise not to take extra credit, or at least, not take extra credit during snow season.”

Lucy’s mock shiver had Kate laugh.

“Not a fan of snow?”

“You know that I am from Texas…”

“That isn’t an answer!”

“Sure it is.”  Lucy reinforced her point with a kiss.

“Fine, no snowy vacations with roaring log fires then.”

“I didn’t say that…” amended Lucy quickly, suddenly assaulted with various mental images that included making love in front of aforementioned log fires.  “...but I’ll read a book while you go out and play in the snow.”

“Noted, though it’s been years since I’ve been on a snowboard, or skis.”

“Yeah?”  Lucy mentally kicked herself as soon as she’d asked the question, finding the breadcrumbs Kate had been scattering had suddenly connected.  

“Thirteen years.”  

2009. When everything changed.

“You started taking extra credits instead of snowboarding…” guessed Lucy, leaving the ‘after Noah was killed’ unspoken.  “...rushing through college?”

“Grad school.  There was, is, a two year accelerated law programme at Northwestern.”  Kate gently shifted Lucy so she was lying a little more evenly on her hips, trying to avoid ending up with pins and needles in her leg.  “I started straight after at DOD.”

“I’m surprised it wasn’t CIA…” mumbled Lucy, almost forgetting this was Kate she was talking to, Kate who believed in right and wrong but also rules and codes.

“So were they.”  That had been a little bit of career detail she’d managed to keep to herself during the Maggie Shaw situation, and one she didn’t really plan on sharing with Jane anytime soon unless they found themselves in another tangled mess with the CIA.

“Seriously?”  That little bombshell had Lucy once again almost elbowing her girlfriend in the ribs as she tried to lift herself up enough to be able to study her expression for any hint this was an elaborate wind up.

“Seriously. But that wasn’t, isn’t me.”

“How’d they think you were into them though?”

“Umm, so that’s…I should probably work out how to make it a funny story, but I was at law school and just really fascinated by the 1963 Vienna Convention, kept asking my professor for more reading and…well, how was I to know he was a CIA recruiter and took my interest in the Convention’s immunity provisions and how there could be potential loopholes and accidental exploitation of that immunity to be a coded message that I wanted to work for CIA?”

“What’s the Convention about?” asked Lucy, having to bite her lip to stop from laughing at her very earnest looking girlfriend, who clearly was just being Kate and going down a research rabbit hole and, decided Lucy, now having a mental picture as to what ‘baby Kate’ looks like, would have been very, very cute.

“Consular Relations, including communications and sovereign territory.  Most people just get as far as the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations.”

“Oh.”  Yeah, that was a pretty big signal that someone who was already interested in national security was interested in working within the remit of the CIA.  “Maybe not such a leap.  But you sorted it out and joined DOD?”

“Yeah.” Kate, realising she’d not managed to avoid the pins and needles, encouraged Lucy to get off her lap so she could stand up and reestablish circulation to her left leg, “Went to DOD as a lawyer, joined DSS and went to FLETC after a few months.”

“DSS?  Oh right, now Defence Counterintelligence and Security Agency.” 

They’d got back to where they’d started on the balcony, looking at Kate’s FBI badge but ending up also seeing her first badge.  “We get reports from those guys.”  She paused, trying to work out how this all fitted together with where they’d got to when they came inside, when Lucy was struggling to process quite how senior Kate was, even if Kate insisted it was just ‘on paper’.  But even if it was only ‘on paper’ now she was at the FBI, and knowing when she’d done FLETC certainly helped explain how the quick move across from Intelligence Officer to Special Agent (or was it return to Special Agent from Intelligence Officer?) was possible, Lucy now had new questions about Kate’s DIA career, questions she wasn’t sure if she could ask.

“Ask me Luce.”  Kate’s crooked grin made Lucy smile, then want to kiss those amused lips.  So she did.  “I’m not a mind reader…”  She saw Lucy’s eyes sparkle, a sign she was about to be gently teased, something she was surprisingly alright about when it was Lucy doing the teasing, but she didn’t want to be teased about that just now.  “...at least, not with you, about this and us.”  

Kate’s serious, nervous admission had Lucy almost tackling her to the couch, so overwhelming was the wave of love she felt.  Her shy, reserved girlfriend’s willingness to be open and committed to improved communication was not only incredibly romantic and amazing, it was devastatingly sexy and seriously testing Lucy’s willpower.

“Ask me Luce.”  Kate had one last potential bombshell to share with her girlfriend, one she hoped wouldn’t see them break up again, but right this second?  She wasn’t willing to expect anything other than the worse case scenario.  “Please?”

“I’d always assumed, when you said you were ‘DOD’, that you meant you’d joined DIA straight away, but if you joined DCSA, umm, I mean DSS…”

“DCSA’s fine,” encouraged Kate gently, standing awkwardly in front of the couch, waiting for Lucy’s real question.

“When you were at DIA, were you also DCSA?”

“Yes.”

“Like undercover?”

“No, at least, that wasn’t how it started, or ever meant to be.  It just…wasn’t something that ever came up in conversation.”  But then, prior to falling in love with Lucy and being ‘adopted’ by Tennant and her team, not much about Kate Whistler’s life ever did come up in conversation, with anyone.  “But I’m glad I can tell you Luce.”

“Yeah?  You’re not like, in trouble telling me or anything?”  Lucy had stood up and was now standing, arms draped loosely around Kate’s neck, studying her intently, wondering for the hundredth time since last night’s kiss why she’d ever thought she needed to be so angry for so long.

“No.”  Kate leaned down and kissed Lucy, smiling when she felt the kiss be returned, prompting her to pull back for one second, wanting to finish her thought before she stopped thinking about anything to do with DOD, DIA or anything other than the incredible woman she was in love with.  “For the first time in a long time, I’m just an Agent.”

“A very special agent,” corrected Lucy, standing on tiptoes to try and get in kissing range.  “My very special, very senior agent.”  A bubble of anxiety rose to the surface, making her pause, doubt and lack of confidence loud in her head.

“All yours,” promised Kate, knowing exactly what was troubling Lucy.  “I’m only yours, Lucy Tara.  No one else’s, well, except FBI and DOD, but only during working hours…hey!”  Kate looked down at her stomach, which had just been poked.

“Shut up and kiss me, Spectacularly Special Agent Whistler.”

“Yes Ma’am.”

Present - drinks after work conversation continues...

“...but I’ll be the first to admit I was, am, out of practice at a lot of the stuff basic training covered.  Annual recertification and skills refreshers only helped so much.”  Kate raised her finger in front of Lucy’s face, knowing what her girlfriend was probably going to share.  “And no, I do not want to know what you all were doing when I was doing FLETC…”  She rolled her neck from side to side, wincing a little when she heard it crack a couple of times.  “...I’m already feeling old as a result of this conversation.”

“Hey!”  Jesse tossed a cold fry at her, knowing he had a few years on her, still wrapping his head around what, now she’d said it, was obvious - the only way she’d be able to move from DIA to FBI without going off island for at least a couple of months was if she’d completed the FLETC training before they’d known her.

“She did FLETC before you Jesse,” pointed out Lucy, respecting Kate’s need for the spotlight to shift away from her and so stepping into it herself as a very proud girlfriend, happy that her, their, family were starting to fully appreciate quite how phenomenal the woman they mostly knew as ‘Whistler’ actually was, once you’d tiptoed through and around national security restrictions and her own shyness outside of work conversations.

“Luce…” groaned Kate, feeling that was exactly what she didn’t want to happen.

“My turn to hobble to the bar,” declared Jane, deciding she could help her friend out.  “Us old ladies…”  She saw Lucy and Kate start to object, only for her raised hand to stall them.  “...in FLETC terms, need to stick together.  I was a year or so ahead of you Kate.”

“That’s not your way of saying you’re getting tequila is it?” asked Kate, narrowing her eyes with suspicion at the NCIS SAC, having drunk more tequila with Jane in the last six months than the rest of her adult life.

“Based on the last bottle you brought me?  Not in this bar.”  She paused.  “Why, are you feeling in the need for tequila?”

“If we’re going to finish this interrogation we seem to have started, yes.”

“It’s not an interrogation!” said Lucy quickly, glaring at Jane, only to be calmed down by Kate’s fingers stroking the bare skin at her waist, having somehow managed to find a gap between belt and shirt.

“But it is kinda cool finding out more about you Whistler,” added Ernie, understanding now how little he knew about her, and how embarrassed he felt that he hadn’t thought about some of this stuff before.  And that was despite knowing a bit more about her than the others did as a result of his friendships with her FBI team and Lucy, obviously.  “If you don’t mind sharing I mean.”

“If I’m drinking tequila, can we have proper food please?” asked Kate after a beat, continuing to have a wordless conversation between first Lucy, then Jane, the gist of it being ‘are you sure you want to do this now?’ and ‘may as well finish what was started but somewhere a little less insecure?' respectively.

“Good tequila’s at mine, collect your own take out choices on the way.”

“I’ll go settle the tab,” said Lucy, passing her phone to Kate, her suggestion for take out already on screen.

“Why do I feel like I’m still missing something?” asked Kai, looking to Jesse to see if he was still the only one not knowing whatever it was that clearly Whistler was prepared to tell them.

“Because I think we’re all about to find out something,” explained Jesse, seeing from how quickly Ernie was finishing his barely started drink that for once, the cyber specialist wasn’t ahead of them.  “You want to split a pizza?”

Flashback to early in Lucy’s Agent Afloat duty, a week or so after the Yakuza case

“Hello?”

“Hey.  Oh!”  Jane met Kate just inside her front door and helped the FBI Agent out by rescuing the bottle-shaped gift bag before it fell to the floor.  “Let me hold this.”

“Thanks.”  Kate finished closing the front door behind her and also putting her shoes down tidily on the rack.  “It’s for you…”  Kate watched nervously as Jane lifted the bottle from the bag.  “...I hope it’s acceptable?”  Jane’s silence and wide-eyed look was not helping to settle Kate’s nerves.  “Lucy described the bottle you had in your office that night and…”  She watched as Jane put the bag aside, cradling the bottle with both hands, her lack of comment prompting Kate to keep rambling, not wanting to linger on the memory of the night Lucy told her she wasn’t a bet she was prepared to take, not with Lucy so far away just now.  “...they didn’t have that exact one but the guy in the store said this was the same distiller.”  She winced, not sure if that was the right word.  “Producer?”

“It’s perfect,” Jane dragged her eyes up from the bottle to her nervous looking guest.  “Better than perfect Kate, this is incredible, thank you.”  She wasn’t surprised that the detail-orientated former Intelligence Officer had managed to pick up on her love of Clase Azul, but this was not their regular tequila.  “And expensive.”

“I liked the bottle, decanter I mean.”  Kate took half a step forward, reminding Jane they were only just inside the front door still.  “Apparently the design pays tribute to the ancestral spirit, tender heart and wisdom of the Mexican women…”  She smiled shyly, her hands anchoring themselves in the back pockets of her pants, a curtain of blonde hair tumbling forwards and half hiding her face.  “...I can’t speak about your ancestors, but it seemed appropriate given our conversations these last few weeks…”  Eyes widening, like she’d surprised herself with her own openness, Kate swept the loose hair behind her ear and Jane watched, fascinated as the vulnerableness disappeared and hints of the more familiar ‘Whistler’ resurfaced.  “The other ones they had were…”  This time the hesitancy was because Kate was searching for the right words to make her point.  “...a bit too close to fertility rites and Mother Earth for comfort.”  She cleared her throat when she saw Jane’s smirking wince, before adding dryly.  “Lucy’s already on edge without this…”  She gestured between them to indicate that ‘this’ was their developing friendship that had started after Maggie Shaw’s detainment.  “...going Freudian.”

“She wouldn’t be the only one…” agreed Jane, leading Kate over to the kitchen space, not surprised Kate knew her psychology.  “You mind if we finish the open bottle before starting on this beauty?” Jane saw Kate’s nod, then headshake, correctly interpreting that as assurance Kate wasn’t offended by them not immediately starting on the bottle.  “Balcony ok?”

“Perfect.”  Kate picked up the two glasses sitting on the kitchen counter, falling into the routine they’d established these last few weeks, Jane joining her on the balcony a minute later with the current, open bottle of Don Patreon and a plate of snacks to eat.

“I thought we’d try to be responsible…” said Jane by way of explanation, knowing that they’d ended up on more than one occasion having to lean heavily on the extra shot in their coffee orders the morning after the night before’s conversation that had seen the tequila not be consumed with food.

“Alex and Julie?” guessed Kate, sitting down and stretching her legs out in front of her.

“Upstairs, homework for Alex, Julie’s already asleep.”  This revelation saw Kate look at her watch and wince, not having realised how late it was.

“Sorry, I’d meant to be earlier…”

“Lucy ok?”  Lately the ever punctual Whistler was only delayed if Lucy rang, with Kate quite understandably then making the time to catch up with her girlfriend before they lost the signal and opportunity.

“Mmm, thanks.”  Kate clinked her glass against Jane’s and took a welcome sip before continuing.  “Not heard from her today, I think she’s still on yesterday’s high from making it onto deck while they’re actually sailing as opposed to at anchor.  But finding out all about that would have been much more enjoyable than the interrogation that I was in all afternoon.”

“Successful?”  Jane knew better than to ask Kate for any specifics, especially as from Kate’s comments so far, Jane had no way of knowing if it was an FBI, CGIS or DIA interrogation.  

“My ‘bad cop’ reputation remains intact,” confirmed Kate, grinning shyly when Jane raised her glass in salute.  “Although I do feel a bit sorry for Mundez, not helping his career to constantly need the FBI’s help with his security interviews.”

“Really?”  Jane’s face conveyed her scepticism, though whether it was for Kate feeling sorry for him, or whether it was for Kate dismissing herself as just another FBI agent when Jane knew first hand she was definitely one of the sharpest interrogators in the islands just now.  “He tie himself in knots of red tape?”

“Almost certainly,” laughed Kate, glad she no longer had the dubious honour of being responsible for the DIA Officer that was doing the bulk of the NCIS and FBI liaison work at the moment.  “But that’s not it.  He’s just so… nice , too nice . ”

“You’re nice, and I seem to remember you worried you were too nice to us?”

“Yes, but I wasn’t being asked to interrogate you.”

“Felt like it sometimes,” pointed out Jane before she could stop herself, though she had the decency to look sheepish immediately afterwards.

“I deserved that,” accepted Kate, shrugging off the criticism.

“Wait, you had to be ‘bad cop’ alongside Mundez?” Jane looked horrified - usually just knowing they were being questioned by DIA was enough to make most people start talking.  “Is he still that hopeless?”  In the almost two years Kate had been the DIA NCIS Liaison, Jane had only had to work directly with Mundez on a couple of occasions, neither of which had left her impressed.  

“Extremely.”  Kate sipped her drink, reaching for a cracker heaped with something that would hopefully counteract the alcohol.

“Have I ever thanked you for continuing to help us out with interviews?”  Jane knew Kate would agree to help her with cracking a suspect or getting to the bottom of what a challenging witness knew when, strictly speaking, it was more a DIA or DOD responsibility than FBI, though as long as Kate’s clearances were as high as Jane knew they had to be, clearly there was some understanding between FBI and DIA that effectively sanctioned Kate keeping a foot in both agencies.  

“I thought that was letting me ramble about my love life?  And nothing to thank me for, I don't help you with all your interviews, only some of them.”

“It’s not like it’s still your job…” Jane paused, considering Kate’s profile, partly in shadow because Jane hadn’t turned on any of the outside lights, catching the sudden stillness in Kate’s body, knowing from her own career what she had clearly just stumbled into.  “...oh.”

“Oh?”  Kate’s smirk told Jane she’d been rather slow to piece it all together.

“You’re still DIA.”  Kate’s silence encouraged Jane to try again, the former CIA agent familiar with how this particular conversation worked.  “Not DIA, but still DOD?”

“Technically I was only ever temporarily assigned to DIA.”

“So DOD assigned to DIA from another part of DOD…”  Jane’s brain was going at a million miles a minute as she pieced together all the small clues and hints in the last two years or so that, now in retrospect, accumulated into a very interesting big picture she was certain Kate was deliberate in making Jane aware of.  “...but you’re actually…”  She caught her lip between her teeth as she ran down the list of alphabet agencies she knew came under DOD’s jurisdiction, eyes widening when she saw at two possibilities that were suddenly making a lot of brilliant, and messy sense.  “...would you tell me if I get it right?”

“It’s not classified, it’s just…originally need to know and most that needed to know have either retired or been promoted to Director level without feeling their replacements needed to know,” said Kate, thinking back to the very start of her DOD career, before her professional life became layers of secrets and cover stories.  “Try me, you of all people I know will drop it if I say I can’t tell you an answer to your question.”

“DCSA?  Or DCIS?”

“What about them?”  Kate’s smile told Jane she was on the right lines, but that whoever Kate was underneath the layers of career and backstory that had her now at the FBI, learning it was not going to be gifted to her on a platter.  

“Two agencies, other than DIA, under DOD jurisdiction that could have sent you through FLETC long before you got to the islands, which is the only way you could have transferred to FBI so quickly.”  She sipped her drink, taking in her friend, wondering why it was she was so certain Kate wasn’t with one of the more widely known about agencies, hell, or even CIA given how much of the Maggie Shaw fallout she’d handled.  

And then she saw it.  The missing piece in the puzzle that, amazingly, had been laid out for her to take up by Kate months earlier, the first time she’d come round and drank tequila on this balcony.  

“You’re a spy catcher.”

“Job perk, not my primary objective.”  Kate turned so she was looking directly at her friend.  “More of a plumber…”  She saw Jane wasn’t quite following her leap of admittedly quite obscure logic.  “...leaks are my thing?”

“Your brother.”  Jane rested her elbow on the table edge, propping up her head with her hand as she studied the blonde, suddenly picturing an indignant, angry Whistler in her office just over a year ago, in the middle of the crashed fighter jet case, when she’d been admittedly more focused on having to manage her feelings towards Joe Milius which had caught her by surprise.  “You told me your mission was to protect the intelligence, because you were an intelligence officer.”

“I thought you’d guess I’d said too much when I then hid behind wanting to impress future Admirals…” admitted Kate, blushing as she remembered that same moment.  While a lot of her work saw others assume that her objective as an Intelligence Officer was to deny access to intelligence, because that was the same as protecting it, she knew Jane knew the world of intelligence and counterintelligence was rather more nuanced and complex.

“Work Whistler can be very driven, and I was a…”  Jane opened her mouth, closed it, opened it again and then took a distracted sip of tequila.

“Let’s just say both of us had some romantic preoccupation to juggle and leave it at that?” suggested Kate, earning her a rare Jane Tennant blush.

“Wait, you and Lucy even then?”  She shook her head, not believing Kate’s small nod of confirmation.  “Work Whistler may be that good at not giving anything away, but Lucy?  She’s much easier to read, especially around you.  And you and Lucy together? Hopeless!”

“Work Whistler stood no chance,” agreed Kate, able to see the funny side of that torturous on and off period of hers and Lucy’s relationship.

“You did keep giving yourselves away, admittedly only when the office was quiet…but going back to that day in the fighter pilot case, you and Lucy weren’t…”  She glossed over what to describe them as, not wanting to presume they’d worked out themselves that their relationship had only ever really been on pause during the weeks between Lucy’s undercover poker game mission and their public reconciliation.  “...not back then.”  Kate’s nod had her jaw drop.  “When?  I mean…”  Jane held up a hand, not wanting to hear details she’d regret when Lucy got back from her Agent Afloat duty.  “...I believe you are telling the truth, but I don’t believe…sneaking about doesn’t come naturally to either of you.”

“You’re right.”  Kate’s phone chimed, seeing her put down her glass and extract the device, the alert tone telling her who was messaging her.  Jane deliberately leaned back and contemplated the stars above when she saw the soft smile appear on Kate’s face when she saw the lockscreen photo the blonde had, a selfie Lucy had taken of them both at the FBI barbeque.  “Lucy says hi by the way, and she’s solved the mystery of the Commander's hat.”  Kate typed out a quick reply, then put her phone down on the table and returned to the original topic, the sound of the phone on the table bringing Jane’s attention back onto her.  

“Do I want to know?”

“As SAC? No.  As our friend when Lucy’s back and she can tell you the story while we have a drink? It’s a good one, promise.”  Kate had received almost play by play commentary by text and email the last few days, and it had certainly helped her have a much needed smile or two in amongst the explosions and gang war escalations.

“I look forward to it.”  Jane raised her glass in confirmation, then raised her eyebrow in a gentle nudge for Kate to stop deflecting and continue her story.

“Six months before I was transferred from D.C. to the DIA position here, I was here for a week.  Lucy was…”  The soft smile returned and Kate blushed, not ashamed of the three days and two nights she spent with the amazing, incredible woman she was now lucky enough to live with.  “...not someone I was expecting to ever see again, nevermind working with on an almost daily basis.”  Kate took a sip of her drink, a new thought occurring, one she’d need to share with Lucy to at some point.  “Speaking of, I should probably thank you.”

“Me?  What did I do?”

“Not call Lucy in to work a case?”

“Contrary to what some of my agents think, I do let them have a night off.”  Kate’s blush and attempted throat clear piqued her interest.  “Day off.”  Cheeks still pink, Kate was looking rather fidgety as she took another sip of her drink.  “Weekend?”  Kate couldn’t hold out any longer.

“Long weekend, well, three days and two nights.”

“And no calls at all?”  Jane was finding that hard to believe, as back then Lucy would have been the new agent on the team, so pulling the new guy share of night cover on base and first call when she was off base.  “Are you sure?”  She was certain there must have been a call, there usually was at some point, but admittedly many weekends it would only take a couple of hours to resolve, something she could well believe Lucy conveniently forgetting to mention to her new friend.

“ Very sure.”    

Oh.

Jane considered Kate’s certainty, seeing what must have happened to give her such confidence that there had been no call to Lucy.

“Impressive.” Jane decided that anything else was probably best left unsaid, although that didn’t stop her smirking, making Kate blush even more.  She gave in and laughed when she saw Kate gulp her way through the rest of her glass and pour another, taking pity on her friend.  “And between the Navy and my kids, I am incredibly jealous of the interruption free long weekend.”

“How is Joe?”  It was Jane’s turn to try to fill the silence with a mouthful of tequila.

“Not the sort of Navy interruption I was thinking of,” said Jane eventually, shaking her head at Kate’s smirk.  “This is your confession session Whistler, not mine…back to the fighter pilot case!” 

Kate sketched a lazy, cheeky salute with two fingers, as she muttered ‘Ma’am yes Ma’am’, making Jane laugh, before they both settled back into their earlier conversation.

“Later that day was when things changed, she came to apologise for the upside down reading stunt she pulled and…well.  But up till then it had been just work between us.”  Kate cleared her throat, searching her memory for how they’d even ended up talking about that, before remembering that it was Jane’s own romantic preoccupation that had seen her not notice Kate’s atypical slip up in how she described the role of an Intelligence Officer. “And answering your first question, I decided I was going to work for DSS after Noah was killed.”

“That’s awfully specific.”

“His letters to me, from ROTC all through basic training and then his various duty tours…I read them again after we’d got the news, that he’d been killed.  In one of the first ones he wrote to me from Iraq, he said how it would surprise me to know he was surrounded by more civilians than Marines.  I’d assumed at the time he meant locals, but then later that year…”  She took a reflex sip of her drink in an attempt to counteract the dryness in her mouth.  “...there were these reports and accusations about contractors in the Green Zone and elsewhere and…”  She stopped talking, glad that Jane let the silence sit between them for a moment, and then, when she did speak, it was to move the conversation along rather than dig deeper into her emotional motivation for her career path.

“The task force you were running, with the murdered port inspector in the container?  It wasn’t a JIA…”

“I never said it was.  And again, I’m a little surprised you didn’t guess then.”

“I’ll admit, the compliment was a nice pivot.”  Jane raised her glass in tribute to that impressive distraction technique.

“And genuine, you guys are very good at your jobs.”

“Thank you, but you didn’t get your leak.”

“Not that day, no.  But the guidance system was a good consolation prize.”  Jane recognised the ending of that conversation thread, happy to follow Kate’s lead and pick up another.

“I thought the FBI transfer was permanent?  But you’re still what, on loan?”

“As far as everyone in the FBI field office here is concerned, it is permanent.  Your team has clearance to know it is…more like an open-ended loan if it comes up in conversation.”

“And I’m guessing it’s not come up yet with Jesse and Kai?”

“No, it has not.”

“The old FBI SAC, I hear he’s made ADIC on the mainland.”  Jane took another thoughtful sip of her drink, surprised to discover it was the last in the glass, but then this conversation had been a little more momentous than she’d been expecting.  “Good mentor to have…is he the reason you came to Hawaii?”

“Indirectly.  It’s because of his work that DOD higher ups  agreed DCSA needed to be more directly aware of activity in the Islands.”

“And he knew you were put in as DIA rather than, say, opening up a DCSA field office or assigning agents to NCIS or CGIS…”  Jane reached for the bottle, refreshing both their glasses while she considered the various factors that would influence Kate’s rather unusual route into Pearl.  “Were you DIA in D.C.?”

“You’ve seen my file.”

“I’ve seen some of your file,” corrected Jane good-naturedly, knowing the same was true for Kate of her own file.  “As much as I’d expect to see in a perfectly ordinary DIA Officer’s file.  No mention of DCSA, or FLETC.”

“I’ll send you my FBI file, that will tell you I did FLETC ten years ago.”

“When you were DSS, before it became DCSA.”  Jane clinked her refilled glass against Kate’s refreshed one, the jigsaw mostly now complete.  “So, DSS Special Agent Whistler…Industrial Security not vetting?”  Kate’s nod confirmed Jane had correctly identified which of the major responsibilities now held by DCSA she had originally been involved with directly.  “... is loaned to DIA and then is transferred to Hawaii JIC as…”  Jane searched her memory for the name of the DIA Officer Kate had been taking over from.  “... Cordano’s replacement?”

“Never met him, but yes.”

“I only met him twice, maybe three times, when he made it very clear that liaising with NCIS was several levels below his pay grade, yet you worked with us on an almost weekly basis.”  Armed with her new information, Jane looked thoughtfully at Kate, wondering why DCSA had felt the need for a hands on relationship with her investigations.  “Was it DIA or DCSA that wanted you as NCIS liaison?”

“If you’d asked me when I was still your DIA Liaison, I would have told you I requested to do most of it myself because my brother was a Marine Captain whose death was as a result of mishandled intelligence and your reputation preceded you.”

“Making it personal to both of us.”  Jane took a deep breath, rationally knowing that if there was any concerns about her NCIS teams beyond her tendency to push back at people saying ‘no’ so long as there were crimes left unsolved or people in danger, she’d not be having this conversation with Kate in the first place, but that wasn’t the same as hearing it confirmed.  “And now?”

“Now I would tell you that I agreed to DIA’s request I move to Hawaii because my brother had told me to seriously consider ignoring our parents’ plans for me to do early start at GW and to instead be a surf bum out here for a couple of years until I was the right age for college.  And that DCSA was happy to extend my loan and let me decide to come to Hawaii because FBI, CGIS and NCIS case loads were starting to indicate increasing vulnerabilities and weaknesses in our security but how and why it was all happening was unclear.  When I saw that it was up to me to assign who your liaison was, DIA accepted my brother’s death as reason for my allocating myself.  As far as DCSA’s concerned, being NCIS liaison gave me an additional way of discovering relevant intelligence without setting off too many red flags too early in an investigation.  But I assure you, NCIS was never, and is not my focus,  especially now.”

Kate waited to see if Jane was going to fill in the remaining missing piece herself.

"Access…you needed access to someone, no, something…" Jane sipped her tequila, eyes widening when she saw a possible explanation, one so incredible it was almost impossible to believe, yet she knew it was the only answer that made sense. "PacFleet.  We gave, give DCSA a backdoor into PacFleet without anyone knowing they’re in the islands."

“Now that,” said Kate calmly, reaching for the bottle and topping up both their glasses, “is a question I cannot answer.”  

Except, of course, she and Jane both knew she just had.

Chapter Text

'Present'  - Jane Tennant's house, continuing after work drinks 

“Oh thank god.” Kate leapt up and kissed Lucy, before taking the assortment of take out boxes she’d picked up from her. She’d not been a tequila drinker before she’d really got to know and spend time with Jane, though once she’d discovered that good tequila was unrecognisable compared to the tequilas she’d drunk at grad school parties, and that Jane only drank very good tequila, she’d been a willing convert. However, the ease with which she could drink it on an empty stomach was extremely dangerous. “I love you.”

“Is she talking to you or the Kalua pork?” asked Kai by way of saying hello to Lucy.

“The pork,” said Lucy, not at all fazed by Kate’s enthusiasm for her dinner, knowing what tomorrow morning would be like if tequila happened without food and how badly Kate would cope given her day’s schedule. “She’s out with CGIS all tomorrow.” Opening her own meal, Lucy sat down on the bench next to her girlfriend, who immediately switched her fork to her other hand so she could wrap her arm around Lucy’s waist.

