Insouciant

Fornell entered the house calling out, “Jethro?” Walking down the stairs with an insouciant step, he was surprised to find that Gibbs wasn’t there. “Must be working a case.” He thought to himself as he headed back up the stairs and out the door. “I’ll catch him some other time.”

He didn’t notice when the tickets to Kingsman: The Secret Service slipped out of his pocket along with the note “I repay my debts” that he had received along with them. He hadn’t figured out which of his agents was trying to butter him up by giving him tickets to a movie to see with his daughter, but he’d seen the reviews for this movie and was pretty sure he didn’t want to bring his daughter to it.

She was too young for that kind of gore. Even though the twist on Secret Service was pretty awesome and he’d probably like the movie himself. He’d been considering taking someone else, but hadn’t wanted to lose out on time with his daughter nor was there anyone else he really wanted to see it with.

When he got home and realized he’d lost the tickets somewhere, he felt relieved. It didn’t even occur to him that they might have fallen out at Jethro’s place even though he had been considering asking Gibbs for advice. He’d stopped at the grocery store and the bank and done a number of other errands on his way home and assumed they’d fallen out in a public place and that some entrepreneuring person would have picked them up and made use of them.

He wasn’t one of those FBI agents that took bribes and they had really been worrying him. Now if whoever gave them to him asked him if he went or something he could literally say he’d lost the tickets somewhere and so didn’t go and it would be telling the truth. Though the chances of them straight out asking were slim. They were more likely to try a different bribe. He cringed at some of the possibilities that came to mind. He’d have to do something to put a stop to this before it got out of hand.

Gibbs house, however, did not remain empty after Tobias left. Abby was the next to enter. She really shouldn’t be here when she knew the boss was out, but she had to check and see if it was true. Putting her spy cap on, she snuck through the house collecting evidence.

She would test it in her lab to see who visited Gibbs the most. She was placing her money on Tony which would make her fangirl fantasies come true, but Ziva insisted it was Ducky or Fornell. She blinked in surprise when she reached the front door and saw the tickets. “I could have sworn those weren’t there when I got here.” She thought to herself not realizing she hadn’t bothered to look down when she first entered.

She reached out to touch them, but then saw the note. “I repay my debts.” It said. “That’s weird. What the heck is bossman into?” She thought to herself, but drew back her hand without touching the tickets. She was sure Gibbs would know if she touched them and she didn’t want him knowing she’d been snooping in his house.

She’d only been gone from her lab an hour at most and was sure no one would have noticed her missing as there weren’t any hot cases on her plate currently. To make sure though she checked her babies as she’d left them running stuff on a couple of cold cases for a few of the teams and shot off emails to the teams with the results. She’d also left her music up loud so that somebody would have to enter her lab looking for her to notice she was gone.

She’d found that loud music kept most people away unless their names were Gibbs or Tony and even Tony only came down when her music was loud if there was an active case. Quickly putting her jacket away and stuffing the evidence she found in her fridge, she returned to that day’s work. Namely organizing and categorizing the evidence locker.

Kort stalked into Gibbs house like he owned it, moving his hips insouciantly which wasn’t really fair of him as he wasn’t one of Gibbs regular visitors, but he could ferret out secrets with the best of them and had long known about Gibbs open door policy. Normally, he wouldn’t be caught dead walking into Gibbs house. The guy was too well known and Kort’s enemies could easily trace him if they saw him entering Gibbs house because of it.

However, the majority of the planet currently thought he was in Bangkok so it should be safe for now and he thought Gibbs still had the information he needed. Or at least Gibbs was the one most likely to give the information up of the people who had it. Gibbs was well known for knowing more than he should about a great many things and he often didn’t get sworn to secrecy because people couldn’t prove that he knew them. That and he was willing to break regs in the line of good.

It was rather disappointing to discover Gibbs wasn’t home. Kort didn’t have time to wait for him to return either. Kort noticed the tickets and even picked them up and examined them, but he dismissed them as unimportant before leaving. He would try a couple of other places to find Gibbs and then he would have to return to his mission regardless.

Ducky was the next to enter the house. He noticed the ticket and other signs that multiple people who weren’t Gibbs had been through here and he had to wonder if Gibbs could really afford to be as insouciant as he generally was about locking his house. Fortunately, it did not appear that anyone had done anything harmful as nothing appeared out of place on Ducky’s pass through of the house himself.

However, Ducky completely forgot what he wanted to talk to Jethro about himself and left pondering the mystery of the ticket himself instead.