Ice and Rocks
By Periwinkle

The team had long ago learned that under their Director’s surface of sweetness there was a very tough edge. It was hard as a rock, ready to appear at any second should anyone dare to thwart her. The agents had learned to live with her cutting remarks, her sarcasm and her haughtiness, but they didn’t like it. If anything, it brought them closer to Gibbs, in sympathy with him for the way he was treated.

Lt. Colonel Hollis Mann, on the other hand, was all Army, all the way. She tended to bark at people and be rigid in her stance. Where Jen was dressed in designer pant suits, Mann was in fatigues with her hair under her cap. Gibbs was possibly the only man who had ever seen the softer side of her.

They were two entirely different types of people.

They both were possessive about Gibbs, not that he wanted them to be.

Something had to give.

It is well-known that very few things can change rocks. Frozen water is one of those things.

*****

Mann was in the Director’s office, talking about a joint assignment she was working with Gibbs. Jen was once again offering her a job with NCIS after retirement. Things had been fine, well almost fine, until Jen had made a remark about how she was sure Hollis would want to work with Gibbs.

The other woman didn’t like Jen’s “sweetness” and her patronizing attitude. Some days they worked together very well, but today she felt that Jen was acting as if she was giving Hollis a gift by helping her “pursue” Jethro, while always making her aware that she had been there first. There was an underlying attitude, at least from what Mann was picking up, of “I’ve had him and don’t need him anymore. You can have him now that I’m done with him.”

The temperature in the room was rapidly dropping.

The Colonel’s face had a frosty look and her eyes had hardened. She should have just waited for Jen to run down, but Mann was an impatient type, so she allowed herself to say, “Well, yes, I might be more successful at working with Jethro than others have been.”

Icicles were forming.

Ducky knocked on the door, stuck his head in, and said “Oh, dear.” He immediately retreated, shutting the door hastily behind him. On his way back down to Autopsy, he passed Gibbs and grabbed his arm. “Jethro.”

“Yeah, Duck?”

“You might want to make yourself scarce for awhile.” Gibbs raised an eyebrow.

Ducky gestured up the stairs. “Mann is in with Jennifer.”

Gibbs looked at the stairs as if he could see something that wasn’t there and then turned to Ducky. “Been saying we should get outside more for our breaks, right?”

Ducky nodded.

“Now would be good.”

Ducky didn’t even bother to nod in reply, but headed for the elevator, Gibbs right behind him.

*****

Meanwhile, permafrost was forming in Director Shepard’s office. The rock was beginning to feel the chill settle down upon it, and icy water was searching for cracks in the rock’s surface.

Jen looked at the other women. “Something the matter, Col. Mann?”

“Why, no, nothing. Did you have anything else for me?” said Hollis with a voice that was filled with honey. And poison.

“Other than Jethro?”

Okay, the gloves were off.

Hollis had a few things to say to Jen about her attitude.

And her luck with relationships.

And her interest in Gibbs’s personal life.

She said them. Each word dripping in frosty venom, slicing through the air, nestling in the rock’s cracks.

When water lodges in cracks in rocks and then freezes, it expands. It fills the crack and presses outward until a piece of the rock crumbles off.

Jen was crumbling.

But Mann had finished. She turned smartly on her heel and left. She didn’t even bother to look back to see how many pebbles were on the floor of the Director’s office.