“Out as in the car with them or…” Jesse looked between Kate and Lucy, seeing Lucy’s slightly green looking expression and sudden hesitancy to start on her meal was anything to go by and worked out that out meant the ocean. He made a mental note to bring some extra nice snacks along with his coffee run in the morning, suspecting she’d need a distraction and pick-me-up.

“Big boats, long way out,” summarised Lucy, confirming his hunch. Despite her Agent Afloat duty, Lucy and the ocean were a long way from being besties.

“Joint training, FBI SWAT are doing boat boardings with their CGIS equivalents,” said Kate, once she’d swallowed her first couple of mouthfuls, trying to encourage Lucy to relax a bit. Technically yes, she was going to be spending the day on a Coastguard cutter and no doubt Pike would continue his enthusiastic attempts to get her to experience every type of maritime craft he could organise, since she was ‘basically NCIS too’ now she and Lucy were back together, but there wouldn’t be any bad guys. And she should just be with the CGIS ASAC who was hosting them, rather than doing any of the boarding drills herself. “My sea legs can cope with tequila, but only if it comes with food.”

“There’s beer…” said Kai, holding up the pack he’d bought while Jesse got their pizza, happy to share.

“Thank you, but if we’re going to finish the conversation from earlier, I’m going to want something stronger.”. Plus, and her college self would not believe her, but she now preferred good tequila to beer.

“We don’t…” As Kai began to try and change the subject, Jesse decided Kate’s comment was a hint to rip the band aid off, so to speak, and launched right in, even though most of his question was lost amongst his mouthful of pizza.

“...ASAC huh?”

“Technically. I’d not expected to get new credentials, since it’s more of a paperwork thing, because Curtis is still the ASAC, and my boss. But someone somewhere was surprisingly detail-orientated and efficient.”

‘Congrats, since when?”

“About the same time I got the medal.”

That had been another excruciating experience for the publicity shy Kate, who had fortunately been able to avoid the full public spectacle of a news item on the Field Office website and piece in the newsletter following a semi-public ceremony. To her great relief, her SAC had been advised by his boss, who’d been the Hawaii SAC until just after Kate had transferred across to FBI, that her security clearances and on-going DIA liaison role meant that the DOD had a strong preference for her to receive the medal in a private ceremony and without any publicity. It had suited Kate perfectly to receive the medal in the main conference room of the FBI building, with the current SAC and ASAC Curtis there, watched by Jane and Lucy. Even better, they'd delayed the understated award ceremony until Lucy was back from the USS Ronald Reagan.

“But like I said, it’s just a paperwork thing. Useful this morning though.”

“The medal?” Jesse didn’t think that getting one of the FBI medals, and now he thought about it, he didn’t even know which one she’d got, was easily dismissed as a ‘paperwork thing’.

“ASAC. I’m not a proper ASAC, just as a result of some federal government need to have everyone compared and benchmarked whether they’re working at DOD or DOJ."

“But you just said…” Kai rubbed the top of his head, looking between Ernie and Lucy, hoping one of them could fill in some gaps, not ever having thought about how his role as an NCIS Special Agent fitted into a big picture view beyond how he fitted into Tennant’s team here in Hawaii.

“It’s just…” She thought for a moment, wondering how best to explain this oddity about her situation with FBI, without either prolonging the conversation or inadvertently opening herself up to questions she couldn’t answer about her time at DIA. “...I started as a Special Agent when I joined DOD ten years ago. As I got moved from one assignment to another, I had all the same career evaluations and regrading interviews as everyone else who works at DOD and DOJ. And until this last transfer to FBI, it didn’t really affect anyone.” Other than Kate, who obviously knew her own grade, and wasn't going to decline the pay increases.

“Everyone at DIA is called an Intelligence Officer unless they’re Director,” explained Lucy helpfully, having needed that same help from Kate months earlier. “While we’re all called Special Agent, we do have hierarchical titles too, same at FBI. But not at DIA.”

“They’re big on those on the mainland,” observed Jesse, knowing Bambridge wasn’t unique in leading with what type of Special Agent he was, with other agents temporarily sent to the islands for a task force often being the same, like that SSA guy from DEA they’d had to work with when Chase was kidnapped.

”When I transferred from DOD to FBI, because it was also a shift from Intelligence Officer back to Special Agent, it technically counted as a downward regrade because it was a lateral move and from DOD to DOJ. Or something. OPM regulations are too boring even for me to be interested in.” The attempt at a joke didn’t entirely work, with everyone still processing what they’d just learned about Kate’s career, although Lucy’s kiss to her jaw and her head settling comfortably on Kate’s shoulder provided the reassurance that, as jokes went, it hadn’t been that bad, just maybe not brilliantly timed.

“But if you were downgraded to SSA?” Jesse let out a low whistle when he saw her nod. “I feel like we owe you some apologies for back in the day.” If that was her demoted grade, how senior had Officer Whistler actually been within DIA when they were trying to go around her or ignore her sometimes.

“It’s fine.” Kate, like she’d said that night in the parking lot to Lucy, had been used to being on the receiving end of some less than friendly treatment, but she’d also never been too fixated on her paygrade or job title, more concerned on measuring her career in terms of access and responsibility. “And not like you had any way of knowing given the DIA organisation structure is classified and everyone you know from DIA is described as an Intelligence Officer.”

“Yes, but we treated you like the bad guy.” Kai’s guilt at being less than kind in how he thought of Kate when she was DIA was also combining with the times he allowed his frustration and emotion to get the better of him when, without her willingness to back him, AJ would still be destroying lives with his racketeering and money laundering activity.

“You knew me as DIA, so literally the bad guy. And if I’d been bothered, I could have said something.” Except, knew Lucy, that’s exactly what Kate wouldn’t do, having learned to take the stoical route through life.

“Yes, but…” Still finding this new information unsettling, Jesse glanced to Jane, hoping she’d chime in with some sort of assist, but she was keeping quiet, clearly feeling this wasn’t her story to tell, cluing him in to the fact she wasn’t learning this for the first time.

“Is Whistler your real name?”

“Ernie!”

Lucy was so offended by his question she’d spontaneously started to stand, only to be held back by her girlfriend, who drew her more closely into her side and kissed her forehead in wordless thanks for the instinctual defence. They were both too focused on each other in that split second moment to notice the exchange of smiles amongst their friends at how connected and in tune with each other they now were. Or Tennant’s very pointed look at Ernie, making it clear that even if Kate didn't feel he'd crossed a line, Jane did.

“Yes, Katherine Marie.” As much as Lucy didn’t like the twenty questions approach, Kate visibly relaxed, finding the quick fire ask and answer format straightforward and easy to handle. Lucy stroking aimless squiggles on her back, having worked her way inside her girlfriend's shirt also helped.

“Which department sponsored you through FLETC?”

“DOD.” Ernie’s frown had Kate glance to Jane, sensing that if she prompted him directly, that would disrupt the rhythm of the discussion, which she knew she needed to get everyone up to speed.

“You meant to ask which agency sponsored her through FLETC.”

“Yes, right.” Refocused, Ernie turned back to Kate, pointing his chopsticks at her. “Which agency was sponsoring you at FLETC?”

“DSS.”

“DSS?” Kai looked to Lucy for help, finding Jesse’s D.C. career and generally longer NCIS career meant he was usually more acronym savvy than the average Hawaiian or NCIS agent.

“Defence Security Service, but they changed their name since Kate joined them. We get reports from them now, under their new name…”

“DCSA,” said Ernie nodding, trying to self-edit his knowledge drop. “Not officially secret but generally overlooked because they’re investigating stuff that sounds almost as boring than what DCIS investigates. And they’re investigating defrauding Uncle Sam.” He paused, realising how insulting that could sound, looking to Kate apologetically. “No offence?”

“None taken, fair description…”

Kate resumed her assault on her kalua pork, after first taking a fortifying sip of tequila, which, despite the bottle Jane had put on the table for people to help themselves from, wasn’t what was in her glass. Instead, unless she was much mistaken, she’d been given the Clase Azul she’d given Jane. Taking another sip, she caught her friend’s eye, the shared smile confirming she’d correctly identified her drink, Jane’s eyes darting to the table at the side where, amongst the beers and red wine, was the distinctive bottle.

“...though DCIS might be offended. I think they’d say saving taxpayers money was worth a not-boring point or two.”

Part of her interest and motivation to originally join them was how 'not sexy' industrial security and counterintelligence were considered to be within the Intelligence community, and even she struggled to find personal security vetting anything other than a necessary and intrusive evil which she subjected herself to but tried to otherwise have minimal involvement with. Unfortunately, that wasn’t a preference the DIA had ever got a memo about, and she’d ended up doing a fair amount of security interviews and reviews while in Hawaii.

“Counterintelligence wins,” said Ernie promptly, like they were playing a game of Top Trumps with federal agencies. “So you were a DSS Special Agent?”

“Yes, I was.” Kate’s smirk as she loaded up her fork again had Ernie firing a follow-up immediately, seeing what he’d allowed her to do.

“Are you still a credentialed DCSA Special Agent?”

“Technically, yes. But since I’m on indefinite loan to the FBI here in Hawaii, those are the credentials I use.” If they found themselves on the East Coast needing to go speak to people at DCSA, then she might lead with her DCSA credentials in order to get into the room faster, but that was a hypothetical scenario they could skip over just now.

“Were you undercover in the DIA?”

“No.” Kate swallowed the last of her mouthful, then, to give Ernie a chance to eat some of his meal which was smelling incredible, expanded on her answer. “My first assignment was being loaned to the FBI to work as part of a DIA led task force, though most assumed it was FBI led.” That had confused her at first, but soon realised it was an assumption people fell into when they learned the task force was based in the FBI buildings in D.C., not appreciating that it was just easier for the DIA to selectively move into the FBI than the FBI to be granted access to the DIA buildings.

“Did the task force people know you were DCSA? Did you have a DOD cover story?” Ernie chewed and swallowed quickly, not wanting something as inconvenient as eating to interrupt this discovery.

“Automatic DOD cover story as part of the clearances I needed to be on the task force, remember it was DIA led, but within the task force they knew I was loaned to the FBI by DSS. Then, as that neared the end, DIA recommended me to another task force for another, related joint investigation… it was easier for everyone involved at that point if I just was loaned directly to DIA by DSS.”

“Who made you an Intelligence Officer instead of a Special Agent?”

“Technically I never stopped being a Special Agent but yes, most people who knew me through work knew me as an Intelligence Officer and had no idea I’d started in a different agency and in a different role.

“Did you have a gun and badge?” Jesse paused to swallow his mouthful of pizza mid ask when he saw Jane’s ‘mom-glare’ directed towards him.

“Yes, when I was a part of that first task force.”

“Was it an FBI badge or DCSA?” checked Kai, finding it easier if he ignored the agency renaming complication, still not sure he knew what DCSA did without resorting to Googling.

“DCSA, well, DSS then.”

“Do you have that other one?”

“It’s a really great badge,” said Lucy, putting down her plate and reaching for her glass, remembering Kate showing her pictures of what her DCSA badge would look like if she’d got her DSS one replaced already, though it was less of an issue since she had the FBI one now. “Much cooler than her FBI one. What?” She looked up at her amused girlfriend, who the others worked out must have pinched or poked her. “It is! The FBI one is boring. Even your DSS old one is better.”

“Why didn’t we know?” asked Ernie, starting to see how a lot of what Kate had been able to do to help them over the last couple of years made much more sense once you knew she wasn’t someone who’d only ever been an Intelligence Officer at DIA.

“But you said you knew she was an SSA!”

“When she moved to FBI, I knew Special Agent Whistler wasn’t a junior probationary agent.”

“How?”

“I looked at her FBI file to make sure I didn’t say something to the tech guys that would get her in DIA trouble,” explained Ernie, as if it was the most natural thing in the world to do. “But there was nothing about DCSA in there.”

“No, there isn’t.”

“Wait, so you weren’t undercover at the DIA, and you’re not undercover at the FBI now, but they’re not allowed to know who you really are?” Kai picked up his beer, really struggling to wrap his head around this whole inter-agency loaning and cover story stuff - it was sounding rather similar to spying… “And you’re not a superspy?”

“I am not a spy, super or otherwise,” reassured Kate, once she’d swallowed the final mouthful of her pork. “I…” She’d spent ten years not having to even attempt to explain what she actually did, with the people around her split into two distinct camps - those that knew her through her current ‘day job’ and those at DCSA who already knew what her role was and why she was continually loaned out to DIA or FBI without any attention being drawn to her DCSA background. “...haven’t had much practice trying to explain what exactly it is that I do, because generally I’m working with people who don’t have the necessary clearances to know about it.”

“Should you be telling us?” asked Jesse, guessing from how calmly Jane and Lucy were sitting listening to this, that not only did they already know, but they’d presumably been ‘read in’.

“Everyone at this table has the necessary clearances to know, now.”

“Since when?”

“Since around the end of the Freeloff case. Kinda.”

“I don’t remember there being a weapons angle to the Freeloff case?” asked Jesse, not seeing the connection that would suddenly explain why they were being cleared to know about this.

“It wasn’t because of that case, it was…” Kate paused, trying to work out how to describe the sequence of events that started with Andrea Medina. “...more to do with blindspots.”

Flashback - a few days into Whistler's sick leave after Medina and the coffee table happened

Coffee - mug on mat, next to laptop on table.

Water - glass of water next to Kleenex, out of view of laptop webcam.

Would a glass be enough? What would happen if she ended up with an empty glass?

Caught indecisively, Kate paused, debating whether the effort of walking back to the fridge for her chilling water bottle was worth the benefit of extra hydration, only for her laptop to decide for her.

Glancing around the not-immaculate apartment, the small amount of clutter indicative of how much her ribs and shoulder were actually hurting her, despite the 'fine' she was insisting she was to anyone who asked, Kate Whistler sighed and carefully sat down, accepting the video call.

"Hello..." She blinked, surprised to see who it was. "...Dr Sutherland?"

"Supervisory Special Agent Whistler..." began the warm, kindly sounding voice that made Kate immediately think of her grandmother.

"Whistler is fine," said Kate promptly, her technically correct title sounding alien to her ears, highlighting perhaps how acclimatised she'd become to the more relaxed Hawaiian approach. "Or Kate," she added quickly, thinking she'd seen the other woman's eyes narrow slightly, wondering if she'd just failed the first test.

"I'm Dr Elizabeth..." Shifting the personnel file she'd been given earlier that morning a little further forwards on her desk so she could see it more easily while keeping eye contact with the blonde on her screen, the legendary behavioural psychologist realised her need to introduce herself was redundant and changed direction. "...Sutherland, and not who you were expecting I think?"

"No Ma'am." Kate went to square her shoulders, now consciously acknowledging the other woman's standing in the DOD. "I understood my return to full duty assessment was to be with Dr Ortego." Kate's eyes automatically took in the full detail of the video feed, noting that Dr Sutherland was at a desk, presumably hers given the back of the photoframe that was just visible in the bottom left corner, the sleeve and lapel of a dark grey jacket visible on the chair back. "And that my assessment was being handled by the Los Angeles office." Kate cleared her throat, taking a split second to place the location of the building Dr Sutherland was sitting in, based on the hints of D.C. landmarks she could see through the window behind her, floodlights illuminating the dark night sky. “Of the FBI.”

"And you understood correctly," came the swift assurance, accompanied by a smile that Kate found reminded her painfully of Lucy's mischievous smirk, "but Dr Ortego's emergency appendectomy last night was unforeseen and so..." Dr Sutherland shrugged, admiring the calmness of the Agent on her screen in the face of this rather unexpected change of plan. "...rather than reschedule, you get me."

"Is this a DOD assessment Ma'am?" That had been something, one of the many somethings that Kate was not missing since her departure from the DIA, with the level of psychological scrutiny of her life and conduct shifting down from 'intelligence community' to 'law enforcement' day-to-day.

"Hmm?" Dr Sutherland hadn't been prepared for that question, but then she hadn't been prepared for her last minute appointment at 7pm on a Saturday night to be with someone who knew who she was, officially. "Only if you want it to be." She saw the well-controlled suppression of a confusion 'tell', cluing her in to how unnerved and off-balance Agent Whistler had now become, as the complexity of the younger woman’s situation became clear. "May I call you Kate?"

A pause, then crisp, precise nod, though there was no relaxation of either jaw or posture by the blonde, extra impressive given the injuries she was currently recovering from.

"Thank you." Dr Sutherland paused, repeatedly selecting and dismissing a question to ask Kate, before deciding that was the issue, this was only going to work if she didn't ask a question yet. "Honestly Kate, I wasn't expecting you to recognise me...few do outside the Beltway, and even then..." She moved a piece of paper to the left, enabling her to take in the 'miscellaneous' points on Kate's personnel file. "...I recognise the name or face first..." Third from bottom, she spotted the missing link. "...but attending meetings via video-link means I don't get to meet people in the same way." She smiled, pushing the now uninteresting file further away from her, not needing to reference it any more. "Which is a particular shame when the meetings were in Hawaii while it's snowing in D.C."

"You managed to not look too disappointed Ma'am," said Kate, recalling the insightful and concise contributions the psychologist had made during the meetings she'd been a part of during that fateful, wonderful first visit to the islands. "But I imagine the Base decor helped." Kate's memory of those meetings was of hours sat in windowless, airless boxes, two large screens at either end of the room, one showing the video-link attendees, the other the intelligence and other information the meeting discussion was focused on. Had it not been for the equitable sharing of the jet lag between Atlantic and Pacific Theatre colleagues, they could have had the meetings in DC or Singapore, or any faceless government meeting room in between, so un-Hawaii-like was the meeting environment.

"You could have been down the hall as far as I was concerned," agreed Elizabeth, appreciating the undercurrent of wry humour in the otherwise neutrally delivered observation. "But to answer your original question, as far as these sessions are concerned, they are straightforward FBI psychologist-led return-to-active duty assessments. That you and I have been in meetings previously at the behest of the DIA is a genuine coincidence. I'm moonlighting on the weekends to help out." She'd now reached the point in her career when weekends were deliberately planned downtime, her male counterparts monopolising the tee-times at the various golf courses in the area, only being called in the most extreme of emergencies. But weekends held no joy to her, not since...she blinked, refocusing herself, unsurprised to find herself the subject of Kate Whistler's calm, steady focus.

"I was supposed to presume you were just another FBI psychologist?" Kate tensed and deliberately relaxed her jaw as she reassembled the facts she knew into a picture that didn't have DOD’s Behavioural Psychology authority and legend Dr E. Sutherland as a jigsaw puzzle piece in its centre. "That a short-notice replacement for Dr Ortego was drafted from the East Coast because..." She caught her lip between her teeth, assembling the narrative like she'd compile an intelligence brief. "...otherwise there would be a delay while a new psychologist was cleared?"

She already knew she was considered to be a 'unicorn' by the FBI, retaining her DOD and DIA connections and clearances when she transferred to the Hawaii Field Office, aware it made her extra useful as NCIS Liaison, aware too it made it easier for the DIA and various parts of the DOD to keep some form of legitimate access to her and her them. It had contributed to her working relationship with ASAC Curtis being complicated at first, even more complicated than a new Agent's arrival into a settled team ordinarily was, although she also knew the rapid decomplication of that relationship was due in no small part to Jane Tennant's gentle influence. It had also explained why she'd known she had to start insisting she was ready for return to duty psychological assessment almost immediately, with the usual FBI psychologists being deemed insufficiently senior to assess someone with her clearances without some preparatory red tape removal. And even then it had been only partial, with her being reminded by her DCSA boss that some things were still best kept vague or avoided unless she requested a DOD cleared psychologist. And now she had one of those by accident.

"Which is why I volunteered to do it," said Elizabeth, sipping her tea, taking in the subtle shifts in the body language of this most impressive Agent who was, even by DIA's high standards, being considered to be somewhat extraordinary, never mind for someone who had volunteered to work for DSS straight after completing grad school, despite a determined courting effort by CIA.

"And there's no agenda?" asked Kate cautiously, not seeing anything in the woman she was talking to's behaviour to make her suspect there was an ulterior motive, nevertheless painfully aware the absence of indicators was sometimes an indicator of subterfuge after all. But she'd always respected her, finding her genuinely likeable when she spent those few days in meetings with her, witnessing her legendary expertise first hand, and was now finding she wanted this to be an agenda free situation.

"Beyond perhaps satisfying my own personal curiosity as to what it is about the Aloha State that has seen you ruffle quite as many Beltway feathers as you have done?" The question could have been loaded, double-edged and having Kate put up all her barriers and defences, but there was something so genuinely sincere about the way it was asked that had Kate, correctly as it would turn out, elect to take it at mostly face value for the moment, her eyes drifting to the closed balcony doors and the tantalising promise of the sunshine and sea breezes she'd return to after finishing this session. "If you would prefer to complete the assessment sessions with Dr Ortego as originally intended, I won't take any offence my dear, and I can get them rescheduled for early next month when she's recovered."

"Ohana."

"Hannah? Is she a friend of yours?" The psychologist's unsurprising presumption that Kate had mentioned someone by name, brought a genuine smile to the blonde's face, amused as she tried to picture one of her last DC briefings done 'Hawaii-style' - there wasn't much Ohana inside the Beltway.

"Ohana," she repeated, enunciating extra clearly, consciously adjusting to the fact she was not speaking with someone on the island and familiar with the culture she was gradually learning about, embracing and being embraced by. "It's...not something I ever really came across in D.C...or with my parents, not lately, which is ironic…"

“Why?”

“They’re literally my family, and that’s what ohana is.”

“And you don’t have a good relationship with them?”

“I don’t have a bad relationship with them,” corrected Kate promptly, her aversion to conflict in her personal life bubbling rapidly to the surface, not wanting this psychologist to think poorly of her parents. “We exchange cards and phone calls on major dates.”

“But you don’t visit with each other?”

“No. Not for a couple of years. Since before I moved here.” Kate inwardly cursed herself for accidentally volunteering information - this was a mandatory psych evaluation to secure her clearance for returning to the field, not a cosy chat with a friend.

“They must be special.”

“Who, my parents?”

“Well, them too, but I meant whoever it is you’re thinking of when you talk about ohana.”

Elizabeth leaned back in her chair, looking thoughtfully at the impressively neutral-looking woman on her screen, her memory starting to connect her with the clear, articulate and passionate DIA officer who had challenged some of her contributions in a series of video meetings she’d participated in to plan and establish a joint task force for something or other, she couldn’t now remember what.

“How are the ribs?”

“Excuse me?”

“Your ribs, how are they feeling? And every ‘fine’ you tell me sees another session added to the mandatory total.”

“Seriously?”

“No, but I will know if you’re being economical with the truth.” She’d worked as a member of too many highly classified projects to ever suggest someone with Kate Whistler’s career was ‘lying’ - it was a truism after all, an inevitable situation she’d find herself in multiple times a week, denying knowledge of x or y in order to protect national security. “And that’s what will see this take longer than it could do.”

“I see.” Kate’s jaw clenched as she swallowed, her gaze still aligned with the screen but looking somehow past Elizabeth, though whether Kate was seeing the view beyond the psychologist of D.C. or her own apartment in Hawaii, Elizabeth couldn’t decide. “They ache when I breathe and talk, but only hurt if I move more than that.”

“So I should avoid making you laugh, cough or do star jumps?”

“If you wouldn’t mind,” agreed Kate calmly, not expecting such an irreverent response.

“Why did you want to stay in Hawaii?”

“I…” Kate worked her jaw open and closed a couple of times, changing her mind about what she was going to say. “...told you, ohana.”

“If I were a disciple of Freud, I’d be making a note that you see Jane Tennant as a substitute, more emotive and expressive mother-figure than your own, and that DIA Assistant Director Sturn is someone you perceive as a threat so you destroyed that relationship in a way that cannot easily be undone.”

“Pfft….ow!”

“Oh, my dear, I do apologise.” Elizabeth was truly mortified - her slightly mischievous analysis had coincided with Kate sipping from her coffee mug, the resultant shock at what she heard causing her to spray her coffee over the table and jolt her ribs.

“No damage done,” said Kate carefully, holding her arm across her front to support her ribs while she used a Kleenex to mop up the tiny amount of coffee spray. “Freud also ascribed the Oedipus Complex as a purely male circumstance, which invalidates your application of it here.” She cleared her throat. “Though I feel obligated to explicitly clarify I in no way consider my relationship NCIS SAC Tennant to be structured along a parent-child paradigm, nor do I have anything but professional respect for Director Sturn.”

“I know dear. How would you characterise your personal relationship with Jane Tennant?”

“My personal relationship?” Kate was caught between confusion and anger - confused as to why this was where the session was starting, and anger that this was perhaps, after all, still related to the Maggie Shaw situation.

“Kinship from common experiences in the intelligence community? Begrudging respect for her as a woman leading in a male-dominated environment despite her inclination to bend the rules? I’ve never believed that just because a woman is a mother, her connections with others have to be framed as ‘maternal’, and I don’t agree with Freud that everything is ultimately grounded in psychosexual motivation, nor that homosexuality is a fixated or immature state.”

Oh.

Kate hadn't seen that coming.

Time to regroup and review.

“Translation, you’re ok with me saying I consider her a close friend, and despite my romantic and sexual relationships always being with women, you also believe me when I say I don’t have anything other than a platonic, mostly peer-to-peer relationship with her.” Score one for DIA background checks and security reviews making her life a mostly open book.

“Indeed, though what do you mean by ‘mostly peer-to-peer’? Just so I understand your qualification.”

“She…” What did she mean? She’d qualified herself without really noticing she’d done it, so why had she refused to put herself on equal footing with Jane? Of course. Ohana. “...has greater experience and skill at working as part of a team who are also a friendship group than I have.”

“Translation, despite her time as a CIA operative, she has managed to remain integrated with her direct family, maintain relationships with family members and cultivate non-work-related commonalities and mutual interests with people whose primary introduction to her were through work assignments.”

Kate blinked, looked suspiciously at the older woman on her screen, then tentatively reached for her coffee, wanting to take a sip without ending up jarring her ribs and wasting the coffee.

“Yes,” she said finally, breaking the silence only when her coffee mug was once more safely placed on the table. “Although that does make it sound like a review of a source or contact, rather than a description of friendship.”

“Potato, Po-tah-to,” dismissed Elizabeth easily, earning her first, faint smile from Kate Whistler. “It’s the description of someone you admire and like, in a personal but non-sexual way, and who you recognise has been able to create a balance for themselves between the objectives established in exchange for a paycheck and also manages to resolve the need for silence and discretion about work with the inconvenient fact that as human beings we are fundamentally social creatures.”

“Why didn’t you say work-life balance?”

“Because then you’d give me a mathematical solution for how to spend time in 24, 168 and 8760 hour increments.”

“Sleep, work, eat well, go to the gym and take a vacation?”

“Throw in read a book or watch a movie and you’d be a textbook pass…and none of that would see us talk about why you are having to talk to me while waiting for your ribs to heal.”

“I didn’t check my blindspots.”

“Is that what you think you did wrong? Or what you’ve been told you didn’t do?”

“I…both.”

“Not that a highly skilled and successful international assassin had the benefit of the element of surprise, significant personal motivation arising from her expected payment for her murdering spree and an ethically cavalier mindset towards human obstacles getting in the way of her receiving that payment? You’re the human obstacle by the way.”

“I got that.”

“Why were you in the field in the first place?”

“Excuse me?” Kate’s voice had turned icy - if any of the NCIS team were in earshot, they’d say that ‘Whistler’ was pissed, but even without that commentary, Elizabeth could tell she’d triggered a rapid deploying of protective armour. Definitely touched a nerve.

“Poorly phrased.”

“I doubt that.” Kate willed herself to count down from ten to zero, willing herself to inhale on the odd numbers, exhale on the even ones, irritated with herself for becoming irritated.

“No, you’re right. It was deliberately phrased,” confirmed Elizabeth, finding this young woman fascinating and extraordinary, and someone she wanted to help, not just with her routine return to work assessment, but generally, because every professional and personal instinct was telling her Kate Whistler had become used to no one being in her corner, had lived her adult life with no back up. “May I tell you what I see?”

A sharp nod, eyes focused intently on her but an otherwise expressionless face, waiting for Elizabeth.

“I see an extraordinary Agent, who despite repeatedly being told, and telling herself, that she is loaned by her bosses to DIA or FBI, that she is not a spy, has effectively spent her whole career undercover. What makes her even more incredible is that she is placed in positions where the stakes are extremely high, not just in terms of personal risk if she is discovered, but also in terms of burnout, since Uncle Sam is effectively taking two jobs worth of output in exchange for one paycheck.”

“I’m not a spy.”

