Category: NCIS het/missing scene ficlet

Rating: G/PG

Characters: Gibbs/Kate

Series: No

Spoilers: Season One, especially Marine Down

Summary: We’re a close team. But there are some things I want to keep private.

Archive: Just tell me where it’s going

Additional ‘stuff’: Based on an earlier ep where Kate’s drawing of Gibbs was shown. Entirely Gibbs POV until the last little bit.

Title: Between the lines

There’s a race of people, I forget who, Shakers maybe, who think if you take their picture you take a piece of their soul. I don’t photograph well. All that ‘Say cheese’ and ‘Smile’ is just so pointless. I have pictures from each of my weddings and in all of them my new wives are smiling. I’m not. Maybe that’s why my marriages didn’t last all that long. Or not.

In the office, when Kate did the drawing and Tony snatched her sketchbook from her, I was ready to get it off him. They were distracted by her caricature of Tony and the vampire bat sketch of Abby. But when Tony threatened to turn the next page over, I was gonna stop him. Thank God Kate got there first. I mean, how would I know what kind of drawing was on the next page if I hadn’t seen it. That would have been scuttlebutt for weeks. And my butt was on that next page. Not just my butt. All of me. More than I want to share with the team.

Kate’s drawings are good. They take a while, but they’re worth it. Like this morning.

‘Don’t move.’

From anyone else, an instruction, an order, like that, and I’d be out of bed and on my feet in a second. But from Kate, with that soft caffeine-deprived voice – did I mention she’s a bean-junkie too – it’s just something I don’t argue with. So I lay, face down, head resting on my arms, butt in full view of Kate and her ever-present sketchbook.

There are sheets of paper all over the house. Me in bed. Me in the shower. Even me working on the boat. I like those. A lot. Guess I just like seeing myself doing something, not sleeping or washing. Kate says she likes the ones of me asleep best. Sometimes, when I look around the house, I’m sad. All those pictures, all that talent and no-one’s ever gonna see them except us. Still, as it’s me butt-naked in most of them I guess that’s a good thing not a bad thing.

I just woke up. She could have been sketching a minute or an hour, I can’t tell. She won’t let me see the drawing until she’s done. It’s Rule Number something-or-other. Hers not mine. That’s another thing. She’s got all these rules. Damn but they’re annoying. Okay, most of them are about me taking care of myself so I’m around for her to draw for a long time to come, but they’re still annoying.

At least my rules are useful. Hers are just about eating, and taking my meds and getting a good night’s sleep. That one we break. A lot. Well, we do sleep well afterwards. But if we’re on a case it can be midnight or later before we get to bed and then there’s...the stuff we do when we finally do get to bed. I wonder if Kate realizes I’ve got a couple of decades on her. I mean I am a Marine reservist but it’s been a while since I took a fitness test. Not that I need one. They say you’re as old as the woman you feel. Which makes me around thirty. I’m not shy but it’s one of those things I’ve never gotten around to asking Kate. I guess I could look in her Personnel file, but she’d know.

She misses precisely nothing. Nada. Zip. Zero. Which is about how cold my butt feels right now. I wriggle and Kate sighs, sitting back, closing her sketchbook.

‘Let me see.’

She shakes her head, her hair swishing around her face. ‘I’m not done.’

Smiling, I reach up for her, pulling her on top of me. ‘Not yet.’

So I broke a rule. Never date a co-worker. Who cares. Kate’s about to break one of hers. If I’m lucky, more than one.

End

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