“No, I know you’re not. You are and always have been Katherine Marie Whistler, whose parents raised her in the shadow of an older brother who could have ignored you but instead supported you, encouraged you, loved you not only as a sibling but as a friend. You describe him as your best friend, and I imagine he did too?”

This time the nod was shakier, softer, the cracks in the armour appearing.

“Working for DSS, whichever agency that took you to, gave you an outlet for your anger at the injustice that was his death.”

“Noah.” It was faint, not louder than a whisper, and Elizabeth would later doubt herself as to whether she actually heard Kate say her brother’s name, or whether she lip read it. “Call him Noah please.” Either way, she recognised this as a peace offering, an olive branch extended in lieu of formal surrendering of hostility. She had managed to penetrate Whistler’s armour, managed to gain Kate’s trust, at least for a few minutes.

“Grief can make people angry, can make people want revenge…Noah dying made you angry, understandably so, but rather than turn against everything he believed in, you became determined to see that intelligence was used appropriately and responsibly…why DSS?”

“Hmm?” Kate’s arm was across her chest, originally supporting her angered ribs, but now more of a supportive hug as she replayed her memories of the days and weeks after they’d learned of Noah’s death, then the further gut wrenching twist months later when a limited truth emerged, limited in specifics but not in message: intelligence had been mishandled and leaked, shifting a routine patrol into an ambush and massacre.

“Most people in your situation would join DIA or one of the service branch intelligence agencies, but you went for DSS. Why?”

“His letters, the ones from Iraq had him trying to reassure me how ‘normal’ life was this time - he wasn’t at a forward operating base, but was inside the Green Zone a lot of the time, with the civilians and diplomats…he talked about how it was more like being on a US base than a war zone, except for the shelling…” Kate swallowed, ignoring her kleenex and dragging her hoodie cuff across her cheek, inwardly delighting that her mother would be tutting at this behaviour. “Later that year, the news was full of all the defence contractor scandals…I was already thinking about grad school options and had been asking Noah’s advice…” Kate chuckled at a random memory she’d not thought about for years, feeling able to share it for the first time. “We were sort of watching the West Wing together, not that we needed to watch the episodes to trade quotes, we’d watched the episodes already so many times by then…he died in an attack on his afternoon patrol, but he’d written me a letter that morning. We’d got almost to the end of the show by then, and in that letter he’d written down one of the lines of dialogue…” She paused, looking up at Elizabeth like she’d almost forgotten she was the person she was talking to. “...do you know the show?”

“West Wing? Sure, I remember it.”

“So I’m not as tall, as the CJ Cregg character…”

“She was very tall,” agreed Elizabeth, trying to conceal her smile - she had an idea where this might be going. “And not overly co-ordinated.”

“Around the time the show started, I was too young to watch it, but Noah got hooked on it, right from the first episode. By the time it was a big thing everyone was talking about, I’d had a growth spurt and was all legs and arms…” She looked down at herself and smiled, wistfully, remembering Lucy nestled into her, their height difference making Kate feel even lankier and just a mass of uncoordinated awkward limbs than she usually did, yet somehow she managed to find a way of wrapping herself around Lucy’s more compact frame without tripping them both up. “...volleyball was the only ball sport I was any good at, I could get to the ball alright, but anything else? Total disaster. But Noah didn’t tease me, he tried a bit to help me get good enough to not humiliate myself in class, helped me practise my volleyball drills and one day showed me the first episode of the West Wing and…” Kate’s smile was the biggest Elizabeth had seen so far on this call. “...here was a woman falling off a treadmill and still being incredible. I was hooked.”

“What was in his letter?”

“Hmm? Oh, right…it’s late in the last season and we were about to watch the Election episodes…and Noah, he’d written at the end of in his letter that he’d always known, right back to that first time he showed me the pilot episode, he said he’d known I was…” Kate’s voice was husky, her throat thick with emotion as the tears freely fell. “...a ‘smart, savvy woman who could easily consider world domination for a next career move’ only Aaron Sorkin hadn’t written it yet.” She winced as her deep breath of attempted composure was too much for her ribs, grateful that Elizabeth wasn’t rushing to fill the silence while she got herself under better control, which took three tissues and two mouthfuls of water. “It turned out to be the last thing he told me.”

“What was your world domination plan?” Elizabeth’s voice was gentle, conversational not combative or challenging, but inviting Kate to lead her through her memory of the decisions she took.

“Storm the Pentagon?” Kate’s smile when she heard Elizabeth gasp was unexpected. “Seriously, for the first few weeks afterwards, when no one was telling us what had happened, I wrote letter after letter demanding answers, asking how it was possible for something so routine to go so wrong.”

“Did you get a reply?”

“No, because I never sent them.”

“Why not?”

“Couldn’t work out who, exactly, I needed to address the letters to.” Kate rubbed her nose, suddenly conscious of it tickling, tucking the stray strand of hair behind her ear. In her hooded sweatshirt that swamped her slight frame, Elizabeth was suddenly seeing the earnest, angry teenager who was also acutely conscious she was effectively on her own in the world. “Then the papers, radio, cable news, all of it was full of these defence contract issues and controversies…I read everything I could, watched the nightly shows, went to the library to borrow autobiographies of past Generals.”

“Why the autobiographies?”

“I wanted to understand how someone could be ok with the idea of the loss of people like my brother being acceptable.”

“Remorse?”

“That too.”

“Did you find your answer?”

“Kinda…I saw what Noah meant, about the good COs he had, that they got it, that…that they could accept that sometimes they asked their Marines and soldiers to do something that wasn’t survivable…but that they were certain they asked only once it was the only option, and the people they asked to do it were as well prepared and equipped as they could make them.”

“Was Noah’s CO a good one?”

“He thought so.” Kate looked off to the side of the screen, her lips parted slightly, frozen halfway to a smile. “Was helping him with his plans, for what he did next.”

“Next as in leaving the Marines?”

“I don’t know…” Kate’s face fell, first swamped by a wave of grief, then because the shutters came down and her armour went back up. “...he was killed before I could ask.” She took a careful, composing breath, looking up and refocusing on the screen. “I got the grades for law school, specialised in contract and international law and continued to work out who was to blame.”

“For Noah’s death?”

“No, I knew that.”

“You did?”

“I mean, I didn’t have a name or a photograph, but I’d worked out it was someone who didn’t see that lines must not be crossed for a reason, didn’t think that ‘secret’ and ‘classified’ really mattered that time…Noah’s life depended on people, military and civilian, respecting the security rules, understanding the consequences if they broke them. But instead, intel was leaked and he died.”

“Soldiers die in war Kate.”

“Acceptable losses, I know. But you tell me what’s acceptable about someone, somewhere, deciding that a radio communication system doesn’t really need to be that secure if there’s better profit to be had? What’s acceptable about body armour not actually stopping bullets because it wasn’t manufactured correctly?”

“Is that what happened to Noah?”

“I don’t know.” Kate saw Elizabeth’s eyebrow raise. “Even now I don’t know, no one’s told me.”

“Have you looked?”

“No.” Kate swallowed, coughed, and carefully reached for her water, unclear how exactly she’d ended up talking about this, but aware she’d gone so far down the road she had to keep going. “That’s not why I have clearance.”

“Many might say it’s an understandable benefit of having it though.” Elizabeth knew she’d mispoken when she saw Kate’s spine stiffen and her jaw tense, though the rest of her expression was impressively neutral.

“If I believed that, I would have joined the CIA.” Not that she'd say as much to Jane though.

“You joined DSS instead. Why?”

“Military operations need as many contracts as bullets.”

“Noah?”

“Mmm, he gave me the idea - said that at the rate it was going, there would be more attorneys and salesmen in the Green Zone than marines. The arms trade starts with legitimate manufacturers, goes wrong when illegitimate buyers purchase them. Same with other equipment.”

“Industrial Security…” Elizabeth saw now how Kate had, barely out of her teens, had pieced together the world of modern warfare. “...the need for nationalism ahead of commercialism.” Kate’s nod was slow, her physical tiredness starting to become apparent even if her brain was still firing on all cylinders.

“I still don’t know if I was the chicken or the egg.”

“Excuse me?”

“The FBI taskforce I was assigned to years ago …did the disregard for the security rules enable the terrorist threat to become credible? Or did the desire to commit terrorism make the security breaches inevitable? Either way, if the things had remained secure, there would have been no access to them by the bad actors.”

“Cause and effect.” Elizabeth understood Kate’s point now. “You received a commendation for that investigation.”

“Yeah, though I admit the pay rise was more useful.”

“How much did you shave off your commute?” Elizabeth might be at the end of her Beltway career now, but she remembered the pressures and challenges of finding somewhere to live at the start of her career all too well.

“Three minutes, but more importantly the neighbours were less creepy.”

“Then more of the same at DIA.” Elizabeth reached forwards, picking up Kate’s file again, scanning over the summary. “You were embedded with Intelligence Analysts, tasked with identifying the weaknesses within the Industrial Security Programme…” Elizabeth looked up at Kate. “...earned something of a reputation for counterintelligence and disrupting the illegal trade of military equipment. Caught a good number of spies too”

“I guess…” Kate tried to carefully shift in her chair, finding the back was now less supportive and more drawing attention to exactly where the bruises from being thrown on the coffee table after being beaten pretty badly criss-crossed her back. “...DIA wanted to assign me to larger and larger taskforces. People started calling me Officer Whistler rather than Agent Whistler.”

“And you didn’t correct them?”

“At first I did, then I was ordered not to.”

“Ordered?”

“Advised I’d been loaned out, temporarily reclassified as an intelligence officer…” Kate smirked, clearly finding something funny. “Employment contracts are just another form of contract, but it was fun listening to the HR people try to convince me it was something complicated.”

“Have you ever had a partner?”

“Excuse me?”

“At work, have you ever been assigned a partner.”

“Oh. No.” Kate trapped her lower lip for a second, then as if concerned it was a possible ‘tell’, relaxed her jaw and resumed her open, neutral mask. “Analysis doesn’t usually get done in pairs.”

“And now, at the FBI?” Elizabeth moved a piece of paper across her desk. “You are still on loan to them yes?”

“Technically I think I’m part of a joint DCSA-FBI task force.”

“That no one knows about.”

“Not true.”

“Apologies, that no one at the FBI Honolulu field office is currently cleared to be read in to.” Elizabeth paused, watching Kate with interest. “Is that better?”

“Yes, thank you.”

“What have the field office been told about your role?”

“I’m their DOD Liaison and intelligence specialist.”

“And a Supervisory Special Agent.”

“Yes. Technically. But it’s not…I mean, that’s just what the FBI call 1811s when they’re GS-14…”

“Which you are.” Elizabeth looked back at an earlier piece of paper, knowing the answer already, but wanting to set out all the pieces for Kate to see. “...because you agreed a lateral move with downgrade from GS-15 when you left DIA.” She looked up at Kate with interest. “And also declined an SES post back in D.C.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Excuse me?”

“Why did you move to FBI? You went from one signature away from a significant promotion to agreeing a lateral move with demotion, and the opportunity to get into fist fights with international assassins.”

“This is where you ask me if it was an ideological shift or insanity right?” Kate had to admit, Dr Elizabeth Sutherland was as good as her reputation and career suggested she was, was as good as Kate had guessed she was based on those meetings she’d attended back before Hawaii became ‘home’ and she and Lucy…

“Who are you thinking of, right now?”

“Why?” Kate didn’t even attempt to dismiss the question as out of order, she had too much respect for the woman opposite her.

“Because you’re not motivated by ideology, and you’re not experiencing an intellectual crisis or breakdown.” Elizabeth took a sip of her now very cold tea, wanting to give Kate a moment to sit with that statement before she continued. “Your driving force, your inner steel and strength was your love for Noah.”

“Was?” Kate looked sharply at the psychologist, feeling her heart rate increase as anger began to bubble and build at the suggestion she had abandoned, or let go of even a tiny part of his memory and love for her.

“Who were you thinking of Kate?”

“I…” She closed her eyes, realisation hitting her hard. Opening her eyes again slowly, her voice was almost a whisper. “...Lucy.”

“Does she know?”

“That I turned down a job in D.C. to be close to her? Yes.”

“And that you are in love with her?”

Kate shook her head, oblivious to the tears streaming down her face.

Damn this psychologist was good.

Lost in her own thoughts, Kate missed Elizabeth's thoughtful scrutiny and shuffle through her personal file, though the quiet sigh from the psychologist refocused her.

"You must think I'm pathetic."

"On the contrary my dear." Elizabeth refocused her complete attention on the battered and almost broken agent on the screen, deciding she was done towing party lines and playing D.C. politics. "May I be frank?"

"You haven't been?" Kate's sharp retort had Elizabeth chuckling.

"I've been professionally frank." She saw Kate's half smile and nod, guessing she'd also had plenty of experience with careful double speak while perhaps wishing she could just say what she meant. "I don't think you are pathetic. I think you are one of the finest I have come across in my forty years or so of trying to keep the DOD sane, and that if you had been a man you'd have been better supported through one of the longest deepest deep cover assignments I've ever seen." She held up her hand in a gentle request for Kate to let her finish. "I don't say that because I think you are a spy, I say that because you have been put out there, with a singular mission objective, for almost a decade with no support beyond an email address to send reports to, the occasional video call and annual reviews that happen because to skip them would attract attention. You are intelligent, resilient, resourceful and completely undetected or suspected Kate. And you've been left out in the cold for too long."

"I'm literally in Hawaii," observed Kate dryly, the tears flowing more freely now, Elizabeth's assessment of her circumstances the first time she'd heard someone say that, making her see how true it was.

"I retire in three months Kate. I have no children now or nieces and nephews, no 'next generation' to hold doors open for in D.C. and since my husband died, nowhere I'd especially like to be on the weekends, which is partly how I ended up stepping into your review."

"I'm sorry." Kate was sincere, picking up on the significance of the 'now' in Elizabeth's explanation about children.

"Thank you, but I mention it only to help you hopefully say yes." Kate's eyebrow raise and head tilt had Elizabeth laugh. "I can practically see the thought bubble over your head pointing out that wasn't a question." Kate's smile was sheepish but genuine, a sparkle starting to return to her eyes as she appreciated Elizabeth's serious respect for the work they all contributed to, but without the need to constantly take everything seriously that Kate missed in her lonely existence as the bad guy from DIA. "So here's my question for you. Given I have less than 100 days left before I retire, and I have more favours owed than the District has unpaid parking tickets…" That made Kate smile - she was not missing the D.C. parking nightmare. "Would you let me help you come in from the cold with the DOD?"

"I can stay in Oahu?"

"Absolutely. I mean it entirely in the spy thriller metaphorical sense. We both know if you'd been a man they'd have been golfing with you on weekends, making sure you had 'buddies' watching your back all this time."

"I don't play golf."

"Neither do they, at least that's what my husband always said, and he had a single figure handicap.". Kate's face made it clear she had no idea what that meant. "Me either, I just knew he was too good to play with the Beltway bores and trusted his judgement."

"If I was a man and played golf I wouldn't be here." Knowing Elizabeth’s point had been a reference to the still-very-present sexism in the Intelligence and Security communities, Kate had been thinking more personally, like how she wouldn't have gone to that bar for one…

"Not Agent Tara's type?" teased Elizabeth gently, pleased to see Kate shared her amusement at the new mental image.

"God no. She hates the weekend golf gang boys club even more than I do." Golf, knew Kate, had been one of the sports Lucy’s father had wanted her to excel at, which perhaps had also helped Lucy’s determined hatred of the sport and those who wasted their weekends attempting to play it intensify.

"If I promise that my only ulterior motive here is keeping you in Oahu so I have an excuse to plan to visit the islands at some point, will you let me help you get the support network and discrete recognition you should have had all along?"

Kate nodded, somewhat shocked that this woman, this legend of the DOD would want to go into bat for her.

"Thank you."

Elizabeth smiled, her mind already speeding along with who she was going to tackle first. Richard perhaps, no, George. Yes, he would be better - that big counterintelligence success that got him from Assistant Director to Deputy Director and meant he was suddenly on the radar of State for that first Ambassador job seven years ago. He knew he only got the counterintelligence win because of what Kate had uncovered and passed back. And now Elizabeth knew. Yes. She'd start with George. Then Richard. Or maybe Peter. She’d wait and see what happened with George first.

"Umm, so what about…" Kate gestured to her arm.

"I'll submit the paperwork for your reinstatement. I've no concerns there."

"But?"

"No buts, just another question, if I may?"

"That was a question, but go ahead." Noah used to play that trick on her - she'd not thought about doing it herself for years, but said it without thinking, and without her ribs crushing her with grief at the memory of him.

"You ever seen the movie Say Anything?"

"Not that I recall."

"Watch it this week, does this time work for you next Saturday?"

"Yes, but what…"

"Has the movie got to do with your review? Nothing. But it might help with your other assignment."

"What other assignment?"

"Lucy. Think it's time Kate Whistler gets her girl back."

"You're offering to help me with that?" Kate's voice was full of the incredulity she felt from this completely unexpected offer.

"What can I say? I'm a sucker for a good love story…as a friend I mean. To be clear."

"I…"

Kate looked at the screen, seeing the genuine warmth and compassion from this legend, who in some ways reminded her of Jane. She didn't have many friends, not now, not since…she blinked, caught off guard by the memory of Noah laughing at her recounting how she'd ended up being made rush chair despite not putting her name forward, how she'd been set up by all her friends who had known she'd never stand but wanted her to do it anyway. Friends. Not contacts, not part of a network of favours owed and owing.

"... thank you, yes please."

"Excellent. So tell me, how'd you two meet? Was it unknotting red tape together as the sun rose?"

"Hardly. We didn't meet because of work…it was that week, of the conference here? So the last night I just couldn't face meeting people so I walked out of the hotel and hopped on the first bus that came…." .

And then, for the first time ever, Kate found herself telling someone about how she met Lucy, how her life changed beyond recognition…how it felt to be happy.

Chapter Text

'Present'  - Jane Tennant's house, continuing after work drinks 

“FBI here in the islands think I’m FBI, now back with them after years loaned out to DOD.”

“But we know it’s the other way around, that you’re DOD loaned out to FBI?” checked Jesse, still not clear on why this was all necessary, but at least seeing that it made some sort of sense, and explained how she’d switched over to FBI so quickly.

“What about Boom Boom and Commander Chase?” asked Jane, knowing the senior NCIS forensic expert and M.E. had a rather different relationship with the NCIS team than the rest of the NCIS or FBI specialists.

“Boom Boom already knows from when I was DIA here.  Chase…”  Kate mentally reviewed what she knew of the Medical Examiner’s clearances from when she was at DIA.  “...is now cleared to know but doesn’t know yet.”

“You get to call him Boom Boom?  To his face?”  Kai was hurt, having not picked up on the significance of her calling him Boom Boom earlier at the bar.

“So do you Kai,” reminded Jane kindly, appreciating it was still something of a raw nerve for Kai, since the first time he’d met Boom Boom he’d been firmly put in his place by the explosives specialist.  “Top up Kate?” asked Jane, somewhat rhetorically since she’d already picked up Kate’s glass and was heading to the side table where the bottle of exceptional tequila was, though there were also some bottles of juice and water.

“Why do DCSA want you here?” asked Jesse, having missed Jane’s question.

“Wow, ok.”  It wasn’t that Kate wasn’t expecting the question at some point during this conversation, but having just finished reassuring Ernie in particular that she wasn’t some sort of spy, it was a bit of an abrupt pivot.  “Please and thank you,” she added, using Jane’s own line back to her when she saw the raised bottle, understanding the question she'd missed.

“She’s a spy catcher,” said Jane, returning with Kate’s glass and having a stab at answering Jesse’s question for her, when it was clear that Kate wasn’t going to start talking.

“Not helpful,” grumbled Kate, glaring at Jane for a second before she accepted the glass with a polite thank you and took a welcome sip, then passed it to Lucy for her to try, knowing too it was too generous a measure for her to finish on her own without experiencing serious ramifications tomorrow.  “A lot of what the military uses is made by private companies who have the necessary clearances and access granted to them for that purpose.”

“Right, we get the DCSA reports with the updated lists of newly cleared contractors and who’s expected to have access to the Base,” confirmed Jesse, following so far.

“And when that all works exactly like it’s supposed to, nothing goes missing, or gets destroyed or stolen, and everything gets to the military.”  Kate looked at Lucy, seeing her cradling the glass and smirked, then kissed her girlfriend’s forehead - she had a feeling she wasn’t going to get the tequila back once Lucy had tasted it, but she didn’t mind.

“But if it then goes missing, it’s our jurisdiction, for the Navy at least.”  Kai was starting to wonder if she was there because someone thought NCIS wasn’t doing its job, though judging by how calm and relaxed Tennant was looking, perhaps that wasn’t it.  “Are there many manufacturers in the islands?”

“No.  And you’re right, DCSA leaves all thefts and losses from naval facilities to NCIS.  That’s not why I’m out here.”  She ordered her thoughts, trying to come up with a suitably succinct and clear explanation for them, at least for tonight’s conversational purposes.  “DOD knows, from your cases, CGIS and FBI ones too, that a lot of weapons and equipment that are being smuggled or illegally traded out of the US pass through your jurisdictions.  And stuff gets stopped by you either because you knew about them, or because you came across them during a case about something else.”

“Like a guidance system supposedly destroyed on the mainland when we were called to a murdered port worker?” asked Ernie, starting to see the pattern that would be of interest to DCSA.

“Exactly.”

“I don’t get it.”

“Oh, that’s brilliant.”  Ernie leaned forward in his seat, the excitement at what he’d worked out clear in his face.  “Not you not getting it Jesse, that’s…”  He realised he’d talked himself into a corner and so changed direction.  “The guidance system, it was thought to be lost when the manufacturer reports it accidentally destroyed, only to turn up two months later, means there’s someone at the manufacturer who helped it to disappear…but you, DCSA, don’t know that until the guidance system reappears here in Hawaii.”  He looked at her, studying her for any clues he was on the right track as he carried on.  “That task force you were running, it was a fishing exercise.”

“Those containers never moved Ernie, it was a bust.  They never got the buyers because they knew they were blown.”

“No Jesse, it wasn’t a bust,” said Ernie, seeing Kate’s lips twitch into a tiny smile, confirmation he was on the right lines.  “I mean, sure, it wasn’t great for DIA and FBI because they didn’t get any illegal weapons buyers in cuffs, but they got the weapons and DCSA got a whole new list of people who maybe weren’t as squeaky clean as they’d thought.  Am I right?”

“Close enough,” confirmed Kate, impressed but not surprised that he’d put it together so quickly.  “A lot of the suppliers and contractors DOD use are long-established, so they’re used to going through the clearance and vetting processes, and they’re used to telling their potential employees they’ve got to go through vetting as part of getting the job.  They know that, DCSA know that, the bad guys know that and see us coming.”

“And by see you coming, you mean cover their tracks and sneak someone through the vetting process?” Kai had never really thought about how someone had to be making the weapons that were illegally traded, and either knowingly or inadvertently then letting them drop out of the secure supply chain through to the military end users, but it made rather worrying sense now he thought about it.  “Is that even possible?”

“Sneak? Not impossible but it’s easier to bribe someone who’s been cleared for the final time before seeing out their last months to retirement, or try to turn someone who’s doing the vetting.”

“Wow, that’s…”

“Commitment,” said Jane, fascinated to see how her team, with their different backgrounds and experiences, were piecing this puzzle together.  “Remember, the illegal arms trade is billions of dollars.  Catching the people who are helping the weapons and equipment get into the illegal supply chain is as important as recovering the weapons themselves.”

“I’m here helping to identify where we’re not looking hard enough on the mainland, based on what gets picked up here in Hawaii.”

“So you what, let DCSA know there’s a guidance system not as destroyed as everyone thought and next day they’re raiding the manufacturer who let it disappear?” asked Jesse, thinking that was rather impressive and extremely clever.

“Something like that.”  It wasn’t that quick, with a lot of extra work done by teams back on the mainland who had to then try and narrow down where was most probably the problem, so they could preserve the element of surprise, but he’d got the general gist.

“That’s so cool,” said Ernie, already a fan of Whistler the Intelligence Analyst, but Lucy could see her best friend was shifting to a new level of impressed now he knew what else she was doing.  “Big Fed’s a spycatcher.”

“Leaks,” corrected Kate, sending a long-suffering look to a far too amused Jane.  “I help to identify leaks, places where our industrial security is compromised.”

“But you’ve also found spies right?”  Jesse, now he was up to speed, was as fascinated and impressed as Ernie and Kai.  “I mean, people who are doing the leaking but to a foreign country rather than for money?  That’s a spy right?”

“He’s got you there,” murmured Lucy, having gone down something of a google research rabbit hole while she was Agent Afloat, learning about all the DCSA successes at uncovering enemy agent infiltration that were reported in the media over the years.

“Fine, yes.”  Kate really didn’t like the sobriquet ‘spycatcher’, feeling it was a little too pointed given the whole situation with Maggie Shaw, but she had to keep reminding herself that it was Jane that introduced it, and Jane was the one for whom Maggie’s treasonous and seditious behaviour was the most personally upsetting.  “Some of the intelligence I have provided to my DCSA bosses over the years has resulted in foreign agents being uncovered and detained.”  She’d put the zip ties on two personally, but that was definitely something that was classified well above everyone else’s clearances and not something she’d even allude to, as for one thing, she’d have to explain what she’d been doing in Afghanistan in the first place.

“Spycatcher,” said Jesse, raising his beer in respectful acknowledgement.

“You’re not going to shake it,” said Jane, knowing Kate didn’t like the term, but also knowing it would have caught the team’s attention and helped them appreciate that, in addition to what they’d known her main role to be, Kate Whistler had been quietly, behind the scenes, doing a hell of a lot more to protect the country and indirectly save the lives of countless servicemen and women.  “But we’re also not going to use it in conversation, are we?” she asked, her ‘Mom voice’ adding to the effect.  If it wasn’t so serious a topic, Kate might have laughed when she saw everyone, her girlfriend included, sit a little more stiffly as they all made eye contact with Jane and muttered ‘no Boss’.

“Is that why you’re always on your own?”

“Uh, hello?”  Lucy reached out and waved in front of Jesse’s face.  “She’s very not on her own thank you very much.”

“What?”  Jesse batted Lucy’s hand away from his face, the handful of beers he’d consumed making his usually sharp reflexes a little slower as, along with everyone else, he settled into the ‘comfortably buzzed’ stage that came from good company, good food and a responsible amount of alcohol.  None of them were in the ‘do something crazy and not remember it’ stage of drunkenness, but none of them were stone cold sober either.  “I’m not hitting on her Luce, I’m married.”

“Then why’d you ask if she’s single bro?” asked Kai, as confused as Lucy was.

“I asked if that was why she's at work always on her own, because asking why she didn’t have a partner when Luce is like that felt weird.”

“You’re weird,” countered Lucy, quickly, only to be gently shushed by an amused Kate, who distracted her chief defender with a kiss, not that she had been that much clearer about Jesse's logic behind his question..

“I thought Conway…” began Kai, shutting up when he saw Kate visibly shudder.

“God no, he’s…”  She regained her professionalism, proof that the two beers and the one, albeit generous tequila Jane had given her hadn’t had that much effect.  “He’s a decent enough agent, working his way back to full field duties after a health issue.”  It wasn’t her place to share that he’d taken time out when he had a cancer diagnosis, but by the time she’d transferred over to FBI, he was in remission and back on light duties.  “He’s been helping me get up to speed on the FBI way of doing paperwork, and I bring him with me to some of the cases because he’s doing most of the computer work for me.”  

According to Curtis, prior to his diagnosis, Conway had been more of a muscle-first type Agent, happy to volunteer to chase down the biggest suspects or canvas a neighbourhood for witnesses and leads, happier still letting the other agents take the lead on the office-based investigative work.  Her job, Curtis had explained, was to give him opportunities to discover that the office-based investigative work was just as important, as practically, Conway needed to accept he needed a more balanced mix of work in his future.

“But he’s not my partner.  I don’t have an FBI agent partner.”

“So you’re on your own, work wise?” asked Kai, learning from Jesse's experience and adding the qualification so as to not get on Lucy's bad side.

“Not exactly.  Mostly, my fieldwork is with you guys or CGIS, and the rest of the time I’m at the FBI offices with my team.”  It took a moment for her to realise why Kai and Jesse were looking unimpressed.  “I don’t get assigned cases by the FBI, I get all the cases you guys need FBI assistance with.”

“But you have cases…”

“That I lead on?  Sure, but they are cases that…find me I guess.”

“Like AJ’s?  You were the lead on that one weren’t you?”

“Yes, with some of the RICO guys.  Curtis and his boss let me keep it because it was you guys who brought it to our attention.”

“And your CI case?” asked Jane, remembering the case shortly after Lucy’s return from the USS Ronald Reagan, when Kate was having doubts about her ability as an agent when she was struggling to manage her first CI.  “How did you get that one?”

“He was a side player in a CGIS case I was liaison on.  He was picked up in their surveillance we were assisting them with.  Wasn’t a person of interest for their case, but I was curious.”  

“Curious about what?”

“He was on the surveillance picking up some burner phones, small amounts of drugs, cigarettes.  CGIS wasn’t interested in him, their investigation was completely different and this was small fry, but I…”  Kate shrugged, a shy smile appearing as she remembered asking her team to send her a copy of the bits of the surveillance videos that had him in.  “...started to look into him, wanted to work out who he was and what he wanted this stuff for.  Then I found him, and found he was selling the stuff on to FDC Honolulu guards.  And that?  That wasn’t so small.”

“And would have been missed if you hadn’t spotted him in the background of the CGIS surveillance,” confirmed Jane, not knowing that part of the story.  “Glad Curtis let you keep it, I was wondering…”

“Why I’d been given a CI to run?” laughed Kate, knowing she’d thought the same thing when she’d been struggling with Kenny.

“Why you were involved in something that wasn’t obviously DOD or illegal weapons related.”. She'd not noticed the pattern prior to Kate explaining her dual role, but once Jane knew it, she had started to see the common thread that was subtly present in all of Kate's work outside of the direct case supporting liaison work.  And that case, with no weapons or liaison with DOD, had definitely not fit the very subtle pattern Jane now knew to look for.

“Yes.   A little bit of old fashioned contraband smuggling was a nice change of pace.” It had also opened her eyes to what was the bread and butter workload for many FBI agents, with street and prison gangs having far more complex operations than she'd necessarily assumed, which had in turn made it a little easier for her to attempt conversation with some of her fellow agents.

“Do you spend much time with your DCSA team?”  From Kate’s neutral face, Kai guessed he’d just asked the wrong question.  “You do have a team there right?”

“Not exactly.”  Kate sighed, knowing this was going to quickly have them thinking she was a spy again if she wasn’t careful with how she explained it, only for Jesse to beat her to it.

“Of course she doesn’t have a team!  Weren’t you listening?”

“I…”  Kai looked from Kate to Jesse, confused.

“She’s just told us, the minute the bad guys know DCSA’s coming, they all get their stories straight.  And some of the bad guys are DCSA so them announcing that the intel’s in from their secret weapon out in Hawaii…”

“Oh, yeah, that would be bad.”  Kai understood now, so refocused on Kate, now having a better way of asking his question.

“How many people at DCSA know you still work for DCSA?”

“To say hello to me if I saw them in headquarters? Two?  Four maybe, certainly no more than six.”   

She genuinely couldn’t remember now, but knew it was a small number, starting with two director level colleagues she sent her reports to.  They probably had an assistant each, who might know she wasn’t ‘just’ an FBI agent, and there was maybe one or two others.  And all would know that she'd probably be there using her FBI identification and to therefore act like she was exactly that, unless she acknowledged them first.

“And Jesse’s right - what I do for DCSA only really works because no one at an operational level at DCSA knows I’m here, and the people who do know I’m here don’t know I’m DCSA.”

“That’s not much of a team,” said Ernie, frowning.  “And I know you said you’re not undercover but that sounds pretty much like being undercover.”

“Which is why she has us,” declared Lucy, lifting her head up from Kate’s shoulder.  “We need to be her team.”

“I mean, I kinda thought we’d already adopted you, right Boss?”

“I think Lucy gets first claim on adoption rights Kai,” said Jane kindly.

“Hell yeah!”

“You make me sound like an endangered panda…” grumbled Kate, not quite as quietly as she’d intended.

“Giraffe.”  

“Even got the neck spots,” mumbled Ernie, joining Jesse in holding up his hands up when the full intensity Whistler Glare was joined by a Lucy scowl.  “Sorry.”

“Sounds complicated though.”  Kai, despite introducing the ‘adoption’ tangent, had been deep in thought and missed the animal detour, sticking instead with his new knowledge of Whistler’s career.  “Being one kind of Special Agent while already being another kind of Agent…lonely too I guess?”

“I’m used to it.”  Kate reclaimed her tequila glass from Lucy, as much for something to do with her hand as for the alcohol.  “And it’s easier now.”

“Because you have us?” asked Ernie, eyes darting to Lucy to make sure he was back on her good side.  “And Luce?”

“Kind of.  Hey!”  Kate leaned to the side so she could look properly at her girlfriend who'd just poked her side.  “You want to give me a chance here?”

“Sorry.”  Lucy snuggled back into Kate’s side.  “Continue, but please don’t rank me behind surfing and food!”

“That was one time!” protested Kate, grinning despite her indignance.  “And you were on a boat in the middle of the ocean asking me to tell you my three highlights from the weekend.”

“And you didn’t have Luce calling you as the first one?” asked Jesse, wincing in sympathy with his partner.

“Her phrasing made it ambiguous!  I assumed the question was framed in the context of outside of that phone call…”  Kate decided that since this was an old debate for her and Lucy, and given Lucy was still tucked securely against her side, arm wrapped around her hips, she could move on to answer the original question.  “And to answer your question Kai, it is easier now because yes, I have people who know what I actually do rather than cover stories and half truths, starting with Lucy a few months ago.”  Kate felt Lucy worm her way somehow between the open neck of her shirt and press a kiss to her collarbone, making her smile as she returned the affectionate gesture with a squeezy one-armed side hug, unable to actually kiss anywhere other than Lucy’s hair just now.  “...and now includes you four and a couple of others at NCIS and CGIS.”

“Not FBI?”

“Not yet.  DOD’s not the quickest at bringing outsiders into the group.  But it’s being worked on.”  Kate shared a look with Jane, one that spoke of a shared understanding and acknowledgement of the relief that even a couple of people knowing about your work could bring, and the toll that having no one know took on you as well.  “And after a decade of practically no one I worked with knowing I was DCSA or DSS, even five is a lot to get used to.”  

Elizabeth had been true to her word, and quickly set the wheels in motion within DOD to ensure that Kate was able to bring in the NCIS and CGIS SACs, plus the NCIS Major Case team, Ernie and Commander Chase.  However her network of contacts and favours was not as comprehensive in the Department of Justice, and getting DOD to open up to DOJ?  That was Beltway politics at its territorial worst and was still slow going in terms of progress, as it was taking a lot to convince DOD that FBI ADIC Frenche on the mainland wasn’t actually enough to constitute a ‘support network’ who knew Kate’s true objective and role within the FBI.  But even in retirement, Elizabeth was determined and Kate knew progress was being made.

“Just because we know, doesn’t mean we talk about it,” added Lucy, sitting up and fixing a serious look on Ernie, Jesse and Kai, respecting Jane’s past experience too much to feel like she needed to reinforce the point.  “Although it was all messed up that no one knew, it’s important that People don’t know.”

“We’re not People right?” asked Jesse, looking to Jane and Kate for reassurance.

“Right, but the ones around us?  The guys at the FBI and HPD and on the main gate?  They are the ‘people’ who mustn’t know, unless Kate is specifically told they’re cleared to know.”

“It’s sounding a lot like being undercover,” agreed Kai, taking what Tennant had just said seriously, making Lucy groan as she thought they were back to the very beginning.  “No, I don’t mean…”  He ran his hand over his head as he tried to organise his thoughts, grateful for whatever Kate whispered to Lucy that meant he got a chance to have another go at organising his words.  “...I don’t mean you’re undercover like spying on people, I mean you’re kind of undercover like having your brain doing one thing inside while also doing another thing outside?”  He frowned, not liking how his words sounded.  “When I was in the kitchen at Ho’olua, I was a chef.  I couldn’t hold up an order or mess up cooking a lobster claw…”

“Mmm, lobster claw…was it lemongrass scented?”  Ernie opened his eyes and abruptly emerged from his food fantasy and returned to the present.  “Not the time, sorry.”

“But at the same time, I was looking at everyone like I was on a stakeout.  It’s kind of the same for you?”

“A little bit.  Not so much because I’m not building a case against the people I’m surrounded by…I’m at the FBI, working with them and you guys on cases and investigations, same as you guys.  I just…also write an intelligence brief about it for my other bosses in D.C.”

“And no one notices?”

“Time difference helps…D.C. meetings happen on D.C. schedules, not Hawaiian ones, but also, it’s not secret what I’m doing, it’s just not something I do with a big amount of noise.”

“Like approving your expenses.”

“Huh?”

“Every month, I review and approve all your expenses, for all NCIS agents in the Pacific Rim, not just Major Case Agents,” explained Jane, heading over to the side table to top up her own drink, returning with a bottle of water for Kate when she’d spotted the blonde had stopped drinking alcohol and was sipping from Lucy’s glass of water.  “Every quarter I get a meeting with the accounts people at Headquarters.  It’s not a secret what I do, it’s just a set of reports and a review meeting, but it’s not one anyone really knows I’m doing when I’m doing it.”

“Yeah, but that’s part of your job, as SAC I mean.”

“And Kate’s briefings are part of hers.”

“Yes, but…”

“If anyone goes digging, here or in D.C, and I mean really really deep take months of digging  at a clearance level higher than any of us have, they’ll find out eventually I’m the DCSA embedded Special Agent to FBI Hawaii and the DCSA liaison here in the Pacific Rim for DOD Agencies. And it's signed off at Director level across all agencies.” 

It was one of the reasons her contacts network was so good, as she'd spent a decade being known of at that level, giving her the ability to get her calls taken by a list of influential people that had only got longer the longer she did this particular work.  Elizabeth’s campaigning on her behalf had also seen an exponential growth in Kate’s network, with the DOD legend making it clear that, when she’d then retired last summer, any outstanding favours owed were transferred from her to FBI Special Agent Kate Whistler in the Hawaii Field Office, and if she, or someone else on her behalf was calling, the call should be taken.  It was a generous gift, and one that Kate had sworn not to abuse or overuse, but so far, the one time she’d tried, it had definitely resulted in action and assistance, and was just one of the many reasons she was the only person with an open invitation from her and Lucy to ‘come visit’ whenever she wanted to, without needing notice.

“The point is, no one goes digging,” added Jane, appreciating the elegance but also isolation of Kate’s official position and how it translated into day-to-day organisation politics.  “And we’re not going to say anything that changes that.”  There was a definitiveness to her words that had her team nodding and murmurs of ‘yes Boss’ and ‘sure thing Boss’ rippled round the group.  “Now, who wants ice cream and fruit?”

“Does fruit mean pineapple?” asked Lucy, fairly certain Kate had said she’d explained to Jane why she avoided the fruit, but wanting to make sure.  She knew Kate was already somewhat over-exposed to pineapple through all the wedges used as garnishes on cocktails, but had long given up trying to request it be left off her glass.  Fortunately her hatred of it was as a result of an intolerance-type discomfort rather than an out-and-out allergy, but still, Lucy knew that even seeing it on the glass or plate caused her girlfriend’s shoulders and jaw to tense a tiny bit.

“It’s on the side.”  Jane smiled reassuringly at the pair - she didn’t have the same degree of first hand experience with the pineapple fallout Lucy had (obviously), but had enough of the details to ensure that pineapple was now always on a separate dish whenever Kate was expected.

“Thank you.”  Kate caught Lucy’s worried look and smiled, tilting her head towards the balcony edge.  “Fruit and ice cream without pineapple would be wonderful."

“You ok?” asked Lucy, coming up beside Kate and leaning her hip against the balcony railing, studying her thoughtful girlfriend.  “We can go if you want, I know you’ve got a crazy early start.”

“I’m good.”  Kate turned away from her star-gazing and smiled at Lucy, tucking a stray strand of dark hair behind her ear to avoid it being swept up by the very light breeze.  “With all of it.”

“Yeah?”  Lucy reached forwards and caught hold of the waistband of Kate’s suit skirt, still somehow wrinkle free despite the long day, drawing their bodies together.

“Except the pineapple, obviously.”

“Obviously.”  Smirking, enjoying how easily her girlfriend could shift from extremely serious ‘Whistler’ to goofy Kate, Lucy reached up and ran her fingertips down the side of Kate’s neck, coaxing Kate to lean down so they could kiss, lips meeting as they savoured the contact and reaffirmed their connection, love rather than passion their shared priority.  “I’m so proud of you.”

“Is it weird that I’m kind of a little bit grateful for Medina beating me up?”

“Little bit weird,” confirmed Lucy, though she knew what Kate was talking about.  “Maybe be a little bit grateful to that other psychologist’s appendix exploding instead?”  Kate had been half way to kissing Lucy again when she paused, then straightened up again.

“I’m not sure it exploded…”

“That’s what you’re wondering?” asked Lucy, stroking Kate’s jaw, amazed at how this incredibly brilliant woman was in love with her.

“That does sound rather…”  Kate’s face was impressively ‘ew’ for a beat.  “...but I guess it was what got me being cleared for field duty again by Elizabeth.”  Widening the circle of who knew about her dual role hadn’t been a requirement of her clearance to return to the field, nor was it in the remit of a regular post-injury psychological review, but then Dr Elizabeth Sutherland had stopped having a ‘regular’ remit as far as the DOD was concerned probably about the same time Kate was born.

“Elizabeth huh?”  Lucy slid the fingers of her right hand around the back of Kate’s neck, biting her lip with amusement.  “You really think dropping some other gal’s name is going to get me kissing you?”

“I think she’d be very amused to hear you describe her as a ‘gal’ considering she’s almost seventy.”  And now retired, hence her insistence that both Kate and Lucy call her by her first name, to the point of ignoring them if they started calling her ‘Dr Sutherland’.

“Older women are hot!” protested Lucy, putting her left index finger on Kate’s protesting lips.  “I’m trying to get my favourite, hottest one to kiss me right now in fact.”

“Oh.”  

It was fun, watching Kate’s brain kick start itself into gear when they were like this, starting with the look of total terror that lasted a split second until Kate realised she was taking something either too literally or, less likely but not impossible, not literally enough.  Then, the terror was replaced by confused Whistler, when Lucy felt like she could almost see her girlfriend’s brain rebooting, before finally… 

“ Oh .”  

After a brief visit by ‘I solved the puzzle’ Whistler, which Lucy also mentally termed her ‘Whistler’s cute work face’, she got her most favourite Whistler expression of all, also known as the ‘my Kate’ look that Lucy knew was only ever seen up close like this by her.  And then Lucy wasn’t thinking about Kate’s expressions at all, her eyes closing as Kate’s lips returned to hers, Kate’s intention clear - a peck was not enough this time.  Soon, too soon though, they were both vaguely conscious of the noise of people returning, reminding them both that they were still at Tennant’s, surrounded by their friends and colleagues.

“Aren’t they usually more quiet?” asked Kate, tilting her head towards the very loud clattering of bowls and spoons onto the table as the team returned with the ice cream and fruit.

“I think that’s supposed to be a hint.”

“That we should make more noise?” joked Kate, leaning back against the balcony rail, enjoying the warm breeze and the opportunity to stretch her legs - the bench seats around Jane’s balcony table were not  the most comfortable for the long-limbed blonde when she was sharing the bench with Lucy, as positioning the bench how Kate found comfortable saw Lucy frustratingly far from the table.  It was second nature for Kate now, to pull the bench in ‘too close’, never considering anything other than feeling cramped up as long as it meant Lucy was comfortable.

“You want some fruit?” asked Lucy, knowing Kate wasn’t overly keen on ice cream, though she’d probably have a spoonful or two of Lucy’s if she offered it.

“I’m good.”  Kate nodded towards the others, who were starting to help themselves to the chopped fruit which included a bowl of pineapple on the side so Kate could avoid it, while Jesse obediently started scooping out the ice cream into bowls when Jane gave him the serving scoop, ‘Dad mode’ clearly activated.

“Translation, you don’t want your own plate but if I have blueberries on mine you’ll steal them?” guessed Lucy, her eyes narrowing as she scrutinised her girlfriend for the ‘tells’ Lucy had carefully catalogued so far, her eyes starting with looking for the slight drooping of usually square shoulders - not a slouch exactly, but certainly a clue when Kate was starting to flag.  To her surprise however, especially given the day she’d no doubt had and considering she was still wearing her ‘office day’ clothes (minus the suit jacket and heels), Kate’s shoulders were their usual ‘not tired’ shape.  “Because you’re really ok with us staying?”

“I’m really ok with us staying,” promised Kate, leaning forwards and kissing Lucy’s forehead as she squeezed her hand.  “It’s…”  She thought for a second, about how to explain why she was so certain she wanted to stay.  “...a relief, that they now know everything, but it’s like it still doesn’t quite feel real somehow?”

“Because they’re still processing,” nodded Lucy, understanding Kate immediately, helped by knowing how her girlfriend’s over-active mind had a tendency to work, especially when a social situation was going quite well.  “You wanna make out until Ernie throws his drink garnish at us and Jesse makes barf noises?”

“Always.”  Kate started to lean forwards, only to catch herself just in time. ”But no.”  She even stretched her neck when Lucy merely stood on tiptoes, earning her a frowny pout.

“Not fair.”  

Usually, Kate was extremely good at not using her height advantage when they were having a playful teasing type of kiss - it was one thing to dodge and duck to delay the inevitable kiss, as Lucy still stood a chance of catching Kate out by anticipating her move, but outright stretching out of range?  That was playing dirty in the mean and unfriendly way, rather than the fun way.  

“He’s drinking tequila, or beer.”

“Oh.”  Lucy relaxed, letting her heels return to the decking, brain catching up with Kate’s.  “So he'd throw bottle caps or ice.  So ice basically.”

“Waste of good ice.”  Kate nodded again towards their friends.  “And your ice cream’s melting…plus I think Jane’s raided Alex’s secret stash of Chocolate Chip.”

“How’d you know it’s Alex’s not hers?”  For a moment Lucy had forgotten about the four months of minimum two nights a week when Kate and Jane gravitated to each others’ company, be it at the apartment or here.

“Because she’s also holding the cherry truffle carton.”

“And I know not to try and get into that.”  Lucy saw Kate’s eyebrow raise.  “She attacked me!”

“Tennant?”

“She hit me!  With a weapon!”

“It was a spoon,” corrected Jane, coming over to them, still holding the aforementioned ice cream, knowing if given half a chance Ernie would start eating it straight from the carton.  “And more of a tap than a hit.”

“Says the defendant, not the victim,” huffed Lucy, drinking in the sight of her amused, relaxed girlfriend who was so like the ‘Kate’ she’d first met on that glorious, incredible weekend when criminals really did seem to be members of the ‘Love Department’ as she genuinely couldn’t think of another three day period when she was on call when she hadn’t been called.  “Blueberries?”

“Mmm.”  Kate glanced over at the fruit platter the others were helping themselves from to see if there was anything else that immediately grabbed her interest, but she was still feeling over-full from the Kalua pork.  “I’m fine.”

“Yes, you are,” flirted Lucy, before leaving the two friends to talk.

“She’s…”

“Happy,” said Jane, opening the cherry ice cream carton and then producing two spoons from her pocket.  “And I will be if you could help me out with this.”

“Jane…”

“Only one.  I just feel bad if I don’t share, but there’s not much left…” She'd shared enough late night sessions with Kate to know drinking tequila left the blonde sufficiently eager for sugar that she'd eat a mouthful or two of ice cream and keep Jane company while she had some, but was still sufficiently sugar averse that Jane didn't have to risk missing out on a generous portion herself when there was only a scoop or two left in the carton.

“Are you going to hit me with your spoon if I say no?”

“More like play the airplane game until you bite.”  Seeing Kate’s puzzled expression, Jane put a small amount of ice cream on one of the spoons.  “Only way to get Alex to eat veggies at first.”  She made a buzzing sound like a small airplane as she spiralled the spoon towards her own mouth, before eating the ice cream.

“Oh.  I’ll pass…”  Kate laughed as she saw Jane go to brandish the other spoon.  “...on the airplane game,” she clarified, accepting the spoon and digging in, sort of.  

“Traitor.”

“Huh?”  Lucy looked up from the fruit platter, to see Ernie glaring at Kate and Tennant.  “Who?”  She hadn’t realised, but she was holding her breath, wondering if this was the moment when everything wasn’t going to carry on as normal after Kate’s revelations.

“Tennant.  She wouldn’t let me have any cherry ice cream.”

“Oh.”  Lucy exhaled loudly, her shoulders relaxing now she knew that this was exactly that, with Ernie just being Ernie.  “Perhaps because Tennant knows Whistler doesn’t have a sweet tooth.” In the same way that, as humans we tend to mirror body language, so too was Lucy's instinctive nomenclature when it came to her girlfriend - if her team referred to their host as 'Tennant' then her girlfriend was automatically 'Whistler'.

“All the more reason to not let her have any.  She won’t appreciate it.”

“Or maybe, that’s why, since that means she’ll only take a tiny spoonful, not half the carton.”

“She really doesn’t like sweet things?” asked Jesse, never having given Whistler’s eating habits much thought.

“Lucy’s the exception it seems,” joked Kai, helping himself to some slices of watermelon, having shared enough post-Saturday-surf breakfasts with Kate while Lucy was Agent Afloat to know on the rare occasion she’d have pancakes, they’d be blueberry not chocolate chip, and she’d ask for butter, not maple syrup.

“Aww, you think I’m sweet.”  Lucy clasped her hands together and fluttered her eyelashes at him, like a cartoon character might look while making ‘heart eyes’ at someone.  “Apart from fruit which she can eat by the plateful, she doesn’t really do sweet foods.”  Dried fruit coated in chocolate or yoghurt was the other exception, but that Lucy kept to herself.

“Unless it's pineapple.”

“Unless it's pineapple,” agreed Lucy, remembering sharing that fact about Kate in Ernie’s presence during the Raven case.

“How can someone not like pineapple?” asked Kai, moving on from the watermelon slices to help himself to some of the yellow fruit, which he now at least understood why it was on the side and also not something he’d ever seen on Kate’s brunch plate.

“Hates.  You said hates,” corrected Ernie, sitting down now he’d filled his own plate.

“How’d you know this stuff?”

“What’s Heather’s least favourite fruit?”

“Tied kiwi, raspberry and fig.  What?”  Jesse shrugged as he put the serving fork he’d been using back on the fruit plate.  “It’s the pits.”

“Seeds.”  Ernie chewed and swallowed the piece of apple he’d selected from his plate.  “Pips if you're talking to a Brit. Not pits though, that’s stone fruit. Kiwi, raspberry and fig have seeds.”

“Yes, but we’re married.”

“And that alters correct etymological usage for fruit?” asked Ernie, confused.

“What? No.”  Jesse had no idea what Ernie was talking about, but stuck to his guns with his original point.  “But you’re not.”

“Married?”

“To Whistler.”

“HEY!”  Lucy punched him, also confused, but certain of some facts.  “Whistler’s not married, and if she were, it’d be to me!”

“Is that a proposal?” asked Kai, as Jesse continued as if Lucy hadn’t just hit him.  “What I mean is how does Ernie know about Whistler hating pineapple?”

“I told him,” said Lucy, calming as quickly as she’d been worked up, hearing enough of Kai’s question to want to immediately back away from the topic of marriage.  She and Kate were good, great, incredible even, but both were also aware that marriage? That was another great stride of a leap from where they were right now.

“She did, they were helping my endorphins…”

“Do you have any idea what they’re talking about?” asked Kate, watching with amusement as the four NCIS friends appeared to be having several conversations at once, without interrupting their consumption of fruit and ice cream. It was also quite impressive how even that level of multitasking didn't affect Lucy's ability to keep the boys in line.  Probably a skill learned growing up as the ‘baby’ in a house with three older, and bigger, brothers.

“I’m getting pineapple, kiwi, fig…”  Jane’s lip reading skills were better than Kate’s, but she was finding it a bit difficult given the lack of context and everyone also eating.

“Are those the tasting notes for the ice cream?”

“Fruit seeds…”  Jane’s knowledge of her team provided the context for her.  “Oh, they’re talking about Heather, and you not liking particular fruit.”

“Heather?”

“She hates figs, kiwi and raspberry.”

“Ah.”  Kate deposited her spoon in the empty ice cream carton when Jane held it out towards her, not needing pineapple explaining.  “Thank you.  Should we?" She tilted her head towards the table, conscious it was getting just a little bit raucous.

“...hey, Whistler’s like your octopus!”

"We should," agreed Jane, not expecting Ernie to say that and agreeing with Kate's assessment that mediation might be needed.

“Excuse me?”  Lucy turned to look at Ernie, having been trying to explain to Kai why Ernie had needed their ‘happy talk’ during the Raven case, not appreciating that Ernie and Jesse had moved on again from fruit seeds, though only as far as circling back to her girlfriend.  At the same time, her eyes darted towards Kate to see if she’d heard her name, and clearly she had as in three long strides she had rejoined the conversation, Jane right alongside her.

“What’s with the animal descriptors?” asked Kate, which also brought Jane into the conversation.  “Giraffe I sort of get.”  She’d been called that on a few occasions in her life, never with any kindness, though Lucy had rather successfully ‘reclaimed’ it as a term, especially when combining it with kissing her neck or snuggling.  “But Octopus?”  She looked at her arms, as if needing to check they hadn’t multiplied while trying to remember how and why Lucy might be associated with said marine creature.  The only other thing she could immediately recall about them was their ‘arms’ being covered with suction pads, so did that mean she was being accused of being clingy?

“Which octopus?”  Lucy, knowing how it had taken a few attempts to get Kate to really understand that to Lucy, ‘giraffe’ was a complimentary reference, finding the creatures incredibly beautiful (not to mention also admitting quite how much she enjoyed kissing her way up and down Kate’s neck), tried to get this ‘octopus’ reference put into some sort of context.  She was sufficiently confident in Ernie’s love of her and her relationship with Kate, nevermind knowing he genuinely liked Kate, to know that his intention wasn’t going to be malicious or unkind, even if right now it was causing Kate to look incredibly confused and no doubt preparing to retreat behind her DIA-era ‘Whistler defences’, which Lucy really, really wanted to avoid putting her through.

“The one you swam with.”

“Lucy swam?”  Jesse looked from Ernie to Lucy, clearly a little hurt that he didn’t know this.

“Technically I floated.” Oh, that octopus. She caught Kate's eye, seeing she'd caught onto the reference now as well.

“In the sea?” asked Kai, confused.

“Yes, wearing a snorkel.”  Seeing their bemused expressions and Ernie’s excited one, Lucy decided she better beat him to the telling of this particular anecdote.  “Me I mean, not the octopus. While I was Agent Afloat, we were in port in Guam and I floated over a reef for a few minutes.”

“On your own?  But that’s..”  Jesse’s voice was full of concern for her safety, shifting to his ‘big brother’ role that was, in this moment, in danger of veering into full on ‘dad mode’, only to be stopped by a rather pointed raised eyebrow from Tennant.

“With friends.”

“I’m sorry, but you went snorkelling with friends yet you've never gone into the sea with Whistler? asked Kai, trying to work out how ‘surfboard strong love’ compared to ‘snorkel strong friendship’, feeling like he was missing something but also feeling offended on behalf of his surf buddy.

"Technically…" hedged Lucy, starting to see what was causing Kai's issue with the news about her snorkelling session.  "...but…"

"Are you sure they were friends?" asked Jesse, his brotherly concern tipped fully into parental worry now. "I mean just because we have the badge and the gun doesn't mean…"

"They were friends!" exclaimed Lucy, almost shouting in her frustration at how out of control this conversation had got, though it had at least moved on from Ernie likening Kate to an eight-limbed big brained marine animal.

"I'm just saying…" began Jesse, still concerned, especially when it seemed Lucy hadn't mentioned her swimming adventure to anyone other than Ernie despite being back for a couple of months.

"Well don't."

There was an awkward silence after Lucy had spoken, with none of the guys knowing quite what to say, but for different reasons.  

Jesse - Jane recognised the set of his jaw from when he’d fielded phone calls from Gracie that contained, in Jesse’s view what he felt were unreasonable requests based on inadequate information - was clearly getting increasingly entrenched into ‘Dad mode’, forgetting that Lucy was definitely not his concern as a parent, nor was she put in any sort of jeopardy from the snorkelling trip, since Lucy had returned with clearly some sort of positive memory.  

Ernie was starting to nervously fidget, very confused as to how his belated connection between Lucy’s octopus that hid in plain sight on the coral reef with Whistler’s ‘DCSA Special Agent right under PacFleet’s noses’, which had been the beginnings of him wanting to really let Whistler know how much his already high respect had increased, now had turned into a big falling out about Lucy going swimming with people who were not her Hawaii ohana.

And Kai?  Kai was still trying to work out why ‘surfboard strong love’ was measured differently to ‘snorkelling strong friendship’ and how Whistler was seemingly alright with Lucy’s continued resistance to getting much beyond a yard or two onto the beach from the parking lot.  He was certain he was missing something, something Hina would probably punch him for not understanding, but that didn’t exactly help him.

“I don’t mind.”  It took everyone else a second too long to pick up on the fact that Kate’s quiet statement wasn’t in reference to the fact that Lucy had clearly managed to go swimming with people she’d only known for a matter of weeks, but to whatever she knew was forefront in Lucy’s thoughts just now.

“But they’re being brattish, brat-like?”

“Because they care,” continued Kate quietly, now perched on the tiny sliver of bench between Lucy and Kai, a space that became much larger when Kai received a sharp poke in the spine from Jane’s index finger - it wasn’t a punch from Hina, but it had the same effect, with him immediately scrambling to his feet and moving to the other side of the table to sit on the bench next to Ernie.  “About you, and us.”

“But it’s…”  Lucy was cut off mid sentence by Kate’s unexpected kiss - soft and gentle, stilling her lips and drawing her out of her spiralling thoughts.

“Now your story as much as mine.  And you can tell them if you want to.”

“Now?”  Lucy did want to tell them, but there was a reason she’d not led with it as a story back when it seemed the appropriate time to be telling her friends about her ‘adventures’ as Agent Afloat, with the moment then somehow passing, leaving it untold.  “But your early start…”

“It’s fine.”  Kate glanced towards the forgotten tequila glass.  “I think it’s your turn to ask Jane for the really good tequila,” she stage-whispered, knowing her friend could hear her and was already a step ahead of them, as she’d headed to pour out exactly that as soon as she’d prodded Kai into moving.  While Jane hadn’t heard about ‘Lucy’s octopus’ either, she knew about the friends and snorkelling, so she had some idea of where the conversation was going to head given who Lucy’s new friends were.

“Thank you.”  Lucy leaned forwards and gave Kate a longer, more lingering kiss, one that would normally see good natured heckling or whistling during a more usual team night out, but for whatever reason (Tennant’s glare as it happened), no one made a sound.  “Alright.”  Lucy stood up, creating the space for Kate to sit more easily on the bench, her pencil skirt not the most conducive to sitting on benches, but also giving Lucy a chance to fix a glare on Ernie, Kai and Jesse.  

“Yes, I went snorkelling, in the sea, with people who are friends that are not you three, while we were in port in Guam.”  She thanked Jane for the tequila, noting the bottle as being the one Kate had sent her a picture of when she’d bought it for Jane, which at least made buying their own bottle a little easier since Kate would know what it was and where to buy it, then moved back into Kate’s lap.  

“And yes, they were good friends, I wasn’t pressured, it was different to surfing and yes, Kate knew.”  She sipped her tequila, as much to give Jane the chance to return to the table with her own drink refilled and another bottle of water for Kate, though it also ensured the others had a moment to work out that this was a conversation that for whatever reason, Lucy and Kate being ‘couple-y’ was both non-negotiable and not to be commented on.

“Where’d you snorkel?”  Kai rushed on when he thought Lucy was about to bite his head off, adding, “I was told one of the best spots to see stuff was this place called Spanish Steps and is it Finger Reef? But it’s inside the Navy Base so it’s often off limits, even to people with Base access because of a nearby pier?”  His question proved to be the necessary nudge that shifted Lucy’s mood, with her more usual enthusiasm starting to return.

“Yes!  That’s where we went, because we could, Spanish Steps I mean.  Finger Reef was off limits because of, you know, us being on the pier.”  Lucy saw she’d already lost Ernie and Jesse.  “They call it a pier, but it’s also the deep water anchorage in the harbour entrance that aircraft carriers can use.  The restrictions then stops the dive boats going to Finger Reef, because it’s inside the restricted zone, but Spanish Steps is a little bit further around and we were allowed to go because…”  Actually, Lucy couldn’t entirely remember all the reasons that they’d worked through with the Coastguard and Naval Base, but the gist of it had been that the crew of the aircraft carrier driving along the access road that took them close to the aircraft carrier could hardly be called a security risk, and, “...well, it was Christmas and even the Navy wasn’t prepared to be a total Grinch so Spanish Steps wasn't off limits to us.”

“Cool.  Do you have photos?  I saw my buddy’s photos one time and it looked really awesome.”

“No, but I’ll come to that…”  Lucy sipped her tequila while waiting for her real meaning, namely ‘ask questions and you’ll never get the story because it’s getting late,' to register.  “...so it all started when I’d been on the ship about ten days…”

Chapter Text

USS Ronald Reagan - Lucy's second week Afloat 

 Nodding along to the beat of her music, the sounds of the ship muffled by her headphones, Lucy killed the time while she waited in line to order a coffee flicking between a stupid time wasting game that at least didn’t need internet connection to play, and flicking through the few photos she’d saved to her phone. She’d been on board just over a week and had managed, today at least, to complete all her morning work commitments, get a gym session in and go to the mess hall for her lunch without getting lost once. While not the greatest achievement, since it involved returning to places she’d been shuttling between every day since she’d boarded, she’d decided it was an achievement that deserved a reward. Unfortunately, the USS Ronald Reagan was singularly lacking in Whistler-delivered hugs and kisses, which was Lucy’s preferred type of reward, so she’d decided to try the coffee shop, which would apparently give her a ‘proper’ cappuccino with her choice of coffee bean, milk and syrup flavourings if she wanted. It wouldn’t however, offer her mushroom as an additive, which she was rather grateful for, not least because explaining it as an option would probably make this line move even more slowly.

Seeing the sailor in front of her reach for their phone as the screen lit up with a message, Lucy flicked her own phone out of ‘airplane mode’, wondering if that was a sign the ship’s wifi was once more available for non-essential communications. Sure enough, her own phone lit up with a mixture of emails and messages. Stupid game forgotten, Lucy started to sift through the various threads, mentally sorting the messages from her team into ‘work’ and ‘friend’ categories without stopping to look at any of them. Shuffling forwards so she kept pace with the line she rounded the corner on autopilot, her focus remaining on her phone as she searched out the various message threads she had with Kate.  

It was testament to her girlfriend’s extremely tidy brain that they had multiple threads, with Kate diligently setting up threads for varying levels of work priority ranging from ‘critical’ (which included the sub-heading ‘hope we never use’), through ‘on-going updates’ (which covered some of the extremely slow moving, long running cases they always had open in the background as they waited for the witnesses to return from operations, or security clearances be granted), through ‘everyday news’ to ‘unbelievable’, which was their venting space. At first, as Kate was setting these up, Lucy thought she’d been over-reacting, but by day three Lucy was hooked, finding the ‘unbelievable’ her most frequently used work-related message thread to neither her nor Kate’s surprise.  

It had certainly also helped, when on day three Lucy had experienced a massive surge of homesickness that had combined with seasickness and the extreme mortification of missing a meeting with the Commander (who she was certain hated her, not least because of her height - she could always tell the heightist ones) because she’d got lost. Finally making it back to her bunk, curling up in a ball wearing one of Kate’s hoodies that she’d ‘borrowed’, she’d opened up their ‘Us just Us’ thread and downloaded everything she was feeling, about everything, knowing that Kate would only look at it when she was able to do so without interruption or comment from their friends.  

It was lovely, having friends invested in their relationship and in making sure that both Lucy and Kate coped with the four month separation, but it did also risk feeling a bit overwhelming and exposing, with very little privacy, privacy that they usually got in their apartment, when the phones were tossed aside and they could just ‘be’, together. Something they now wouldn’t be for another three months and twenty-something days. Because she had also promised herself a two month to go reward (specifics to be decided on) if she didn’t start counting down the exact number of days left until she was on day six of week five, as that was when Kate had told her it would be ‘only’ 100 days to go (including day six, because Whistler maths included informative footnotes like that).

Sighing at that depressing thought, Lucy couldn’t help but smile when she found, buried in amongst what looked like half a dozen work related questions from Ernie and Jesse, an answer from Tennant to her question yesterday about ‘what do I do with this?’, a link from Kai explaining one of the ‘on board life’ things she’d been confused by and all their general hellos, the notification bubble next to the ‘Us’ thread. And it was that magic sort of bubble that had a ‘+’ next to the number.

Taking another automatic shuffling step forwards, Lucy tapped on the message thread and began to read Kate’s beautifully phrased, correctly spelled and punctuated, emoji free updates about her day, including her battles with the crossword because Lucy wasn’t there to help her with the name of the Cowboys’ original stadium, which Lucy would have immediately told her was ‘Cotton Bowl’, whereas Kate had to google it when she was getting ready for bed, which was cheating really…“HEY!”  

Rubbing her elbow, which had collided with the metal wall she’d been neatly stood by, Lucy glared at whoever it was that had slammed into her, while also trying to spot where her phone had flown to. “What y’all playing at?” she started, her inner Texan rising, disgruntled, to the surface as she continued to look for her phone while also starting to note the distinguishing features of her assaulter for future identification, starting with the Marine uniform and…crap…that was an oak leaf cluster so she’d just yelled at a Marine Major or worse, Lt Colonel. Should she add a sir to her question?

“What you doing stood at the bottom of a ladder?” barked the Marine, who had just spotted the phone in the corner of the compartment at the same time he’d placed the short, apparently shortest on the ship, much to the delight of a female chef who was now merely the second shortest on the ship, woman shouting at him as the new NCIS Agent Afloat. Shit. At least she was wearing her gym clothes and not her badge and gun, but even so, should he Ma’am her?

“Yes, a ladder, not a…" Lucy swallowed what she was about to say, knowing this wasn't her best way to make an impression with anyone on the ship. Especially as she was now holding up the coffee line, prompting a heavy sigh as she dutifully stepped out of the line, losing her place. "Nevermind, if you could just give me back my phone please?" She saw he'd reached for something in the far corner of the small space as she moved out of line, presuming it was her phone, remembering too her need to not piss off those in charge. "And you are alright? I mean you're not ignoring a stab wound or something are you?"

"Stab wound? Why'd you think that?" Nevertheless, he did instinctively give himself a quick pat down, twisting and turning a little as he moved to the slightly quieter adjacent compartment now he'd retrieved her phone, clearly also deciding it was better to put a little distance between their conversation and the bottom of that ladder.

"Why else would you stumble down the ladder?" asked Lucy, her eyes giving the ladder space a quick once over in case her joke was closer to the truth than she'd intended.

"Not paying attention? Distracted by the…" He was about to say coffee line when Lucy's phone screen lit up, receiving another message notification. Not only did that remind him he was holding her phone still, but he also instinctively glanced at the screen, seeing the lock screen image Lucy had set between landing in Singapore and boarding the carrier.  

"...umm…shit…" 

His sudden stop was, knew Lucy, directly as a result of him seeing the picture of her and Kate, taken by one of Kate's team at the barbeque social Kate's own team had, right before she'd come away. It was, in some ways, a picture Lucy hated, since she was slightly out of focus and only just appearing in the bottom corner of the shot, eyes half closed and looking at something off to the side. But she also loved the photo, because as badly as she'd been captured by the camera and as much as it seemed to exaggerate how short she was compared to Kate, everything had worked in terms of light, focus and composition when it came to Kate. Caught completely unawares, Chang's amazing photo had managed to snap the moment Kate had been looking at Lucy with such an unguarded, open look of love that it had immediately taken Lucy's breathe away when she'd opened it up after reading Chang's sweet little apology for inadvertently intruding on their privacy (hardly private, as from memory, Lucy thinks she and Kate had been debating whether the food truck they'd seen in the parking lot was literally the same one as the one with the same name and paint job that they bought lunch from sometimes if Kate was at Pearl visiting NCIS, or whether it was two-truck 'empire'). But she'd been grateful to Chang for sharing the picture with her, not having known Kate had been looking at her like that then and loving having that particular image in a photo, since usually, whenever Lucy did see her girlfriend looking at her that softly, rather than reaching for her camera, Lucy just reached for Kate.

But either way, she was not putting up with some dumb Marine's homophobia, officer be damned.

"... that's Bug…I mean Katie."

"Excuse me?" Holding her hand out for her phone, Lucy was confused. It was coincidence right? That he'd just said her girlfriend's name, almost. "What did you say?"

"My apologies Ma'am." Shaken by the likeness, but feeling rather foolish, he tried to brush it off as he passed the phone back to her. "No offence was intended."

"Yes, fine, but what did you call her?"

"Katie Ma'am." He assumed that she'd expected him to be crude or crass given it was clear from the photo that it was not a picture of sisters, or friends, but could only be a photo showing the blonde deeply in love with the NCIS Agent stood in front of him, and given said Agent had picked the image as her lock screen, the love was welcomed and reciprocated. "She just reminds me of someone I knew." He felt like he was a raw green recruit in front of the drill instructor at OCS during that first few weeks when he'd get his lefts and rights mixed up, attracting all the wrong sort of scrutiny, making him ramble. "Little sister of a buddy of mine…but I apologise for the intrusion, and collision, Ma'am." 

He could feel the sweat beads forming on his brow, starting to taste the bile rising as his guts twisted, the sudden cascade of memories catching him unprepared. He knew it couldn't be her, couldn't be anything but a coincidence that he needed to box away until he could get to his bunk and remember for a moment in private.

"I understand, and thank you." Lucy ran her thumb down the screen, confirming the screen wasn't cracked. Now calmer, over both her initial shock at the collision and her fear she was about to have to put a homophobic Marine Officer in his place, she tried to fix his face in her mental filing system of people she'd now met. He wasn't as old as she'd expected from his voice or rank, and now she looked at him rather than his uniform and rank, she could have sworn she'd seen him before…not in person, but in a photo….and then it clicked into place, all of it, when she read his nametape. "Wait, you're Matt Winkler." The rank was wrong, and she wasn't clear why he'd ended up on the carrier given the only Marines sailing with them were Air Wing and she was certain that wasn't what he'd been doing in the photos Kate had shown her. "Tiggy."

He looked at her in shock, proving she was right, which in retrospect was a relief, as otherwise she would have ended up on the wrong side of a rather insulted Marine Officer which was probably career limiting.

"And you think she's…" Lucy turned on her phone screen again, showing him the picture, effectively giving him permission to have a proper look. "... Katherine Whistler, Noah Whistler's little sister, who he called…"

"Bug. I mean Katie." He nodded, his voice breaking with the emotions that were building as, a second or so behind Lucy, he put the puzzle pieces together. "You know Katie?" It was a dumb question, considering the photo, but his brain was stalled, awaiting a reboot as Noah would say in his easy going, light hearted but not remotely judgemental or patronising way.

"Kate, she…" Lucy skipped over explaining that 'Katie' had hurt too much after Noah died, so Katherine became Kate or Whistler for a decade, only responding to Katie again because trying to ask Cara not to use it meant sharing Noah with her, which Lucy knew Kate had never done. "...hi!" She stuck out her hand, getting a brief flashback to the FBI barbecues. "I'm Lucy Tara, Kate's girlfriend and I should probably try not to call you Tiggy again?"

"Are you sure I'm doing the right thing?" worried Lucy, leaning towards her NCIS tablet, watching Tennant move around her kitchen preparing something that Lucy didn't recognise but could tell it was going to be tasty. "Kate isn't good with surprises."

"Noted." Jane added a pinch of something to the pot she was stirring. "That does surprise me actually," she added, smiling at Lucy as she came back to where she'd propped up the tablet, picking up her drink which she'd left next to it. "She's rather good with them at work."

"That's Whistler," said Lucy decisively, her face then immediately softening as her worry returned. "This is Kate." As far as Lucy was concerned, that explained everything, and to Jane's slight surprise, she saw that it made sense to her as well. It was Kate who came round to see how she was doing after Maggie, Kate who understood disappearing so deep into your own thoughts and head that you lost the map and needed a friend to lead you out again. Whistler, DIA Officer Whistler certainly, probably just expected the map be superglued to your hand.

"Which is why she's going to meet, Matt is it?" Jane had said a brief hello to Major Winkler a few minutes ago, so everyone knew who was who, though she'd just been introduced as 'Jane, who's Kate's closest friend in Hawaii' and left her job out of it. Seeing Lucy's nod as confirmation she'd remembered his first name correctly, she continued. "Who you are going to introduce to her by saying that you have made a friend…" The warning was spontaneous, but she had a sudden recollection of Kate's distress when she'd told Jane that Lucy was 'seeing someone' already. Her relief when Jane had explained Ernie's intervention with the Kahuna recommendation had been such that Jane wanted to shake Lucy for her poor phrasing. "...you are not to use the word 'someone'." Clearly as part of their reconciliation Kate had told Lucy how much that 'someone' had hurt the already bruised and battered blonde, as Lucy winced and nodded. "And then you're going to suggest that this new friend of yours is already a friend of hers and then it's up to Matt."

"Yes but she's expecting to have dinner just with you! Even me being on the phone’s going to also be a surprise…" 

"Which I will handle Lucy," said Jane calmly, further confirming that Lucy's plan was a good one. "And will be right here so she's not on her own after she's met Matt again. I'm not you, but I'll do my best."

"Thank you." Lucy glanced up and waved in someone. "Matt's back, so I'm going to let him get set up here…" Lucy glanced around her small office, not the best environment for an emotional reunion after, based on Matt's guess, fifteen years, but pretty good considering the circumstances. Aircraft carriers she was discovering, didn't have much in the way of private spaces. "...can I call you on your phone?"

"Of course." Jane unplugged it from the charging cable as she acknowledged Matt’s wave as he sat down in front of the tablet Lucy had set up on her desk. Muting her end, Jane continued to add the last of the ingredients to the gently simmering pot which would be dinner for her and Kate after the end of the call, whenever that may be. A minute later, she answered her phone, starting the video call with Lucy. “All set?”

“He’s set up with his headphones at the desk, I’m…” Lucy turned her phone around so Jane could see she was leaning against the wall on the far side of the small office, her own headphones on. It wasn’t total privacy for Matt - this was the NCIS office after all, but it did ensure that Lucy was near enough to be brought into the call if he or Kate wanted her to be included, but far enough away that Matt and Kate could reconnect without distraction. And, best of all, far enough away that no one’s eardrums ruptured with sudden feedback.

“I always forget how small those offices are,” mused Jane, as much to fill the silence and hopefully settle Lucy’s nerves as anything.

"How's Kate?"

"She's fine." There'd been an edge to Lucy's question that Jane had nearly missed, one that suggested the question had more riding on it than time filling. "What's on your mind?"

"Kai. He's…." Lucy trapped her lip in her teeth, confidence replaced with nerves for bringing up her fellow agent with the SAC. "....sounding very intense, with this AJ stuff."

"He's taken it personally," agreed Jane cautiously, mentally reviewing his demeanour after he'd talked to Whistler earlier in the week. "Which is why it's better it's FBI, even if it wasn't RICO." She paused, considering Lucy on screen, sensing she was still struggling and guessing it was because of something Kate hadn't said. "What's Ernie told you?" Bingo, that question scored a hit but it wasn't a jackpot winner yet. "About what Kai's told him?" Almost, but she could see Lucy was still conflicted between loyalty to her friends and colleagues versus her love and concern for Kate. "Because Kate's deliberately not told you, presumably because of not wanting to put you in a spot?" Now that was the jackpot. They were really going to have to work on Whistler's propensity to designate herself the sacrificial lamb without consulting anyone.

"AJ put up money to help Wally's, not long before Kai came back."

"Disappointing, but not entirely unexpected." So far, all Jane could see was an extra reason for having it handled by another Agency. "But?"

"Kai asked Ernie to double check what Kate had shown him."

"Double check as in review the file note?" Jane had a sinking feeling that she already knew what Lucy was going to say.

"As in get the IRS records." Lucy pulled herself up straight, her indignation ironing out any slouch. "Ernie refused."

"I will talk to him."

"Ernie?"

"Him too, to say thank you for not agreeing although he should have told me. But I meant Kai."

"He shouldn't doubt her."

"I'm sure he doesn't…"

"It's Whistler! You know she'll have been pacing the hallway, practising what she was going to say. And she'd only be saying anything because she'd triple checked first. And was probably already bending a rule even telling him."

"I know. And I'll talk to him."

"Thank you. And you won't say anything? About me asking…to Kate I mean. About me talking to you, about Whistler stuff?"

"I won't say anything to Kate." Jane sipped her drink as she gave the pot a final stir, then turned the heat down. "Whistler stuff?" She gave Lucy her full attention. "And you called her Whistler."

"You know I call her Whistler."

"Yes, at work." 

Lucy sighed, knowing she owed Kate dinner, having bet that the reason they'd not had to explain this to Jane was because she'd worked it out for herself, unlike the others who'd needed an explanation. Kate though, had been firmly of the view that Jane hadn’t noticed yet, since when she did hear their relationship mentioned, it was usually by Kate, not Lucy.

“And about work.” Lucy shrugged. “I can’t explain it, there are just times when it’s a Whistler sort of thing? Like that’s when…when we both know that if we’re getting frustrated or annoyed, it’s because it’s FBI or NCIS stuff, not us stuff you know? But it’s more…I mean, it’s not like when you call someone by their full name because you’re mad at them.” It was a little bit like how they called Jane ‘Tennant’, but not entirely, as they all called her ‘Jane’ at times, both in and out of work.

“Hi, the front door…” began Kate, clearly having had time to stop by her own apartment and change, as gone was the silk blouse and pencil skirt, replaced with plain navy t-shirt, dark jeans and some very 'un-Whistler' battered Converse.

“...was open," finished Jane, smiling warmly at the blonde's predictable opening, Hawaiian hospitality still in permanent conflict with Kate's mainland manners, saving her also having to try and unpick a logic that made little sense to her, but clearly made sense for Kate and Lucy. "She's here,” she added, somewhat redundantly as she turned the phone around in her hand to allow Lucy to see Kate had arrived.

“Damnit Kate!” Hearing her girlfriend’s voice had Kate twisting around as she remained bent down, unlacing her shoes, not expecting to hear Lucy. “You know how I feel about your ass in those jeans.”

“Umm, Luce…” Red in the face, Kate abandoned her shoelace and toed off her left shoe as she turned to face an amused Jane, who was holding her phone out for Kate to take, clearly not prepared to have any part in this conversation.

“Shit, I said that out loud?” Seeing Kate’s nod, Lucy’s groan was audible through the phone’s speaker, making Jane chuckle, attracting Kate’s attention and, if possible, increasing her mortification level.

“You just reminded me why my OBGYN encouraged me to start surfing when Daniel and I were trying for Julie.” Seeing she’d lost her audience, perhaps unsurprising given neither of them had gone through labour, Jane elaborated. “Gets the muscles in shape for pregnancy and labour.”

“I…” Kate was lost, but Lucy was there.

“Boss!” Her indignation confused Kate further. “You’re not wrong…” Lucy lost herself for a second in a very happy memory of feeling how toned and strong her girlfriend’s glutes and thighs were from surfing, only to snap back to the present fast. “...but stop checking out Kate’s…”

“Luce!” Kate cut her off, finally catching up, before then shooting her own look at Jane, who was looking so innocent Kate decided there was probably one or several stories there to revisit sometime, once both had consumed enough liquid courage obviously. "Are you ok?"

"Me? Fine, totally fine." Lucy's answer, extra bright sounding, had Jane wincing as she turned away from Kate to both top up her glass and check in with Matt, who based on the thumbs up and grin, was amused by Lucy's end of the conversation which he could hear since taking his headphones off, ready to hear his introduction. It really was, in retrospect, a miracle they got Lucy in and out of her undercover poker game alive given her inability to act ‘normal’.

"Luce…" Kate wasn't buying. "...are you hurt?"

"Only my elbow." Lucy put her hand over her mouth when she heard what she'd said.

"What happened to your elbow? And when?" Kate had been having a chat with Lucy (not video) while she'd been at the apartment changing, so either Lucy had hurt her elbow in the time it had taken Kate to get her ride across town or Lucy had managed to deliberately avoid mentioning it earlier.

"Umm, when is…" Lucy was really struggling with the impact the international date line was having on her calls with Kate, since she was almost an entire day ahead of her.

"Use meals and sleeps Luce," reminded Kate patiently, having been trying to work out a solution to this problem since Lucy landed in Singapore.

"Oh, right! Umm so no sleeps and between lunch and dinner. Next sleep is in about an hour." Assuming that the imminent surprise didn't explode on them and she ended up with a distraught Kate who she had to rely on Jane looking after.

"What happened?" Kate looked up at Jane when she heard her name, nodding a 'yes please' when she saw the tequila bottle in her hand.

"So I was in the line for an after lunch coffee. A reward for not only not getting lost, but actually using the direct route to everywhere today, and not by accident!"

"That's awesome." She looked a bit confused, almost hurt however, though Lucy rushed on, knowing why.

"And I didn't tell you about that earlier, because then I'd tell you about the coffee line and my elbow and none of that's important because what is important is that I was there, in the line, at the moment of KaBOOM."

"KaBOOM?" Kate took the glass Jane held out, so focused on what was an alarming word to hear given Lucy was on an aircraft carrier, that she didn't notice Jane was holding her tablet. "What went KaBOOM?"

"Me. Well not me, obviously, but my elbow, into the wall and l…"

"Bulkhead," corrected Kate automatically, getting her a glare for the interruption. "Shutting up."

"So my elbow hits the bulkhead and my phone flies across the compartment because a mountain-sized Marine fell down the ladder into me."

"And you went KaBOOM? With your elbow?"

"No, that was just a bang. My brain and heart went KaBOOM because the Marine picked up my phone as Tennant messaged me and he saw your photo and…" Not sure how else to explain things, Lucy began to turn her phone around, forgetting about the camera being switchable, just as Jane worked out this was as good a moment as any to take her tablet off mute and hold it up for Kate to see the screen. "...look who hit me."

"I did not hit!"

"Fell onto then."

"Tiggy?" Kate's voice was barely loud enough for Jane to hear, nevermind Matt via the tablet, but he was a pretty good lip reader.

"Hey Bug. I'm…" He'd spent all afternoon, since Lucy had suggested they might take advantage of the night in port for emergency maintenance to call Kate with Jane's support, wondering what he'd say, thinking about what he wanted her to know. But of course, the moment he saw her, that all went out the window as words became almost impossible to push out past the lump in his throat. "...I'm so sorry. I tried…"

"To visit? I guessed." Kate took the tablet from Jane, not noticing how her friend reclaimed her phone from slack fingers. "I'm sorry they pushed you away.". She sighed, smiling sadly as she realised what he'd called her, leaning back against the counter, her legs feeling wobbly. "I haven't been called Bug since…since he was hugging me at the airport, flying out to meet up with his Unit."

"Shit, I'm sorry, Lucy told me you preferred Kate now…"

"I don't mind. Actually I liked it, Bug I mean." She looked at him with what Jane recognised as a fairly fierce Whistler glare. "But Lucy's right, not Katie please." That was a Cara complication they did not need revisiting. "I can't believe…" She looked at him in wonder, not noticing her tears. "...today of all days."

"I know."

"What's today?" asked Jane quietly, having stepped through to the balcony to give Kate some privacy, but not before hearing the tremble in Kate's voice. She held up her finger to Lucy on screen, needing a moment while she grabbed an abandoned pair of earbuds Julie had left on the table, plugging them into her phone and popping one in her ear. "Sorry, I'm out on the balcony now. What's today?"

"Noah's birthday."

Present - Tennant's house (dinner and drinks continue)

“Wait, so this Major Wrinkle…”

“Winkler,” corrected Lucy, rolling her eyes at Jesse’s predictable mangling of Matt’s name. “Matt Winkler.”

“So this Matt guy, he crashes into you…” He points his spoon at Lucy to make it completely clear who ‘you’ is, in case there was any doubt as to which one of them was on the aircraft carrier being crashed into by Marines. “...and turns out to be your…” The spoon moved to point to Kate. “...brother’s best friend?”

“In the Marines, yes.”

“Huh.” Jesse slumped back in his chair, trying to work out the odds of that happening, given the Marines were not exactly small in number.

“It’s not as weird as you’d think.”

“Being thrown against a wall by a Marine?” asked Ernie, thinking this sounded way weird enough.

“Meeting guys you knew on aircraft carriers.” Seeing he had everyone’s attention, Kai reached for his beer and provided his ‘evidence’. “Happened to me too.”

“No way.” Jesse tossed his beer cap in Kai’s direction, not prepared to accept it was that common.

“Yes.” Kai turned his attention to Kate and Lucy. “Matt, he was part of the Air Wing?”

“Yeah, never quite worked out what he did, but he had one of those coloured vests in his office.” Lucy and the flight deck had only really got on well when they’d been in port and aircraft operations were suspended - the rest of the time, assuming there was a break in flying which allowed for non-aviation personnel to have access, the whole ‘being in the middle of the thing she hated the most’ without there even being a rope line around the edge was a sufficient deterrent.

“Your brother, he wasn’t Aviation?” guessed Kai, given what he knew about Captain Whistler’s death.

“No.” He’d been Intelligence, but that wasn’t something Kate volunteered, not that she had much practice talking about Noah over the years. Still, she caught on to Kai’s point, and was grateful he was seemingly prepared to complete the explanation for the others, if she could provide enough of the details for him. “Noah and Matt were put next to each other on day one of ROTC. Whistler and Winkler.”

“That will see you either want to throw the guy out the window or stand up for him at his wedding.”

“Which were you?” asked Kate, recognising how he described the relationship.

“So far? Two weddings and no windows.” He chuckled at her look of surprise. “I was in dorms.” Some things were universal in terms of the experience of serving in the Marines, and some? Like all branches of the military, there were times when the officers’ way of life was rather different to their enlisted counterparts. “Not everyone knows their specialty when they start basic training, even those that think they do might not get it. Easy to lose touch if one of you’s headed for Aviation and the rest are not.”

“But aircraft carriers are places where aviation and non-aviation specialties can mix up again,” concluded Lucy, recalling some of the stories Matt and his friends had shared and recognising what Kai had clearly also experienced. "Anyway, he's the friend that persuaded me to go snorkelling." She saw Jesse's 'I don't get it frown' starting to form. "Mostly because there wasn't anything else to do and he made an excellent point about Christmas presents."

"What's Christmas got to do with it?"

"That's when I snorkelled."

"Christmas Day?"

"Yup." Lucy popped the 'p' as she answered Ernie's question.

"And the presents?"

"Were lovely," said Kate, with just enough of a hint of her 'DIA Officer Whistler' voice that no one felt bra

ve enough to ask for any more details, causing Jane to smile behind her glass at how understated Kate's response was now compared to Christmas Day.

Chapter Text

Flashback to Christmas Day, Tennant House

"Mmm, that was lovely, thank you." 

"You're welcome, thank you for joining me." Jane pushed aside her own empty plate and reached for her glass.  She'd invited Kate to join her at any point on Christmas Day, uncertain of her plans but knowing that she'd already declined both Kai and Jesse's invitations to join their families.  Jane had too, not sure she wanted the chaos of a multigenerational celebration when her own kids were not there, but celebrating their half brother's first Christmas with Daniel.  "How was your day?"

"Good." Kate's smile was bright and easy, surprising Jane a little, as she knew Kate had been dreading it a bit, missing Lucy.  "I went snorkelling with Lucy."

"Huh?" That would explain Kate's evident happiness, but made no sense.

"Well, we were both in the ocean together…" Kate reached for her own glass of wine, taking a sip while she tried to order events into a succinct explanation that would make sense.

"Hey!" Sitting on her surfboard, feet hanging off the sides as she drifted in the shallow water of a calm cove, Kate couldn't stop the big grin that seeing her girlfriend prompted.

"Happy Christmas!" Lucy blew a kiss at her phone, ignoring the groans and playful barf noises coming from Matt and Freddie, though she couldn't stop the chuckle when the immediate follow up shriek and splash suggested Tima had exacted some well timed revenge on Freddie on her behalf. "Is that a new bikini?"

"A Christmas present from someone ." Kate held the phone further away from her, letting Lucy hopefully see the new bikini, one that Kate would never wear for actual surfing but was certainly very lovely for less energetic activities like floating around on her board, video-calling on Christmas Day morning with Lucy. "Thank you."  

"It's me who should be thanking you," sighed Lucy, drinking in the sight of her beautiful girlfriend, skin golden from the light tan living in Hawaii was giving her, plus the warm mid morning sunshine that made her blonde hair shimmer, the water sparkling around her. "As it was an entirely self-indulgent purchase. You're beautiful." As expected, the compliment had Kate immediately blushing and ducking her head, her shyness emerging.  "So, um, I guess you're wondering why I asked to call you at this crazy time of day here?"  It was a moderately sane 11am on Christmas Day for Kate, but for Lucy in Guam it was coming up to 7am, just after dawn, on December 26th.

"A little, and that I be here," admitted Kate, angling her phone so Lucy could see the quiet, calm water that was rather more suited to stand up paddle boarding than surfing.

"Because umm, I want to take you snorkelling."

"Excuse me?" As she spoke, Kate saw the Lucy on her phone screen get smaller as clearly someone, Matt most probably, was now holding the phone a couple of arms lengths from Lucy, enabling Kate to see… "You're in the water!"

“I am.”  Admittedly, at the moment she was still just standing in shallowish water - much to everyone’s amusement, it came up to hers and Tima’s hips (confirming they were the two shortest members of the ship’s company) but was barely ‘mid thigh’ for Matt and Freddie.  “Flippers are weird.”  Lucy was frowning as she looked down at her feet, already in the oversize rubbery flippers.  “Walking in them is hard.”

“Yeah.”  Kate was still in dazed shock, trying to wrap her head around what she was seeing.  “Wait, is that your favourite Cowboys sleep-shirt?”  The long-sleeved, navy blue crew necked t-shirt had been one of the first things of her own clothes that Lucy had put out to pack, after she’d taken her girlfriend’s soft green striped hoodie, two of her tank tops and the pale blue zip up hoodie that was like wearing the fluffiest cloud ever.  There would also have been at least three items of FBI logoed clothing, but Kate had carefully pointed out that would be potentially confusing given Lucy was the NCIS Agent Afloat, a point Lucy had reluctantly had to agree with.

“Yup.”  Lucy looked down at herself, then back up to the phone camera.  “None of the rash tops fit me as well as this does and I do not want a sunburnt back.”

“But you…”  Kate was about to say that Lucy had a lovely, lightly tanned back from lying out and reading her book while Kate surfed and swam during the weekend they’d spent in a beach house for Lucy's birthday, about a month before she went away, when she checked herself, spotting what was different this time.  “...oh, right.”  Then, she’d been delighted to take great care in ensuring that every millimetre of Lucy’s skin was properly covered with sun cream, something that she didn’t want anyone, not even Matt, helping Lucy with now.  "I should have given you one of my surf sprays." Kate had an aerosolised sun block she could spray on, enabling her to protect her back went she went surfing without needing to wake Lucy for help with sun cream.

“Mmm." Lucy was momentarily distracted by her memories of applying suncream to Kate, then refocused, hoping everyone just assumed her pinking cheeks were from the rising sun.  "So, you want to come snorkelling with us?” asked Lucy, before she lost her nerve, holding up the snorkel mask she was holding.

“Sure, just, how are we going to do this?  And who’s us?”  Kate could probably guess, but wanted confirmation in case she was about to meet someone new, never underestimating her wonderful girlfriend’s ability to get on with people.

“Tima is one of the cooks, who went looking for Lucy the second day she was aboard.”

“Case?” asked Jane, topping up Kate’s glass, enjoying the story so far as much for how animated and happy Kate looked as she retold it.

“No.  She’d heard a rumour the new agent was ‘tiny’ and, as the current holder of the ‘shortest aboard’, she wanted to see if she could transfer her title to Lucy.”

“Oh.”  Jane had been witness to people describing Lucy as short or small, and generally it didn’t go all that well for the one who pointed it out.  “How’d that turn out?”

“They hit it off immediately, and Tima was really great at showing Lucy the couple of tricks she needed to know for the things where otherwise, their height was a problem.  Freddie is Tima’s friend and one of the on-board divers.”

“Friend?”  Jane resisted actually miming the air quotes, but you could hear her scepticism.

“Lucy says they’re like siblings at the moment when they’re on board, faultless professionally but it’s Tima’s last deployment before she’s done and is going with him wherever he gets as his next shore based posting."  Kate smiled, remembering Matt explaining the extra details he knew when she’d had a call with him a week or so back and mentioned Lucy telling her about them.  “According to Matt Tima had declared ‘anywhere that needs a Navy Diver has a kitchen that needs a fry cook.”

“She has a point.  Does Freddie agree with this plan?”  Jane had worked out she’d seen Freddie and Tima in a group photo Lucy had sent her and Kate a week or so back, only at the time she’d not appreciated their significance, focusing instead on Lucy, relieved to see her agent looked well and generally to be thriving in her new environment.

“Apparently Freddie’s had an engagement ring with him, ready for the minute they’re ashore at the end of the tour.  And no.”  She raised her finger, anticipating Jane’s reaction.  “Lucy and I are in a great place, but she only moved in a couple of months before you shipped her out and I’m not proposing the minute she’s back.”

“But you are proposing?” asked Jane, rolling her eyes at the familiar blame assigned to her for Lucy’s absence, knowing it was not a genuine grudge.  She knew Kate understood that the Agent Afloat positions were assigned by NCIS Headquarters, although as the SAC covering the Pacific Fleet, she did technically get a veto if she had a real issue with one of their appointments.

“No!”  Kate started to panic.  “I mean, I love Lucy and can’t imagine my life without her but…”

“Kate.”  Jane realised she’d inadvertently triggered her friend spiralling, which hadn’t been her intention.  “Whistler!”

“What?”

“I was teasing.”  Jane saw Kate visibly deflate as some of the nervous anxiety and tension left her shoulders.  “Daniel panic proposed twice before the one I accepted.”

“Panic proposed?”

“Mmm.”  Jane took a generous gulp of her wine, deciding it was only fair given how she’d startled Kate, that she share the details.  “First one was the night before I was leaving for six months.”

“Before or after the final orgasm?”

“Before mine, after his.”  Jane laughed at Kate’s wince and muttered ‘oh, right, straight sex’.  “I heard that!”

“And the second? Proposal I mean, not orgasm.”

“Ten minutes after I’d landed.  And, no, no orgasms involved with that one.”

“Yet it was a panic proposal?”

“His exact words were ‘oh thank goodness, now you’re here you can come with me to the Annual Dinner.  Better yet, marry me?  Then I’d never have to let Tanya down gently.’”

“Tanya?”

“His Mom’s leading ‘nice girl next door’ contender for him.”

“Nice.”  Kate’s face showed her scepticism.  “And no, before you ask, neither of us panic proposed before she went, nor are either of us planning to propose on her return.” She side-eyed Jane when she cleared her throat.  “And orgasms were simultaneous and multiple.”

“Show off.”

“Nope.”  Kate sipped her drink, waiting for her moment when Jane was about to sip from her own glass.  “Just gay and talented.”

There was a brief pause while both collapsed in a mix of coughing and laughing, before finally a truce was mutually agreed on and they returned to their original topic of conversation, namely who Lucy’s friends were.

“Tima and Freddie sound cute, add in Matt?” guessed Jane, knowing he and Lucy were getting on brilliantly by all accounts.  “That’s a curious grouping.”  A senior Marine Officer, a Navy diver and cook and the Agent Afloat?  That was definitely an unexpected group going ashore together.

“Freddie is Matt’s cousin.”  Kate had asked Lucy the same question, having read the Navy regulations the first week Lucy was away, wanting to have a better understanding of the environment Lucy would be living in as well working in.  “So weirdly, the only rumour they’ve had to deal with about them all is Matt and Lucy being a thing.”

“Oh boy.”  Jane took another sip of her drink, hiding her smile as she imagined how such a suggestion would go down with Lucy.

“Indeed.”  Kate had been mortified when she heard Lucy’s animated retelling of how she’d shoved her phone screen under the XO’s nose when he’d brought it up, asking him if ‘that looked like someone who would be interested in a big male lump of a Marine?’, her Texasness dialled up to about a twelve out of ten.  "Fortunately by the time the XO asked her about it, Matt's CO had already had a word, though Matt hadn't explained how and why he and Lucy became such close friends so quickly."

"Because that would out Lucy and bring up your brother." Jane had been at NCIS just as the whole 'Don't Ask Don't Tell' half assed compromise had been lifted and there no longer being a restriction on military personnel being not straight, but she also knew that for some more senior officers, that discipline of not asking or telling was still deeply ingrained.  "I should have talked to her…" Jane knew Lucy well enough to see how stilted reticence, borne out of years of only being able to support their not-straight staff by being scrupulous in not raising anything that could create any opportunities for others asking or worse, individuals telling, could be now misconstrued as homophobia and intolerance.

"We did." Kate sipped her wine, missing Jane's surprise. "About it I mean. Both before she went and after she met Matt." Now she saw Jane's bemusement, clearly trying to work out how it even came up in conversation. "Noah served knowing I am gay, knowing too that talking too much about me was technically creating opportunity for someone to ask him if he was 'like his sister'." She sighed, looking up at the stars. "Sounds so strange now, thinking about how it was then, how even that had been described as progress."

"A lifetime ago," agreed Jane, thinking back to her CIA days. "Though without…" she cleared her throat rather than say a name, knowing Kate understood. "...in the cockpit, I can think of a couple of places I wouldn't have got out of."

"Ex Air Force?"

"Navy. She ended up outing herself on the stand, she had to defend herself against sexual harassment accusations.  Went from flying for the Navy to flying for the Company."

"Navy's loss," said Kate, raising a glass to this unnamed female aviator. "I made Noah promise not to put himself at risk because of me."

"Was he? At risk?" asked Jane carefully, aware talking about Noah was difficult enough, without layering on romantic relationships.

"I don't know, not sure even he knew," said Kate honestly. "I knew his high school and college girlfriends, all perfectly nice , exactly what our parents would be expecting, but…" She sipped from her glass, letting the evening breeze tickle her face with her hair for a moment. "...he always seemed more like the Noah I knew somehow, when he was visiting with Matt.". She shrugged as she looked at Jane. "Maybe there was something in it, certainly it was the only time I know of that my father has addressed me being gay."

"By telling your brother he mustn't mention it?" Jane tried picturing herself or Daniel behaving like that, finding it unimaginable, and making her even more certain that Kate deserved a supportive ohana now.  "Nothing to you?"

"No." Kate sipped her wine, resigned to the past being exactly that, over and done with. "I never asked Noah, or talked to Dad about why he brought it up, and it's too late for either of them to tell me.  And it doesn't matter. About Noah I mean, not telling me if there was something to tell. I just hope he felt loved."

Present continues 

"He sounds like a good friend," said Ernie quietly, understanding why Lucy had glossed over the details of how she'd felt suddenly inclined to go in the ocean without mentioning it at the time.

"He is," agreed Kate, smiling when Lucy slipped her arm around her waist, wordlessly knowing this was still not the easiest topic for Kate to talk about, knowing too that Kate had not wanted Lucy to keep her ocean adventure a secret from the team because of that.  "He was like another big brother as far as I was concerned, coming home with Noah when they had leave.  But we lost touch…" Kate could feel the genuine interest from her friends, and while she'd got to the point that, now Lucy and Jane knew how she'd lost touch with him, trying to explain herself was still too much, so she squeezed Lucy's hand under the table, wordlessly asking her to continue the story for her.

"He was on deployment when he learned what happened to Noah." They all worked enough cases involving active duty personnel to understand how it could take months for news about close friends' injuries or deaths to reach people, longer still for them to make contact with loved ones and family.  "When Matt finally got a chance to visit, Kate's parents were away and he'd never had contact details for Kate once she was at college.  He left a note but…" Lucy paused, trying to work out if she needed to explain that Kate's parents had ignored it, unable to face meeting a friend of Noah’s and not seeing the need to let their daughter know about his attempt to make contact, before deciding that was a detail that could stay between Kate and her, though she suspected Jane knew parts of it.  "... anyways, y'all get to meet him soon enough."

"Yeah?"

"He's coming to the Air Base here in Hawaii in a couple of months," said Kate, finding her voice again. "It was a request he'd made before his assignment on the Reagan," she added, not wanting anyone getting the wrong idea about his motives. "His father was in the Navy and was based at Pearl when Matt was a teenager. He'd been hoping to get the opportunity to return for a few years now."

"Trip down memory lane," said Ernie, earning a grateful smile from Lucy that he wasn't asking too many questions, Lucy knowing him well enough to know he had several.  "And gets to meet us!"

"He surfs right?"

"Bro! He was a teenager here!" Kai, on behalf of all island raised teenagers, seemed offended by Jesse's question.

"He surfs," confirmed Kate, Lucy nodding.

"Did you…" Jesse's half asked question earned a prompt denial from Lucy.

"Me? Surf? Oh nnnnooooo, definitely not. Like I said, I floated, in the water, wearing a snorkel, for a few minutes."

"On Christmas Day?"

"Mmm." Kate's fingers had found their way underneath her shirt, their warmth against her lower back proving something of a distraction.  “Technically.  I mean, it was Christmas Day here still, but the 26th for me.”

"In Guam."

"Yes." Lucy narrowed her gaze, scrutinising Jesse for any clue as to where this questioning was headed.

"Santa hat?"

"Maybe." 

"Pictures or it didn't happen."

"Are you twelve?" asked Ernie, though he was curious, having not seen any himself.  “Wait, are there pictures?”

Wisely, Jane keep very, very quiet.

Flashback to Christmas Day - in the ocean in Guam and Oahu

"Can you hear me?" 

"Yes. But where'd you go?" asked Kate, paddling with her foot to turn her board back around so she was able to see her phone screen clearly in the sunlight. Although this was a very sheltered bay and there was barely any breeze, the gently coming in tide generated enough motion that she needed to make some attempt to keep herself in the right place relative to the sun.

"Here!" Lucy reappeared on the screen, waving. "You're now in a waterproof bag with floats."

"I am?" Kate was, for a split second, about to look down at herself to check out her supposed wardrobe change but caught herself in time. "Oh, your phone is now in a waterproof case." That seemed like a sensible decision given Lucy was in the ocean.  Hers was, and had been since she got out of her car.

"With floats." Kate bit her lip to try and hide her amusement at how damn cute Lucy was as she, with surprising excitement considering where she was standing, again disappeared from the screen and temporarily blinded Kate with the sun as the phone camera tilted up to the sky. "Hi."

"Oh, hello…" Kate hadn't expected Lucy's face to reappear, slightly sideways on and framed by cascades of dark hair.  With the sun behind her at just the right angle to infuse Lucy's skin with a golden glow, she was breathtaking.  "Wait, how are you hearing me?" There were so many things she wanted to say, starting with how surely Lucy's skin could cope with the sun for one minute and therefore could she please take off that Cowboy's shirt and let Kate see her from that angle again but wearing whatever swimsuit or bikini she had on underneath, but she felt self-conscious enough saying that to Lucy, nevermind if anyone else could hear her.

"Waterproof Bluetooth earbuds." Lucy pushed some of her hair back, enabling Kate to see the little earbuds sitting in her ears that were identical to the ones Kate was wearing now, and that she normally wore when swimming.  She’d asked Kate to order her a set to bring with her, refusing to make any promises about actually going in the ocean, but figuring that it would probably be fairly windy and wet at times on the carrier and it would be better to have waterproof ones, just in case.  "I've been practising wearing them in the shower, so I know they fit. And get used to the sloshing."

"Sloshing? Oh, you mean the sound of the water."

"Yeah. But your voice is going to be a nice distraction."

"It is? I am?" Kate was confused - she still wasn't quite sure what was happening, and then Lucy turned the phone over and Kate went from seeing her girlfriend's face to seeing the flippers on her girlfriend's feet. "Ohhh, I see." The phone, in its waterproof case with the floats attached, was now face down on the surface of the water, enabling Kate to see the sandy floor that Lucy's flippered feet were standing on.  "Oh, that's cute." She spoke without thinking, seeing the small brightly coloured fish make a brief appearance as it swam out of a shadow, only to presumably detect Lucy's presence and quickly disappear.

"You told me this was a boring sandy bit!"

"I…"

"Not you, Freddie." Lucy clearly managed to find the right combination of taps on the earphones to mute the microphone, leaving Kate with a silent window into another part of the Pacific as she sat, floating on her surfboard.  It was quite funny really, watching Lucy's feet moving clumsily as she tried to stride through the water in pursuit of Freddie, her flippers slowing her marching progress and making the sand swirl as she towed Kate's viewpoint along with her. Clearly the phone case was attached to Lucy somehow.

Finally the waters calmed and cleared again, confirming that despite Lucy's accusations, she was actually in a 'boring sandy bit'. Looking around, finding Lucy's bit of sea a bit dull to study, Kate decided to reposition herself in the bay, seeing she'd drifted nearer to the family playing in the gentle waves lapping up onto the beach.  Spotting where she wanted to get to, allowing for plenty of safe drifting space so she could then focus on Lucy, Kate rolled smoothly onto her stomach so she was lying flat on her board. Feeling her phone in its own waterproof case trapped securely between her chest and board, knowing too that the case was tied into the board, she began to paddle herself to her chosen spot.

"Oooo, one of my favourite freckles! Shame I can't kiss it. KATE!"

Lucy's shriek had Matt, Freddie and Tima all launching themselves through the water to get the short distance to Lucy in record times. Matt, having been the nearest, arrived at Lucy's side in a second, looking over her shoulder at the screen, trying to work out what was happening.

"Splash… then…. roaring….can't see her!" said Lucy, starting to hyperventilate, gulping snatches of breath interrupting her speech as the panic took hold. This was a mistake, a bad idea. The ocean had Kate!

"She's ok, look…" Matt tried to get Lucy to focus on one particular part of the screen. "She's in control, see?" They watched together, Tima with an anchoring arm around her new friend's shoulders, Freddie behind her with Matt, as Kate's hand reappeared on the screen.

"I'm fine Luce."

"She's fine," said Lucy, feeling better for hearing her girlfriend, but wanting to see her. "You're fine? Really?"

"Absolutely," promised Kate, picking up her phone, still in its waterproof case fortunately, and angling the screen towards her so she was in view of the camera. "Bit wetter than I was…" She pushed soaking wet tendrils of hair back from her face, her grin demonstrating that she wasn't that bothered. "...guess we're now both in the ocean huh?" she teased, grateful for the protective presence of Lucy's, no, their friends, because Kate had got to know Freddie and Tima a bit as well.

"You're not on your board." Although she wasn't struggling to breathe as much now, Lucy's heart was still pounding, the shock lingering.

"No." Kate rested her chin on her forearm, which was holding onto her board, which she was now treading water next to. "I'm not right now."

"You fell off? You promised you'd be in safe water Kate!" Lucy's anxiety was returning, making Tima tighten her hug as Matt rubbed Lucy's upper arm in silent support.

"And I am, look." Kate, neither surprised nor fazed by Lucy's anxiety, tapped the phone screen to switch the camera around and began to kick out with her legs so she turned in a rough spiral, showing Lucy where she was.

"Oh, you're there." Lucy's shoulders relaxed a bit and her rib cage no longer felt like it had shrunk three sizes, only two sizes now she knew where Kate was, though right now she couldn’t remember the name of it. "That's even calmer water than here."

"I'm safe Luce, I promise," reassured Kate, mentally replaying her inelegant tumble from her board when she unexpectedly heard Lucy's breathy whisper like she was right by her ear. "I didn't mean to scare you."

"I know." Starting to feel a little bit foolish for her panic, Lucy tried to solve her new mystery. "Why did you fall off your board?"

"Can they hear me?" asked Kate, nodding to the screen, only to get her answer in the form of a wave and series of 'yups' confirming that at some point Lucy had pulled out her earphones. "It's her fault," said Kate, deciding that Lucy was sufficiently recovered from her shock to be liable for some of the blame.

"My fault?" Lucy's eyes were wide and round, trying to convince anyone and everyone she was innocent. "What did I do?"

"Talk. About freckles."

"Shit, I said that out loud?"  She could feel the eagerness radiating from Tima, wanting to know what exactly she’d said and tried to glare her into silence.

“Those pink cheeks ain’t from no sunburn.”  Glaring didn’t work.

“Oh, that freckle…”  Matt however, had been continuing to pay attention to the screen and watched as Kate, taking advantage of Lucy’s preoccupation with her own embarrassment, she’d used the time to get back onto her board.

“TIGGY!”  Kate’s glare as she picked up her phone and brought it close to her face was pure ‘Whistler’.

“Man she’s good.”  Freddie slapped his cousin on the back.  “You’re in the shit bro.”

“Wait, what did she call you?”

“Doesn’t matter.”  Matt tried to distract Tima from this new discovery.

“Yes, it does.”  He’d always claimed he didn’t have a nickname, something she’d found hard to believe, but Freddie hadn’t known of one either, so she’d let it slide.  “But that’s a powerful glare and the only thing going to make it clear is this one getting her snorkel on…” Tima really didn’t want to think about what this call was costing, but it was Christmas and one hell of a romantic present.

“Right, yes.”  Lucy’s reaction to seeing a ‘Whistler’ glare in all its potent glory, and what glory it was when it wasn’t being sent in your direction, had been to almost forget about snorkelling.  But she’d had this idea and made a plan, and if there was one thing that loving Whistler had taught her (and there were many, many things, not just one), but the one thing of particular relevance right now was that life could be amazing if you followed through on a well made plan.  And this was a very well made plan.  “Umm, you still alright with this?”

“Absolutely!  But you’re the only one that matters Luce.”  Kate knew a bit more about how Lucy thought her phobia had started, knew too how much of a challenge it was for her to even do the Agent Afloat position, and the fact that she’d spent the last however many minutes stood waist deep in the ocean?  That as far as Kate was concerned, was an immense enough win and a worthy end point if that was what Lucy wanted.  “Do you want to start with your earbuds?” suggested Kate gently, starting to see how she thought the plan was probably going to work, based on the bits and pieces Lucy had already shared.

“Oh, right.  Umm…”  Lucy looked around, before giving Matt her phone.  “...eyes up Marine,” she advised, in her best ‘Agent Afloat’ voice, grinning when he actually Ma’am-ed her as he took the phone, though based on how sheepish he immediately looked, perhaps some of his reaction was in anticipation of the ‘Whistler’ glare returning.

“It’s not the first time he’s seen that freckle,” observed Kate in an almost wistful voice, one that had Lucy pausing before she’d put her earbuds in, sensing this was something that Kate wanted Matt to remember too.

“It looked a little different…”  Matt held up his other hand in a ‘I come in peace’ gesture to Lucy, knowing what Kate was talking about.  “...Noah missed out on the freckles completely.  Apart from one.”  Matt pointed at a spot on his own chest, which for him was between his pectoral muscles, just about level with where his lowest rib connected with his sternum.  It was a spot, relatively speaking, that Lucy knew very well on her Whistler.  “Guess it was more of a birthmark than a freckle.”

“No, it was a freckle, same as mine,” said Kate with the certainty only a sister can have.  “Though he did have a birthmark too.”

“What? I never…”

“Same as yours?” asked Lucy, knowing Kate had mentioned previously that when Kate had been around 16 and Noah just 21 there had been a brief period when people meeting them together for the first time had sworn they had to be twins, so similar were the two.  It only lasted for about 6 months - partly because of when they were actually in the same place at the same time, and partly because Noah shed the last of his ‘boyishness’ and almost overnight started to look more and more like the man Lucy now recognised from the photographs of Captain Whistler she’d seen.

“Mmm.”  Kate knew Lucy knew where her birthmark was, but then it was covered up by all but the most revealing of underwear, and even then it was mostly covered by hair unless she’d had an atypically very extreme and comprehensive bikini wax.  Based on what she could remember of her pre-pubescent brother and her general awareness of adult males, she was certain that not only was Noah’s also equally hard to spot except under the most intimate of scrutiny, but she suspected that even in the moments of military ‘all guys together’ massed male nudity that was absolutely not remotely weird given how terrified they were of ‘the gays’ (and yes, that was an observation she made to Noah with her sarcasm voice) it would have been effectively invisible.

“Ah.”  She hit Matt on the arm, earning her a questioning look, before he realised she was gesturing to have her phone back, as she’d now put her earbuds in. “Do I need to hit him?”

“No, he was just…”   Kate thought back to the times she’d heard Noah talking about Matt, a moment suddenly coming to her that she’d genuinely not thought about in at least a decade, much to her surprise.  “...he taught Noah the basics of surfing.  Noah wrote to me about it, telling me how bad he was at staying on his board, but even worse, how bad he was at getting back on it.  Can you…”  She gestured to Lucy to take her earbuds out, wanting to check something with Matt.  “Hey Matt?”

“Yeah?”  Blinking, Matt refocused his attention on Kate and the screen, rather than the distant horizon and a memory from a day’s leave, not that dissimilar to today in some ways.

“It was the freckle?  That’s how you got Noah to learn how to slide back onto the board?”

“He told you about that?”

“Wrote.  Telling me how it was not a bit like snowboarding and I really should consider being a surf bum for a career.”

“Yeah.  He…”  He touched his chest again.  “...kept trying to muscle himself onto the board, rather than swim on.  I finally started holding the board and kept shouting at him when the freckle went above the board.”  He looked at a bemused Lucy, knowing that Freddie and Tima had little idea what he was talking about.  “If he was kicking his legs out and swimming onto the board, his ribs stayed level with the board.  If he pushed up…”

“...he’d go too high out the water and you’d see the freckle…” understood Lucy, having watched Kate surfing often enough to recognise some of her girlfriend’s movements and understand their significance.  Starting with getting back on her board if she slipped off it.  Admittedly though, she’d never been near enough to Kate when she did it to understand the significance of the freckle as a landmark reference for the technique.

“Yeah.”  He shrugged as he waited for Lucy to put her earbuds back in, not wanting to talk about it anymore, but glad that it was something Noah had shared with his sister.  He had good memories of that day, admittedly he never made Noah Whistler into a surfer, but they had a happy few hours of laughter in the sunshine, enjoying the water and some beers.  That it warranted telling Kate about?  That told him how much the day had meant to Noah, and that?  That was priceless and, whether or not they actually managed to get Lucy snorkelling, this day was now also priceless because of how it brought Noah back to him and Kate.

“He ok?” asked Kate, once it was just her and Lucy again, starting to recognise when she was just audible to Lucy from how Lucy was holding the phone and what she was hearing in terms of background noise through the earbud microphone rather than the phone’s inbuilt one.

“Yeah.  He’s gone to get the snorkels from the kayak.”  Seeing Kate’s eyebrow raise, Lucy looked a little sheepish and switched the phone camera for a second, enabling her girlfriend to see the final element of their plan.  “So, you know I don’t like the ocean.”  Kate nodded, refraining from commenting, sensing Lucy was trying to muster some momentum to get through her explanation of the plan.  “And you know why I don’t like the ocean.”  Another nod, Lucy grateful that Kate neither made her say it, nor reminded her of the reason.  “So we rented this kayak, and Freddie borrowed all the flags and things you’re supposed to have under maritime law when there are divers in the water.”  Lucy rubbed her nose, starting to feel some of the anxiety returning, but kept her focus on Kate’s calm, supportive smile, seeing her nod.  “Which of course you could probably tell me all about.”  Kate tilted her head, half nodded, opened her mouth as if she was about to start explaining them, then closed her mouth again and smirked, “Anyway…”  Lucy grinned, feeling a little smug that she’d correctly guessed this indeed was one of Kate’s areas of unexpected knowledge, and proud that her girlfriend was so freaking smart.  “...about twenty yards that way…”  She pointed in a direction, knowing it didn’t really matter to Kate which direction it was.  “...the reef starts and apparently it’s something worth seeing.”  Lucy took a deep breath, trying not to think about what she was saying in the context of things that she, Lucy Tara who hated the ocean, was about to do, willingly.  “So once the kayak’s set up with Tima on watch, Matt’s going to help me float over it wearing a snorkel and I’m kind of hoping you’ll maybe tell me what I’m looking at?  Cos you know about this stuff right?”

“Reefs?”  Seeing Lucy nod, Kate tried to send as many positive, loving ‘I’m proud of you’ thoughts through the screen, wishing she was there to cheer her girlfriend on in person for taking what was this truly monumental step, so proud of her for even getting to this point.  “I know some.”  

‘Some’ was perhaps an understatement as, in true ‘Whistler’ fashion, almost as soon as she’d arrived on the island to start her new job, Kate had also signed up with a local dive company to both get her scuba qualifications and learn about the marine environment that was both precious and fundamental to the culture and people of the islands she was going to try and call home.  That she signed up for it the same day she’d discovered ‘Lucy’ was also ‘Special Agent Tara’ and someone she’d be working with regularly was a total coincidence that had nothing to do with her remembering ‘Lucy’ admitting she was an ocean-hater, thus guaranteeing at least three hours a week that were Special-Agent-Tara-free.  Because there was nothing between her and the petite Texan, nothing but a holiday hook-up that had no relevance to their current professional proximity.  And she’d believe that right around the same time she’d accept that gullible was no longer in the dictionary.

“And that’s about it.”  Lucy bit her lower lip as she reviewed the plan her new friends had helped come up with.  “Oh, and Freddie.  He’s going to be underwater so I can see someone who’s ok all the time too.”  That was the final part - they’d gone through the senses, following a simple grounding technique to come up with ways Lucy could feel connected and anchored in the present.  “Touch is Matt’s hand, sight is Freddie being ok, sound and taste is you…”

“Taste?”

“Your lip balm on the mouthpiece.”  Lucy pulled a sulky looking face.  “Apparently there isn’t smell in water.”

“Not really,” confirmed Kate.  “Sounds like a good plan.”

“Yeah?  We’ve not missed anything?”  That was Lucy’s final condition to actually attempting snorkelling - she didn’t put the snorkel on until she’d run through the plan with Kate and it had received a ‘Whistler’ seal of approval.

“How’s Freddie going to be underwater?”  Kate knew he was a Navy diver - in one of the early group calls Lucy had organised to introduce her girlfriend to her friends, Kate and Freddie had ended up talking diving for a few minutes, but based on what she’d seen of them so far on this call, she didn’t think he’d be in full scuba gear.

“You’d have to ask him for the details, but he’s got a new gadget he wants to practise with.”  Lucy glanced over towards the kayak where Freddie was getting his new ‘gadget’ set up.  “Does tankless diving make any sense to you?” Lucy had asked the exact same question, and while she’d been given an answer, she couldn’t work it out even when he explained it, and googling it in front of Freddie seemed a little rude.  “I mean, how do you get the air if there isn’t a tank?”

“There is a kind of tank,” said Kate, immediately reassured, knowing exactly what Freddie’s new gadget was, having talked to him about it in that first conversation.  “But it’s on the surface, so it’s called tankless diving because the person who’s diving doesn’t have the tank with them underwater, just a long pipe back up to the surface.”  There was more to it than that, but Kate had learned to judge when to simplify and edit out details for her girlfriend, especially when it came to ocean related ‘stuff’.  “Think of it like a giant snorkel, with a little air pump at the surface end of it to help make sure the air gets all the way down the pipe to him.”

“Oh, that makes more sense.”  Lucy glanced over to the kayak, seeing Tima was sitting in it now, talking to Freddie who was in the water next to his gadget.  “I think I have to do this?” she asked Kate, her anxiety starting to return.

“I’m not going anywhere,” promised Kate, thinking back to that evening on the beach when they’d talked about Lucy going onto the Reagan in the first place.  “I love you.”

“I love you too my love.” Lucy blew a kiss at the screen, then turned the phone over, clearly about to put it face down on the water, wanting Kate to have the same ‘view’ she was about to have.

“Hey!”  Startled, Kate called out as her view shifted, seeing what Lucy was doing but having a bit of an issue.

“What?” asked Lucy, slightly testily - her girlfriend was the water baby, not the water crybaby.  That was Lucy’s role.  “I’m the one with the fear of the ocean here.”

“I know my sweet…” soothed Kate, appreciating that the testiness wasn’t personal, just a product of Lucy’s general anxiety.  “...but don’t you want to put the snorkel on first?”  Suddenly the phone was on the move again, as Lucy scooped it up from the water and turned it so she could look at Kate.

“I…”  Kate had to grin at Lucy being, so well, Lucy in that moment, as her mouth opened and closed, her finger raised and half pointed in Kate’s direction as she tried and failed to come up with a witty comeback.  “...you know, I might just do that.”

"How was it?" asked Jane, refilling Kate's glass, pleased to see how animated Kate was as she talked about Lucy, able to picture Lucy finally psyching herself up to go snorkelling and managing to forget the snorkel.

"Good. Brief." Kate sipped her wine before continuing her story. "I mean just a few minutes, but for Lucy that was…" She trailed off, trying to find the right word to describe the scale of achievement and pride she felt,  trying too to remember how much Lucy had said Jane knew about the underlying reason for Lucy’s fear of the ocean.

"Incredible,” said Jane simply, her pride in her junior agent evident.

“She is.”

“You both are.”  Jane just about managed to avoid rolling her eyes at her friend when she saw, and felt, the look of sharp shock Kate directed at her.  “Yes, you too.”

“But…”

“Nope.”  Jane held her glass out towards Kate, her index finger pointing to the FBI agent.  “You don’t get to dismiss yourself from this.”  She waited, refusing to relax her position until she saw the resignation and acceptance of defeat in her friend.  She might not have won the war that Kate insisted on having with the idea of her own importance in Lucy’s success at conquering her fear and growing in confidence as an agent, but Jane was pleased that she’d at least been able to win this particular small battle.  “You know what happened, with water.”

“Are you asking me or telling me?”

“Kate…”

“Yes, I know what happened.  Do you?”

“Bits.  Probably not as much as you, and no, that wasn’t me asking you to tell me.”

“I wouldn’t.”

“I know.  My point,” Jane looked pointedly at Kate, her meaning clear - would you shut up long enough for me to finish?  Based on Kate’s sheepish expression and small sip of wine, Jane decided she’d been ‘heard’ loud and clear.  “Is that doing this, going snorkelling, it was a big decision for Lucy.”  Jane saw Kate open her mouth to comment, then closed it again, nodding slightly.  “And she doesn’t think she’s good with big decisions.”

“She told you that?”

“Mmm.”  Jane drank some of her own wine, smiling at the memory.  “Repeatedly.  About how they make her sick to her stomach.”

“When?”

“When she was applying for Agent Afloat.”

“Oh.  Right.”  Kate’s mood deflated, reminded of the time when Lucy was so mad at her that she’d applied to work on the other side of the world on a boat floating in the middle of the thing she hates the most.  She’d not connected that knowledge with how Lucy coped with making big decisions until now - so not only had Lucy hated her, but her response to processing that hate had made her sick to her stomach too.

“And when I offered her the job here,” continued Jane, noticing Kate’s reaction but not letting it distract her from her originally intended point.  “And apparently when she decided to cut herself off from her father.”

“You knew her then?”  Logically, Kate knew the timeline didn’t fit, but Kate and logic weren’t that close right now, with her heart pounding and blood roaring in her ears as she tried to wait for Jane to make her point.

“No.  But she told me about some of it during her interviews and first weeks here.”  Jane had always wondered how much Kate knew of that part of Lucy’s life, but her curiosity never extended as far as asking either of them outright, though Kate’s reaction just now had her wondering once more how much Kate did or didn’t know, suspecting it was quite a lot.  “Mentioned it again when I was helping her with the Agent Afloat forms.”  That earned her a glare from her friend, accepting that there would always be moments, until Lucy was safely back on land, when Kate considered Jane to be a traitorous friend for helping Lucy apply and keeping it a ‘surprise’ for Kate.  “You know when she never mentioned it?”

“Hmm?”  Kate was still mostly in her own thoughts, trying to work out when during the difficult few months between Cara’s disastrous intrusion and her and Lucy getting back together Lucy was doing the application, and therefore almost missed Jane’s question.  “When she never mentioned being sick to her stomach?”

“When she never rambled about something being a big decision that made her sick to her stomach.”  That, Jane was amused and delighted to see, had Kate smiling, clearly fondly remembering times when Lucy had ‘rambled’.

“When?” asked Kate finally, once it registered that Jane’s question hadn’t ever been rhetorical.

“When she brought me the form updating her home address to your apartment.  Or when she brought me the form changing her emergency contact from me to you.  Or when she told me she accepted the Agent Afloat position.”  Jane cleared her throat, leaning back against the table to watch the stars emerging.  “Each time, I asked her if she was sure, just like I did the other times.  And you know what she said?”  Out of the corner of her eye she saw Kate shake her head, her perplexed expression confirming that this was something Kate hadn’t known about her girlfriend.  “When I was expecting a ramble about nausea, instead she just said ‘I’m sure Boss’.”  She turned and looked at Kate, smiling at the memory.  “I must have looked surprised, as every time she then immediately said ‘Really.  I talked it through with Kate.’”

“Oh.  Umm.”  Kate wasn’t quite sure what Jane’s point was, since they’d been talking about Lucy going snorkelling, which had been something she’d definitely not talked through with Kate, instead surprising her with it.  “Did she ever tell you how we ended up living together?”

“I might have heard something about a spreadsheet…” Jane’s voice had a light, teasing lilt to it that grew into kind laughter when Kate’s cheeks went pink.  “...but what matters is you both managed to talk about it and come to a decision.”  She reached over and wrapped Kate’s hand in her own.  “You both talked,” she said, squeezing Kate’s hand gently to emphasise her point.  “And I’m betting that before Lucy put the snorkel on, which I want to see a picture of by the way, you talked about it?”

“Yeah, she went through the plan she’d got with her friends.”  Kate smiled, thinking back to Lucy’s determined expression when she put the snorkel mask on, turning the mouthpiece away from her so she could say a final ‘I love you’ and threaten Kate if she didn’t keep up a constant monologue about ‘not-scary’ underwater stuff.  “Freddie made sure that by the time she got out onto the reef, pretty much everything was hiding, it was just rocks and coral.”  

Kate’s smile softened, thinking back to that quiet, tranquil view of an underwater world that she’d seen with Lucy, explaining how the coral was alive and that there was all sorts of things they’d see if they just gave them a minute or two to let them look at Lucy and work out she wasn’t scary.  It was, looking at the sunlit coral reef with seemingly no life around, watching Lucy and Matt’s shadows drift across the sea floor, about as far from Lucy’s imagined or actual nightmare as it was possible to get, which was kind of the point. 

“First thing to come by was a turtle - probably a teenager, as its shell wasn’t much more than a foot or so.  Then a couple of fish started to stand out against the reef, and then…”  Kate trailed off, not really wanting to explain how Lucy’s first snorkel session came to a sudden and abrupt halt when an octopus emerged from its hiding place, tempted by something it clearly considered suitable breakfast food.  The rapid flurry of movement as the octopus rushed to capture its food and the other fish darted away startled Lucy enough that she fell out of her stable floating position and was suddenly coughing and spluttering, mask and snorkel hastily removed as Matt and Freddie immediately supported her, making sure to keep her head above the water.  “...she liked the turtle.  And afterwards even brought up maybe watching Finding Nemo when she’s back.”  

Unsurprisingly, Lucy had point blank refused to entertain the idea of ever watching that movie, even calling it ‘ocean propaganda designed to corrupt children’ one particularly animated debate with Ernie.  But after her few minutes watching life on a reef, and her memory of a couple of hours spent in the water adjacent to a reef, with Kate promising to stay completely ‘present’ with Lucy during the movie, and plenty of snacks, pauses and kisses, she’d actually expressed a desire to watch the whole thing.  Kate had already bookmarked a tiny ‘Crush’ plushie, no bigger than Lucy’s palm, that Kate wanted to give her when she got back, thinking it might help Lucy to remember that not everything in the water was sinister or terrifying.  

“Julie loves that film.”  As Jane filed that piece of progress away, impressed with how far Lucy had come in terms of her relationship with the ocean, Kate instinctively reached for her phone when she heard the message alert, smiling when she saw it was a series of messages from Lucy.

“Mmm, it was one of the reasons Luce wants to try to watch it before any other ‘wet’ movies.”

“Wet?”

“Classics she’s been told she should see that she’s avoided.  Umm…”  Kate mentally sorted through the list Lucy had rattled off on more than one occasion, picking a few that would clue Jane in without being too much detail.  “...Moana, Jaws, Finding Nemo, Crimson Tide and The Hunt for Red October…”

“Quite the range,” agreed Jane, seeing the logic behind all of the movies.  “Only submarine movies?”

“No.  But we’re having a disagreement about some of the others.”  Jane’s smirk and raised eyebrow were ‘loud’ and had Kate sigh.  “She’s been told repeatedly to watch Pearl Harbour.  I want her to watch Tora! Tora! Tora! Instead.”

“I know which one I’d rather watch…” mused Jane, having seen both at some point or other, preferring the joint American-Japanese retelling rather than the Hollywood romance version.  “Why does Lucy want to watch Pearl Harbour?”

“She doesn’t.”  Kate’s cheeks were pink, this ‘debate’ actually stretching back as far as their original time together, before they even knew that both worked for DOD, Lucy just picking up on Kate’s outwardly serious demeanour and guessing she’d watched Pearl Harbour as part of her research ahead of her meeting in Oahu.  Before Kate could explain any further, she was saved by the sound of her phone receiving messages from Lucy as photos uploaded from the Reagan’s slow at sea wifi had finally arrived.  “Oh, here…”  Kate held her phone screen at a slight angle, making it easier for Jane to see the photos Lucy had sent through that the others had taken of her, starting with a grumpy looking Lucy stood in waist deep water, her dark t-shirt mostly dry, arms folded across her chest as she clearly became accustomed to the snorkel mask and mouthpiece.  “...wow, I did not know it was possible to look pissed with a snorkel in your mouth.”  Jane joined in Kate’s chuckles as the FBI agent swiped to the next photo, which showed a rather happier looking Lucy, hair and t-shirt wet as she stood, clearly returned to the relative comfort of the shallower water, holding her snorkel and mask above her head in triumph.

“I did not think I’d ever see her looking that happy in water,” added Jane, seeing the genuine grin on Lucy’s face.  “Or…oh.”  

She didn’t think she’d ever seen that much of her junior agent either.  

“She’s not lying when she says her life is work, gym and you.”

Chapter Text

Present - Tennant's house

“Oh, it happened,” said Lucy defiantly, mock-scowling in Jesse’s direction at his lack of faith, which she knew was him teasing her, not actually doubting her claim.

“And there are photographs,” confirmed Jane, smirking from behind her tequila glass.  “Including the Santa hat.”

“No there…”  Lucy stopped when she felt Kate give her a gentle squeeze, her eyes narrowing as she looked from her boss to her girlfriend, seeing the sheepish look of apology.  “...are not photographs for the group of that,” she amended, willing herself not to blush.  “I thought…”

“She was sitting next to me when you sent them!” protested Kate, unable to hold out when faced with the raised eyebrow her girlfriend was currently directing at her.  “And only the first one, with the Santa hat I mean.  Not the video.”  Kate winced when she realised she was probably just digging her own grave at this point.

“It’s a great photo Lucy,” assured Jane, her calm acceptance of the photograph’s existence easing Lucy’s nerves a little bit.  “And Kate’s right, we were sat there when you sent them.”

“Now I’m curious,” admitted Ernie, looking pleadingly at Lucy.  “It’s a huge thing!  Conquering your fear…”

“I wouldn’t go that far.”  Knowing he wouldn’t shut up now he knew there were photos, Lucy picked up Kate’s phone from where it sat on the table in front of them, holding it up in front of Kate’s face so it unlocked for her, then opened her photos.  Although they were also on her phone, she’d reached for Kate’s, knowing that her girlfriend had them saved in a folder, because yes, she was that organised and had all of her photos sorted into folders, unlike Lucy who just had them in a continuous timeline.  Well, most of them.  There were some that were filed in a folder, but that was more to do with being ‘Lucy’s eyes only’ than organisation.  Including the ones of Kate in her Christmas present bikini, which showed far more of Kate than her teammates were ever getting to see.  Because while the freckle was occasionally sighted by others, the birthmark? That was definitely Lucy’s eyes only.  

“There.”  She’d found the one she wanted, of her stood up in the water, her Dallas Cowboys t-shirt clinging to her, damp and uncomfortable, snorkel mask still firmly on.  “Proof.”

“Of snorkelling,” said Jesse as she turned the phone screen around so they could all see it.  “Not a Santa hat.  Or any hat.”  That fifth beer had kicked in, and Jesse’s ‘Dad mode’ was nowhere to be found, replaced now with ‘annoying big brother’ mode.  “Sun’s hot.”

“Yes, it was,” agreed Lucy as Kate moved her fingertip across the screen, scrolling to the photo she felt Lucy should show her friends.  “Oh, yeah.  I’d forgotten about that one.”  She turned Kate’s phone round so her teammates could see the screen.

“Very on-brand,” agreed Ernie, giving Lucy a thumbs up when he saw the photo of her stood, still in the water but it now only came up to just above her knees, arms folded as she stared down the camera.  The NCIS baseball cap and t-shirt, coupled with the badge and gun sitting low on her hips, could have made for an intimidating picture, were it not for the brilliant smile on Lucy’s face, her bare legs and the glorious setting with the sparkling water behind her making it clear it was an ‘off duty’ Lucy.  "Flippers are a nice touch."

It was one of Kate’s favourites, along with the one with Lucy stood in an almost identical pose, complete with badge and gun, though instead of the NCIS cap and t-shirt, Lucy was wearing a Santa hat and her bikini - apparently that had been Kate’s other Christmas present, and one she’d enjoyed very much - with Lucy’s general inability to sit still coupled with her loathing of water-adjacent environments, Kate didn’t get to see her girlfriend in a bikini all that often.  That was the one Jane had seen on Christmas Day, and one of several that the rest of the team weren’t seeing.  Because Jane was right - it was a photograph that clearly showed Lucy’s pride in her earning the right to wear the NCIS badge and gun, with the bikini also making it possible to see how hard Lucy worked in the gym.  That the photograph even existed - her hands on her hips in a ‘Wonder Woman’ type pose, biceps flexed and abs clearly defined and visible thanks to the very skimpy bikini?  That was all Kate, as without her girlfriend as the intended audience, Lucy would have never posed for the photo in the first place.

“That’s a hat,” agreed Jesse, giving Lucy a thumbs up, seemingly now forgetting his need to see a Santa hat photograph.  “I’m proud of you.”

“How’d you get your badge and gun to sit…”  Kai turned and looked sharply at Jesse, who had just not-entirely-playfully hit him.  “What?”

“No wonder you’re single.”

“What’s that got to do with it?”

“Never,” began Ernie, raising his glass in silent tribute to Jesse’s point, “and I mean never, ask a lady how she assembles her outfit.”

“But…”

“No.”  Jesse shook his head at a bemused Kai, who was either still too sober or too naive to just accept the wisdom from his elders.  “Trust us.  You do not ask these questions.  Especially when the lady in question is looking as fine as that.”  His brain caught up with his mouth, and he looked to Lucy with genuine apologetic terror at her possible reaction.  “No disrespect or offence.”

“Dive belt.”  She turned to her partner, grinning.  “None taken.  Thank you.”

“Huh?”  Now Kai was confused - he had Ernie and Jesse telling him off for asking, while Lucy had just given him the answer to his question.

“I mean, they’re not wrong,” she continued, taking pity on Kai.  No wonder Hina hit him so often, he really was a walking disaster when it came to women in a sisterly way, nevermind anything more. Pausing to lock Kate’s phone screen, she put it back down on the table in front of Kate, wanting to avoid any accidental oversharing of the bikini photos.  “Bit overkill applying it here, but definitely don’t ever ask for details about an outfit in a date type situation.”

“She’s right,” agreed Kate, trying to ignore that, thanks to her phone, she now knew how late it was and worse, how soon her alarm would be going off in the morning.  Unfortunately, she couldn’t, and her general tiredness from an altogether completely surprising and unexpected day began to creep up on her in a way she couldn’t fight.  “Compliments only.”  She turned to kiss Lucy’s temple.  “And always true.”  The soft comment had Lucy’s smile ratchet up a notch and she somehow managed to tuck herself even more tightly into Kate’s side, missing the happy sigh Ernie made.

“Huh.”  This was new information for Kai, with Jane’s sage nod making him decide he should just accept it, even if he was still confused as to why it was such a big no-no to ask questions.

“I’m wearing a dive belt,” explained Lucy, confusing him further by actually answering his question.  “That’s what my badge and gun are on.”  It was more obvious in the photos where she was just wearing her bikini, but those were definitely for Kate’s eyes only.  As were the ones of her, without her badge and gun, muscling herself up out of the water and onto the kayak - she’d not seen why Tima was so insistent, after Lucy had done that exact movement to get out of the water when she’d decided she was done after just one attempt at snorkelling, that it needed to be videoed and photographed.  But then she’d got Kate’s reaction to the photos, which included Kate recreating them for Lucy using the side of the apartment block’s rooftop pool and things had made a lot more sense.

Turned out that Kate liked Lucy’s abs in a bikini as much as Lucy liked Kate’s…blinking, Lucy refocused on the present, recognising that she was no longer snuggled up to an affectionately tolerant Kate, but was instead snuggling into an almost asleep Kate, whose long and draining day had clearly finally caught up with her. They were therefore rapidly approaching the point where if they didn't leave now, Kate would be fast asleep where she sat before too much longer, and Lucy was determined not to let that happening, knowing Kate would be mortified when she woke up.  "You mind if we head off?" She asked Jane, standing up and guiding Kate up with her, making the blonde start to automatically pick up the stack of dirty ice cream bowls, and head for the kitchen, which did make talking about her easier. "Only she's…"

"About twenty minutes from unconscious?" Jane stood, ever the hostess, and began redirecting the returning Kate's focus towards finding her shoes and suit jacket, her original intention being to continue clearing the dishes. "I'm familiar. You’re welcome to stay?" She knew Kate had driven them here, but had guessed early on that the couple had switched around at some point during the evening and, while both were sufficiently sober to be fine to drive, Lucy was the one who was intending to drive them home. "I can lend you some things if you’ve not got your go bags."

"Thanks, but I'm good. And she needs clothes from home for tomorrow."  She continued her mental run through of the morning. "Jesse, can you get the coffees please?"

"Sure, but…"

"It's my turn? I know, and if you are in at 6 you can have yours hot." She saw their mixture of confused and horrified expressions, smirking. "I'm dropping Kate off at the airport at 0530.”  

"I'll get the coffees," agreed Jesse, reminded too of his earlier plan to get Lucy an extra nice snack as a distraction from Kate being out on the ocean all day, actually reaching for his phone and starting to set a reminder so he didn’t forget.

"Thanks. Night guys."

"You got everything?" asked Jane, following Lucy to the door, not fazed that the guys were staying - it wasn't that late, barely half past nine, but Kate's day had clearly taken its toll and she had a much earlier start than the NCIS team tomorrow. 

"I…" Kate nodded, yawning mid way through it, looking a bit sheepish. "...sorry. Today has been…" 

She was not supposed to have been involved in the scene that morning, FBI only there because both CGIS and NCIS were a little bit light on agents available to maintain the large scene's perimeter owing to some unfortunate clashes with court dates and other active investigations. What should have been a completely straightforward background 'do what you're told and be useful' task that should have been well within Bambridge's capability had ended up in a very friendly and good humoured jurisdictional nightmare, as in pulling rank on Banbridge, she'd ended up having to lead at the scene as the ranking agent. Which when it had been Bambridge attempting to do exactly that (including then changing the plan from sensible to stupid) had been a tense and edgy situation, but everyone involved knew Kate and knew she was having to just follow the protocols and procedures that would ultimately save them all when hopefully they turned arrests into convictions.  Plus it helped that she recognised a sensible plan when she saw one and had no desire to change it for a stupid one.  But while the whole scene had been ultimately amicable and successful, it had totally messed up Kate's day and had meant being far more involved in the paperwork afterwards, when she'd been hoping to be focused on other work. Thanks to Bambridge's ego, her weekend was seeing rather more catching up with work time and less being lazy with Lucy time than she liked. But that was a problem for the weekend, and she could hopefully get a chance to get ahead again.

"Nothing like what you planned?"

"No…" She smiled as she automatically moved her arm so Lucy could tuck in against her side now she'd put her boots on, providing the exhausted Kate with a mixture of physical and moral support. "...and what really irritates me is I have to be a tiny bit grateful to Bambridge for being such a jerk that you guys had to ask me to get involved."

"Feels good that they all know now?" guessed Jane, knowing Kate had been worried about how to tell them, once she'd been allowed to.  It wasn't the easiest thing to drop into casual conversation, and Lucy's time away hadn't helped as Jane hadn't needed to ask to know Kate would have refused to entertain telling the guys without Lucy's presence.

"Yeah." Kate looked surprised at how easily she said that, before grinning. "It does." The grin however, quickly disappeared into another yawn.

“C’mon sleepy,” teased Lucy, patting her very tired girlfriend’s stomach.  “Thanks for…”  Lucy had been going to thank Jane for the evening, only to realise she actually wanted to thank her for so much more than just this evening, but for all the other times she’d clearly been there for Kate, be it during Lucy’s time away as Agent Afloat, or before that, when she and Kate were not together.

“Nothing to thank me for,” said Jane sincerely, leaning in to hug both of them individually.

“Hey Kate?” called out Ernie, Kai’s latest question being one the cyber specialist couldn’t confidently answer without the blonde’s input.

“Hmm?”  Blinking sleepily, Kate swayed a little as she tried to refocus on him, Lucy helping to keep her swaying almost unnoticeable.

“What do we call you?”

“Call me?”  Kate’s brain was running at not even half speed.  “My name.”

“Yes, but…”

“I told you, Whistler’s my real name Ernie.  I’m not a spy.”

“I think they’re asking if they should use ASAC,” nudged Jane kindly, thinking not for the first time how incredibly adorable Kate was when she was this tired, something clearly Lucy agreed with given how she was looking at Kate.

“Oh, right.”  Blinking, Kate managed to get her brain into the correct gear.  “Just keep calling me Whistler.  Special Agent if you must, but not the other stuff.”

“We promise to only call you ASAC Whistler if your guys do it first.”  Kai interrupted himself with a small, surprisingly delicate hiccup.  “I mean, use their full titles.”

“Trust me,” said Kate, already mentally counting down the days until Senior Special Agent Bambridge returned to North Dakota, at least, she was doing when she was more awake. “They won’t ever do that, unless they’re ASAC Curtis.”

“Or in trouble,” added Lucy pointedly, patting Kate’s stomach again.  “Which you will be if you fall asleep standing up, ASAC Katherine Marie Whistler.”

“That told me,” said Kate, a happy, sleepy smile showing everyone that she really wasn’t remotely concerned.  “Night everyone.”

Double checking the apartment front door was locked, Lucy turned out the light and headed for the bedroom.

"Hey." Frowning at her far too awake girlfriend, Lucy actually put her hands on her hips.  "You my love, are supposed to be asleep." In fact, she'd been pretty certain Kate had been asleep during the drive home from Tennant's.

"I know." 

Kate stretched her arms above her head, proving why for someone so tall she insisted on sleeping with three pillows, as that meant her head was far enough away from the top of the bed that she didn't hit the wall when she stretched. It didn't make much sense to Lucy, as it also meant her long limbed girlfriend's feet were at constant risk of hanging out off the bottom of the bed.  But Lucy didn't argue it, finding it oddly sweet that her incredibly logical and precise girlfriend was irrational about something, even if it was how she liked to make her bed. It was, decided Lucy, when Kate had finally explained her reasoning, perhaps just another little sign they were a good match, as Lucy had no issue with the extra pillow - she was nowhere near either end of the bed, no matter how much she stretched.

"I just…" Kate turned onto her side, her arm slipping under Lucy's pillow as she watched her progress through her own quick nighttime routine, eyes tracking her as Lucy took off her jeans and put them on the chair then grabbed her pyjamas and stepped into the en suite. With the door only just ajar, she could hear Kate if she finished her thought, but had a feeling that she'd not hear anything more.

Sure enough, a couple of minutes later, after completing a rapid change and necessary other tasks, Lucy stepped back into the bedroom, turning out the bathroom light as she went. Kate, she saw, was still turned towards Lucy's side of the bed, still half holding Lucy's pillow and still awake.

"Hey." Kate watched with a sleepy smile as Lucy got into bed, her arm staying tucked under the pillow. "I'm proud of you."

"That was going to be my line," said Lucy, frowning as she replayed the day, trying to pinpoint why Kate thought her day had been memorable. "In fact, overruled!" Lucy propped her head up with her hand so she could look down at her love. "Today is your day, you Kate Whistler, with your awesomeness. Not mine. I am proud of you."

"Me? What did I do? Apart from nothing that I'd planned to from mid morning onwards," grumbled Kate, the state of her email inbox weighing on her mind. "And tomorrow's a raid training day, so no WiFi," she continued, knowing that she was spending the day not on a Coastguard cutter which would have given her at sea WiFi, but instead on the 'guest' vessel Pike had organised for them to run the joint training sessions on.

"Oh? But I thought…" Lucy's heart rate ticked up a notch. She'd assumed that this would be like times they'd worked with CGIS, when they had been on Coastguard boats which came with open satellite links back to Pearl and constant contact. This was sounding very different. "I mean, you're not flying out to a Coastguard boat?"

"Hey!" Kate was suddenly very much more awake, picking up on the shift in Lucy's breathing and nervously darting eyes. "I'm right here Luce," she encouraged, drawing Lucy towards her then rolling onto her back, pulling Lucy so she was lying on Kate's chest. "We're right here, in bed, in our apartment." She started to run her right hand through Lucy's hair as she rubbed her back with her left, keeping her body relaxed and pliable as gradually the tension left Lucy's body and she sank into Kate, legs slotting together.  Continuing to stroke and soothe, she kept her own breathing steady and even, smiling with relief when she felt Lucy start to shuffle around until she had her ear pressed against Kate's chest, hearing her heartbeat.  After another couple of minutes listening to Lucy's increasingly steady breathing, Kate felt it was time to resume their conversation. "Would you like me to talk you through my day tomorrow?" She'd explained it in general terms last week, but after revisiting Lucy's carrier and snorkelling experiences, Kate wasn't surprised that a further review was helpful.

"You must think I'm stupid."

"Hey!" Kate nudged Lucy repeatedly until she was able to make eye contact with her, ignoring the strain it was putting on her neck. "I never think you're stupid." She saw Lucy's eye roll, knowing that her reactions were ingrained after years of mocking and teasing that was cruel, not 'fun' by her brothers. "Do you sometimes do things that are sufficiently reckless or baffling that I for a moment might think you have done something I think is stupid? Yes, but you feel the same about me when I use a four tab spreadsheet to ask you to move in with me."

"Six." Lucy shuffles a little bit, so it is easier for her to look at Kate without moving off her. "It was six tabs. With cross referencing."

"Actually," said Kate, smirking, her voice dropping in pitch and taking on a huskiness that made Lucy's insides flip, glad her deliberate mistake had been enough to help bring Lucy back to the present. "It was nine, but three were hidden."

"I'm honoured!" exclaimed Lucy, her own fears and anxieties momentarily retreating as Kate's new revelation distracted her. "But you know you had me at ‘move in with me?’"

"I mean," Kate's smile shifted, a hint of cockiness shining through it. "I am pretty amazing."

"Your bathroom alone, nevermind the balcony. And the commute to Pearl?" continued Lucy, feeling Kate's fingers starting to tickle her, laughter bubbling up from her. "Truce! Truce!" Still grinning, she settled back down into her previous position, head resting on Kate's chest, her heartbeat steady and comforting in her ear. "You're incredible my love," said Lucy seriously, snuggling into Kate's embrace.

"And you, my sweet, are the most amazing woman I have ever met."

"Even though I live on an island and work for the Navy?"

"That's part of what makes you amazing and the total opposite of stupid." Kate hated that Lucy's perfectly legitimate and understandable fear had been ridiculed and mocked for so long by her brothers and parents that it was something she still had moments of shame and insecurity about.

"But…"

"In fact," continued Kate, ignoring her own growing sleepiness, wanting to make sure that there was no lingering doubt on her girlfriend's part. "It was the first thing you shared that I completely understood."

"It was?" This was a new puzzle, and had Lucy propping herself up a little bit more so she could study Kate's face for any clues she was being anything other than 100% serious.

"Flyer?" Kate shuddered, closing her eyes like that would help the mental image fade. It didn't, so she opened them quickly. "You know what I'm like with heights, and need I remind you what happened when you asked if I could cartwheel?"

"Oh. Yes." Lucy bit her lip, trying not to laugh at the memory of Kate attempting a cartwheel at the NCIS gym for, she thought, the first time in twenty years.

"That Marine actually called out ‘Timber’!" protested Kate, now able to see the funny side, and accuracy of the Marine's response to her attempt, which just saw her land, rather like a felled tree, on the gym mat.  “And don’t get me started on trying to jump in a rhythm.”

“You’re great at jumping!  Like freakishly brilliant at it, I’ve seen the video of you going after that Mom.”

“Which Mom?” asked Kate, making a mental note to not let Lucy get away with this distraction for too long, but slightly alarmed at the idea of there being a video of her somewhere.

“The Accountant one?  The case we had the day I was told about the Reagan.”  Lucy contemplated reaching for her phone to show Kate, but decided she was too comfortable.  “You ran onto and off a picnic table?”

“Oh, that.”  Kate turned her head to the side as she tried to recall that ultimately fruitless chase.  “That wasn’t jumping, just track.”  She knew Lucy knew she’d run track in high school and college, so wasn’t seeing why this was such a surprise.  “That was just like the hurdles in steeplechase, only without getting wet feet.”  She had felt bad for the tourists whose picnic lunch she’d run through, but by the time she’d gone back to check in and apologise after dealing with the idiot bounty hunter, they’d gone.  “And we’ve discussed opening Christmas presents on the 23rd, though I grant you last year it definitely worked out, as there was no way I was wearing that bikini if I’d only opened it on Christmas Day.”  

It had been very differently cut to her usual ‘go to’ bikini and swimsuit that she’d been wearing for surfing and swimming during Lucy’s time away, and had required a change to her usual routine in order to be comfortable and confident wearing it outside of their bedroom.   “But I do at least now understand the backup shoe thing was you just trying to confuse me.”  Kate had discovered a couple of days later that Lucy meant she had a pair of back up boots in her car, and had only borrowed one of the boots to complete her pair because she’d already laced up her left boot and was running late as it was.  “Although I still don’t get why you leave the apartment in only your socks each morning.”  Surely putting her boots on before she left would completely eliminate the need to make use of backup boots before the day had properly begun?  Kate put her finger over Lucy’s lips when she saw she was about to try and explain her logic, again, knowing that was exactly the sort of topic Lucy could use to complete the distraction from what Kate had originally been talking about.  

“Nevermind.” She suspected it probably involved being able to slide along the polished hallway floor to the elevator, or something equally innocent and joyful, with Lucy’s ability to continually find the light and sunny in any situation one of the things Kate loved.  “But promise me,” continued Kate, her tone shifting to serious as she searched Lucy’s eyes to make sure she was really focused on what Kate was saying, “promise me that you will always remember I do not think you are stupid in general, and definitely not at all stupid when it comes to water.”

“Yes, but…”

“ Promise me ,” repeated Kate, refusing to tolerate anyone disparaging her girlfriend, least of all Lucy herself.  “Because I never thought you were stupid that first weekend when you told me you were afraid of the ocean so had never gone surfing before I knew you worked for NCIS, and I didn’t think you were stupid when I did know you worked for NCIS.  And I definitely never thought you were stupid when you told me the reason…”

Flashback - a couple of days after the FBI barbeque

“Something smells good.”

“It’s just onions.”  Kate continued to gently nudge the chopped onions around the shallow pan as she leaned down and kissed Lucy on the temple, noting the still wet hair.  “Feel better?”

“Much.”  Lucy wrapped her arm around her girlfriend’s hips, contemplating the pan.  “Thank you.”  She’d had a shower at Pearl, which had washed most of the sand away, but she’d spent the rest of the day with that itchy feeling she always had after having to head out onto the sand.  “Why do they always run?”

“Because your reputation precedes you.”  Kate reached for the plate of chopped vegetables she’d prepared while Lucy had been showering, waiting for her to emerge before adding them to the onions.  “Did you get checked out?”

“No need.”

“Luce…”

“No, seriously!”  Lucy stole a slice of carrot from the plate, squeezing Kate’s hip in reassurance.  “Have you ever been to Ka’ena Point?”

“Out by the Space Force Base?”  Kate nodded, then canted her head to the side.  “I mean, I’ve been to the Base a couple of times, second time I drove out to a viewpoint to look at the ocean…”

“DIA stuff?” guessed Lucy, knowing Kate’s previous on-island role had seen her working with all branches of the military in the region, not just the Navy, knowing too that unlike her the ocean was a natural place for the blonde to gravitate to when she’d been left frustrated and annoyed by her colleagues.

“DIA stuff,” agreed Kate, trying to work out why Lucy was bringing up the western-most point on the island.  “Though I prefer to remember it for the sunset.  You were there? Today?”  She put aside the empty plate and carried on stirring the pan, though she did so while looking at Lucy.  “But I thought you were working with Jane on the divorce gone wrong?”  Kate had been in meetings most of the day and had minimal involvement with the NCIS case beyond a quick text exchange with Jane confirming if the child custody case they’d become involved with went bad fast, FBI hostage negotiators were on Oahu for once and at her disposal.  Since she’d not heard anything else, she had assumed that the NCIS team had managed to resolve it somewhat peacefully, even if it did sound like it was a rather sandy conclusion.

“I was, but the kid was there on a school trip.  We ended up cuffing the Dad in the sand dunes.  Less punches and tumbles, more stumbles and sand in some really uncomfortable places.”

“Ah.”  Kate winced when she mentally filled in the blanks, appreciating now why Lucy had been adamant she wanted to shower the moment she arrived, and why it had been a longer than usual one.  “At least it was the dunes not the waves,” she added, trying to find a silver lining for Lucy.

“That would have been way worse,” agreed Lucy.  “I’ll do the table?”

“Thanks.”  Dropping another kiss on Lucy’s head, this time in exchange for the one Lucy pressed into her bicep, Kate refocused on cooking their dinner, their settled routine making her smile as she heard Lucy puttering around the apartment.  She’d been about to ask Alexa to turn on some quiet music when Lucy started to speak, her quietness and lack of curiosity about Kate’s day a result of preoccupation with something.

“I was eight, like Liam.”

“Liam?”

“The kid, from today.  His father was a bully and seeing him being cuffed by Tennant…”  Lucy put the last fork down on the table, her hands resting on the top of the chair back, gripping tightly.  “...it was like that day on the lake.”

“When you were eight?” guessed Kate quietly, sensing it was important that she stayed seemingly focused on the cooking, giving Lucy the space and distance to process whatever it was that she was thinking about.

“Mmm.  It was Cart’s 16th birthday.” 'Cart' - Kate quickly reviewed what she knew of Lucy's family - Carlton 'do not call me Carl' Tara, Lucy's eldest brother, followed by Brad who must have been thirteen and Aiden who would have been eleven, and his twin sister, Lucy's only sister, Michelle. "He was driving his birthday present."

"A car?" Kate didn't want to interrupt Lucy's memory too much, but sensed a nudge or two wouldn't distract her enough to change the subject.

"Power boat." Lucy sighed, straightening the fork. "Rich people present. Cart got the boat and we went down to the lake for him to use it.  He shouldn't have been driving it, none of them should have but I didn't know that then."

"You were eight Luce…" reminded Kate quietly, turning the heat off from under the pan, but otherwise maintaining an outward 'I'm cooking' demeanour.  This conversation was starting to have a ‘feed Lucy pizza afterwards’ feel to it, one Kate was happy to accommodate.  And if she was wrong, she could always turn the heat back on.

"Mmm. I meant I didn't know, when I got on the big floaty chair thing he was going to tow, that none of them had done the mandatory boater education.  I mean my Dad and Uncle Aziz had driven boats loads of times when we were visiting my grandparents, but that wasn't Texas.  He was not happy when she put the cuffs on him."

"She?" A knot began to form in Kate's stomach - she had a hunch where Lucy's memory was taking them.

"Game Warden. Cart he, I don't know…" Lucy's grip on the chair was now knuckle-white-tight as she stared at the middle of the table, seeing that day decades ago. "...was speeding or took a turn too tight maybe? Whatever it was, the float we were on flipped and we were dunked, shrieking at the cold and at him but…" Lucy frowned, squinting as if that would help the memory come into focus. "...I couldn't get to the surface, there was grass or weed or something making it thick and dark.  And the…" She bit her tongue, the sharp shock an instinctive reaction after years of learning to mostly manage what had happened next, the sting bringing her mostly back to the present, or at least the part of the memory she was better able to navigate through. "...Cart pulled me out, I was ok, but we'd attracted the Game Warden patrol. That's when…Cart's alright really, I mean, I never really had much to do with him when I was little because of how old he was, but I think…I like to think if our parents hadn't been who they are he'd have served you know? He's an engineer now, for Dad, but I meet the Navy engineers during cases and some of them? They remind me of him. The good, innocent squared away ones I mean, not the lying to the feds ones."  It was a more charitable description of her oldest brother than she’d used when she was younger, with ‘boring’ and ‘dull’ being her main opinion on her quiet, studious brother whose recent appointment as Tara Oil’s newest Vice President had seemed inevitable ever since he went to college to study engineering.

"By the book?" suggested Kate quietly, not wanting to interrupt Lucy's flow but picking up on her stalling over her brother.

"Mmm, but not annoying about it." Lucy had always wondered if perhaps that was a way to describe Noah, wondered too what he would have made of Cart, of all her brothers really but Cart in particular, age now helping her see she’d confused focus and a genuine fascination with chemical engineering with a lack of personality.  Cart wasn’t dull, he just didn’t volunteer to join in whatever amusement or entertainment had caught a young Lucy’s attention, something it seemed Noah had been especially good at with Kate. Unsurprisingly however, she'd never asked her thought. "He's stood up, on the boat after getting me out of the water, water dripping off his face, listening to this Game Warden asking him all these questions when Dad turns up."

"He wasn't on the boat?"

"He was on his boat, which he also didn’t have mandatory boaters education for.  That he’d bought for himself at the same time.  We were on Cart's new boat." 

"Ah." Right, rich people.  Kate could just about remember her parents hiring a kayak one summer for Noah and her to use, but couldn’t picture them joining in on the water.  Somehow Kate suspected the Tara boats would have been longer and more powerful than the average weekend boater’s craft.

"Dad's all 'how dare you' and 'what makes you think' and suddenly this Game Warden's partner is on his boat arresting him."

"That's…" Kate was about to comment on that seeming to be quite an escalation by the Warden given he was a father whose kids had just been in a minor marine accident, but stopped herself. Lucy's comments about being expert in all the family drama echoed in her memory and made her wonder at the ambiguity in her words as her brain helpfully reminded her that in Texas Game Wardens were also given federal commissions by the Department of the Interior…oh shit. "...he tried to buy off the Warden?"

"Gold star right there," said Lucy, starting to straighten the cutlery and glasses on the table for the third time, needing an outlet for her nervous energy. "He didn't care about why we'd fallen off the float, didn't wonder why Cart was soaked too, and definitely didn't care about why I was still screaming. He was outraged that this…" She wrinkled her face up like she was confronted with a bad smell, "... pretend cop was writing Cart a ticket when he'd just pay the fines and give them a bit for themselves for the trouble."

Kate's eyes widened at that, hearing Lucy's commentary of 'rich people attitude' in her mind, but keeping her own reaction otherwise silent.  But she now understood the cuffs. Lucy it seemed, was now on a roll as the words started tumbling out from her as her hands once more white knuckled the top of the chair.

"She cuffed him, had her partner start writing up the tickets I guess, then came over to me and crouched down, because I was extra little… I'm sorry honey , she said, in this really strong Texas accent, I didn't mean to upset you but …I'd got hiccups from crying and couldn't speak so Cart…he says 'excuse me Ma'am? She, when I got her to the surface, she was asking me who the man was."

Kate's stomach dropped right through the floor hearing Lucy's distracted, almost fully removed from herself account, like she was recounting a case she'd worked rather than something she'd been a part of, the significance of what she was saying horrifically clear. This wasn't what Kate had been anticipating hearing, but it was certainly one hell of a good reason for aquaphobia.

" ’What man honey?’ She asked, all soft and kind and I just…pointed at the patch of plants that Cart had pulled me out from.  I could hear Dad, Uncle Aziz, my brothers all making noise but all I could really see was her, crouching in front of me.  ‘Breathe in through your nose honey, hold onto it.  Can you give me a smile?  Awesome-sauce, now breathe out through your mouth.  That’s it honey, can you do it again?  Can you show me with your fingers how old you are honey?’ She kept going, just talking to me like that while I started to calm down.  Then I started to hear Dad shouting, arguing with the other warden I guess, but she kept me focussed on her…”  Lucy blinked, her gaze shifting from the middle of the table to Kate, who was stood motionless by the stove.  “Anyway,” shrugged Lucy, letting go of the chair and, after a moment of wondering what to do with her hands, crossed her arms across her chest.  “Turns out his eight-year-old being nose to nose with a dead body in the lake was enough to make my father low priority and he got off with the tickets and a warning.  Still waiting on that thank you,” she joked awkwardly, chewing on her lip.

“Luce…” began Kate, taking a step towards her girlfriend, filling in the gaps that Lucy wasn’t talking about, but which Kate could now clearly see, like why she’d never returned to the water with anything other than fear and trepidation, and maybe also why she’d been drawn to a career as a federal agent once she’d decided to break free of her father’s grasp.

“I should get a t-shirt printed, ‘caught my first homicide case at eight and all I got was aquaphobia'.  On the back it could say ‘and I bought this shirt myself’."

"Or," said Kate gently, lightly catching hold of Lucy's Daydream rainbow t-shirt, nudging her focus towards her. "You get the t-shirts, wind breaker, cap, backpack…" she paused, trying to remember what other logoed kit Lucy had, "... vest, umbrella and badge that say you're an incredible federal agent?"  Ok, maybe the umbrella was a stretch - she knew they had them, but did they say NCIS?  The FBI ones did…Kate gave herself a mental shake and refocused on what Lucy was saying.

"I work for the Navy and live on an island," said Lucy, not with her usual higher energy, but with atypical cynicism starting to creep in as she looked up at Kate. "That's pretty stupid."

"And I live on a tropical island that puts pineapple with everything."

"You hate pineapple because it hates you."

"And I love you." Finally Kate felt Lucy relax enough to draw her into her arms, enfolding her with love and pulling her close, so close she felt her girlfriend's face turn into her chest as she tucked herself under Kate's chin. "All of you, especially the brave and incredible parts." She heard a noise that was probably a sniffle but might also have been an attempted objection, which she wasn’t going to allow.  “And one of the bravest and most incredible parts of you is the NCIS Special Agent who is helping the Liams of the world here, on an island, in spite of her perfectly logical and rational hatred of anything big and wet.”

“You mean that?” asked Lucy in such a small, quiet voice that Kate’s heart broke for her, broke for the ‘extra little’ eight year old Lucy who’d come face to face with a truly horrible sight during a genuinely terrifying ordeal and was clearly neither believed nor supported by her father or family, although at least her brother had helped a tiny amount.

“Completely.”  She gave Lucy a tight squeeze of a hug to emphasise her sincerity and complete belief in what she was saying, absolutely certain she’d be distrustful of the water if she happened upon a dead man while trying to return to the surface after falling off her surfboard, and she was a federal agent in her thirties, not an eight year old.  She dropped a kiss into thick, silky hair as she heard a knock at their door.  “Now, you want to grab the door?”

“The door?”  Lucy hadn’t heard the knock but pulled away from Kate enough to look at her, hearing the follow-up knock in the process.  “What did you do?”

“Open it and find out,” said Kate, extricating herself from Lucy’s arms with another kiss before heading over to the stove to quickly put away their part cooked meal - she’d turn it into soup or something later.

Present - Kate & Lucy's Apartment

“You ordered pizza…” remembered Lucy, smiling at the memory.  “Texas BBQ pizza from the place I love...”

“...with extra ground beef because no Texas barbeque is complete without brisket,” recited Kate, smiling at a different memory, of her girlfriend miraculously bonding with her barbeque obsessed boss and his wife at the FBI picnic a couple of days earlier.  “Which reminds me, I have an email for you from Mrs Curtis.”

“Jolene?”  Lucy nearly elbowed Kate in the ribs in her enthusiasm to sit up and seek out Kate’s phone to start to read it.  “She’s emailed you?  Does that mean she’s finally sharing…”  Lucy’s eyes were wide and sparkling with her excitement.  “...her secret family pulled pork rub and sauce?”

“I guess so?”  Kate knew when she was beaten and reached out to grab her phone.  “I mean, I have an email from Curtis with the subject ‘JC says only Lucy can read it’.”  It was almost six months since the FBI barbeque and given everything that had happened in the last 48 hours, an email from ASAC Curtis’ wife for Lucy with sacred Texan barbeque secrets was nowhere near her bingo card.

“Oooo.”  Now kneeling up on the bed, seemingly completely oblivious to the fact that she was straddling Kate’s hips, Lucy gestured for the phone, smiling at how respectful her girlfriend was and had, true to instruction, not opened the email.  “Wait, what did you do to get this?  She was holding out on me.”

“Umm…so you know I mentioned this morning’s chaos was because Curtis was off island?”

“Ye-es.”  Lucy’s eyes narrowed, trying to connect Curtis’ sudden absence with Jolene Curtis deciding to break the sacred family code and share the secrets of their barbeque success.  “What happened?  And what did you do to help fix it?”

“So, remember they said their daughter is now working at State?”

“In D.C.  Proper State, not State-as-a-cover-for-CIA-State?  Sure, Jolene was telling me about it at the weekend.  Wait, is she ok?”

“Yes, I mean, I guess so since her Mom’s sent that email.”  Kate paused, ordering her thoughts.  “I don’t really know what happened, but…”

“You knew someone who could help,” finished Lucy, leaning down and kissing Kate, grinning when she saw her leap of logic had managed to ‘break’ her girlfriend again, as she was sporting her adorable confused look.  “I know you.”  She also knew Kate well enough to see how tired she really was, so she stretched over to the edge of the bed, putting Kate’s phone back on charge.  Secret barbeque recipes could wait until morning.  “And you’re sleepy.”

“Mmm.”  Kate wrapped her arms around Lucy again, holding her close and still.  “But I’m not going to sleep.”

“Ka-ate.”

“I’m not going to sleep until you promise me you will not think you are stupid about anything, especially not water.”

“I promise.”

“Like you mean it,” corrected Kate, slipping her hands under Lucy’s pyjama top and splaying her fingers out across the warm, smooth muscles of her girlfriend’s lower back.  “Without rolling your eyes at me,” she added, anticipating Lucy’s instinctive reaction.

“I promise,” repeated Lucy, this time sounding like she did actually believe what she was saying.  “I know you’re right, it’s just…a lot to forget you know?”

“I know,” agreed Kate simply, thinking back to all the times her own confidence and sense of self had been casually eroded or dismissed by her parents, only unlike Lucy, Noah had been her number one supporter and champion.  She couldn’t imagine what it must be like to have three brothers, nevermind three brothers that mostly either ignored her or belittled her and a sister who resented her.  “But the first step to forgetting can be not remembering, not living in the past.”  She ran her hands up Lucy’s back, savouring the softness of her skin, smiling as she remembered a very happy moment in the past, when she’d seen the photos and video Lucy had sent her of her Christmas sea adventure.  “Or at least, only remembering the fun parts...”

“Like you in a bikini…” hummed Lucy, Kate’s sleepiness infectious as she relaxed into her long love’s body.  “...sea’s gotta be good if it gets me that.”

“It is,” mumbled Kate, her eyes drifting closed as she relaxed under her ‘Lucy blanket’, the mixture of the stress of a day going off the rails combined with the relief that her NCIS ohana now knew about her and weren’t judging her for keeping secrets.  “And it does…get you that.”

“Yum.”  Lucy was almost asleep, fingers of one hand now tangled with Kate’s, her others lightly resting against a fair cheek.  “Secret…”

Kate had no clue if her half asleep girlfriend was thinking about the not-for-sharing photos they’d exchanged at Christmas or the pulled pork recipe.  With Lucy she knew it could go either way, and she smiled, genuinely not caring.  Actually, were she to have asked, it would have been both, with Lucy wondering if she could manage to host a beach barbeque ‘Texas style’ for their friends sometime, wondering too how Kai in particular would cope with Lucy trying to cope with Kate in a bikini…

“Love you...” Kate’s words were slurred, like her brain was fighting her body’s sensible recommendation that sleep was what she should be doing.

“Love you more if you go to sleep.”  Lucy waited for a reply, ready to continue the debate but all she heard was the gentle sound of Kate’s heartbeat as her chest rose and fell in time with her breathing.

It had been a long day, but a good one.  Bad guys were in jail, put there by the good guys and finally Kate’s brilliance was better understood by their NCIS friends and colleagues, who rather than being intimidated or irritated by the discovery, had embraced her with respect and love.

That was ohana.

That was their ohana.

That was… 

“No…”  It felt like it was only seconds since she’d closed her eyes, but judging by the fuzzy view of the clock on Kate’s side of the bed it was almost 1am.  

“Damn it.”  Lucy carefully moved off Kate, reaching for her phone, hoping that she managed to answer it before the three vibrates gave way to loud annoying music that signalled this was NCIS calling her.  “Special Agent Tara, and this better be good…” she whispered, looking at her fortunately still sleeping girlfriend.  “...of course there is.”  Sighing, Lucy rolled onto her back, glaring at the ceiling as she mentally planned what she needed to do, starting with getting dressed again.  “Sure, I can pick you up in thirty.”  Hanging up, she turned and reached for Kate’s hand, kissing the knuckles.  “Sleep well my love.”  And, with a final sigh she forced herself to get up.

Ohana, like any family, really sucked sometimes.  As did the bad guys who insisted on murdering Naval Officers outside twenty-four hour convenience stores in K Bay.

“Luce?”  Kate was still mostly asleep but had noticed the loss of her ‘Lucy blanket’, so rolled towards her girlfriend’s side of the bed, seeking some confirmation she was alright.

“Dead sailor, go back to sleep.”

“K…love you.”  Kate pulled Lucy’s pillow towards her, snuggling into it like she would if she was spooning Lucy.

“Love you too.”  She kissed the tiny patch of Kate’s forehead not buried in pillow, then dragged herself to the bathroom, loving her super-organised girlfriend’s insistence that they kept ‘emergency underwear’ in there so they could get dressed in the middle of the night with the minimum of fuss, reclaiming her jeans and bra as she went, starting to feel the buzz of adrenalin as the reality of a new case starting to hit.

Maybe she’d get done at the scene in time to take Kate to the airport, though it didn’t sound like they’d be done before lunchtime given what the HPD scene summary was.

Maybe, even if they weren’t done, she’d ask Tennant to excuse her for a bit so she could come home and take Kate to the airport.  K Bay coffee sucked, so adding in returning with a round of Red Eyes with a Bullets from Sunrise Shack would surely sweeten, or rather caffeinate the deal.

Yeah, that was a better, Whistler-grade plan.

Nodding, Lucy picked up the hairbrush and started to tidy her hair back into something that was baseball cap compatible.  That was what she’d do, she’d ask on the way to the scene, rather than wait until later, or worse, wait until Tennant suggested it.  Because she would, if Lucy didn’t say anything first.  

Any of them would.  

It was what they did for family.