Chapter Two
Mac grabbed his cell phone from the kitchen table and started scrolling through his contacts. There were several reservists he knew who lived down south, not close enough to New Orleans to get in and get an additional two people out. Having someone who knew ASL or at least had a basic grasp would be helpful.
Seeing a name, he smiled, knowing that he may have just found the perfect solution. A buddy of his from the force, a detective turned victims’ advocate, had retired about six months ago, choosing New Orleans as the polar opposite of New York. Hitting the dial button, he hoped that Ethan was still in town, or somewhere near there. He wasn't the type to just bail when things looked bad. If people needed help, he generally stuck around.
Ethan Grant looked at his cell phone in surprise. New York? Mac Taylor? Must be important, Taylor wasn’t someone to call on a whim. Not at a time like this. He looked up at a TV in the firehouse he was helping out at. The levees were gonna go, he could feel it. Whatever Taylor needed, he’d have to make it happen double time. “Taylor, we got a hurricane here, this better be important.”
"Good to talk to you too, Grant. I can't think of anything more important than two deaf adults who might still be in their house as whatever is happening down there is going on. I have their daughter in the den of my buddy’s house, and she can't get in touch with her parents. I really need a favor, I need them found."
He would owe Ethan, and was pretty sure that his friend would request manual labor for doing this. But helping out Jet's lab tech would make it worthwhile. "Their neighbor who helps out couldn't get them to answer the door, and she's fearing the worst. I can't let her drive down there, which is what she's planning. Tell me that you can or you know someone who can get over to their house."
“I can, signed up with the Guard when I got down here. Have a Hummer. Get me their details, Taylor, and I’ll do my best.” Ethan’s sister was deaf, he knew why Taylor had called him rather than anyone else. “But do it fast, Mac. Things are going down here and if I can’t get it done in the next couple hours, it’s gonna get real bad real fast.”
"Hold on a second, I can get you an address right now.” Mac crossed the house and walked back into the den, glad to see that Abby had calmed down a little. "Jet, I have someone who will drive out and check out Abby's parents house, but he needs to know where he's going. He needs to do it now."
"Here, let me talk to him. I can give him an address and directions and then walk him through a couple of signs, something that my parents would recognize. He's really going to go for them?" Tears were welling back up in Abby's eyes. Here was a man who didn't even know her helping her out and finding her parents.
"We had a sign when I was little, like a code word. If someone didn't know the sign I knew that they weren't there because my parents asked them. They'll go with him if he knows the sign."
"His name is Ethan, and he's fluent in ASL. Lucked out that he retired down there not too long ago." Mac handed the phone over to Abby, and smiled as the young woman excitedly gave information to his friend.
Mac tugged Jet into the hallway, out of Abby’s earshot and arranged them so that she couldn’t lip read them. "So, are we out?" Mac shouldn't care, they'd been together a lifetime, it wouldn't change. But being together and being out were two different things.
“As out as out could be. What the hell ya thinking prancing around with your shirt undone? And the buttons on your jeans are still open.” Jet flicked the exposed skin there.
“Says the man who thundered upstairs in his boxer shorts. I was going for comfort, and wasn’t expecting anyone to just show up.” Mac had been coming down to DC for years and had never had anyone besides Kelly show up.
Jet smirked, shrugging. “Shouldn’t have been sanding that close to nude anyway.”
“Is she cool with all of this? She’s not going to run off and gossip to the whole Navy Yard that you have a male lover, is she?”
Jet inclined his head, nodding. “I think she’s going to keep this very quiet. We’re close and she respects me. We’ll establish the rules, Mac. We’ll work this out.”
"Only you could have a groupie who won't ruin you, Beautiful Boy. Me, I'd get some crazy woman who was angry that I didn't choose her. You, you get a funky little Goth who doesn't care that the big bad Marine is sleeping with another big bad Marine. You're lucky I guess."
Mac liked Abby, at least the little he'd seen of her. Both Jet and Kelly had been raving about her since she joined NCIS. He fully understood why. "If you're not careful, I'm going to steal her out from underneath you. I need a good lab supervisor, and she'd be perfect. Something to shake up the NYPD."
“She wouldn’t last two minutes in that political swamp. You want Abby, you come down here and work for NCIS or elsewhere, like you’ve been threatening.” Mac gave him a curious look and Jet shook his head. “Don’t tease me if you’re not thinking seriously about it.” Mac just continued staring. “Mac, you seriously starting to think about making the move?”
“I’m sick of making this drive, Jet. For twenty some odd years, I’ve made this drive. You’ve come up for just as many years.” They had earned the chance to be together, without the miles between them. “I need a change, and I can’t think of a better one than Washington. My two favorite people who aren’t my parents live here, and they’ve been talking about moving to someplace milder and nearer their grandchild. Jet, it might be time.”
“I’d like that,” Jet admitted softly. “You wanna make the change, my door is wide open. You’d class up the place, Babe. And NCIS would love to have you.” He reached over and placed his hand on Mac’s head, stroking over his hair. “Thought of waking up next to you every day makes my night.”
"Don't know if I could work at NCIS, that's your domain. I wouldn't want to try and force myself in. I'll find someplace to work or something to do. I've got money; I'm not in a rush to just take a job to have one." Mac thought he might be ready to leave New York. He had stayed longer than he should have, because he swore he could still feel Claire there. But it was time to move on, and that meant leaving the city he had adopted as home.
"When I go back, I'll start looking at my options. See if I can't create an exit strategy. It won't be immediately, but sometime soon."
“Like that, Babe. Really like that.” With Kelly at college, Gibbs had been feeling out of sorts. This would change things, and he thought they were ready for it.
“You’re just looking forward to potentially getting some when ever you want, and not having to wait until we get a weekend off to be together.”
Jet wrapped his arms around Mac’s waist. “So, I like doing and being done by you. You never objected, so why start now.”
He heard a big sniffle and turned to find Abby off the phone, extending it to Mac. “Super Mac strikes again? What’s happening, Abby? Is Mac’s friend able to get to your folks?”
“Yeah, he’s going to drive over there and I told him some of the places they might be hiding. This isn’t exactly the first rodeo for my parents, there’s always potential that a storm will turn ugly.” Abby was feeling much more relieved. If her parents were still at the house, they would be taken out and might have a minute to save a few family mementos. “You said it, Boss, he’s Super Mac. In less than an hour, he made this happen.”
Mac gave her a gentle smile. “My pleasure, Abby. Ethan will get them to safety.”
"I hope so. My parents, they've lived in New Orleans a long time, they know how to prepare for a storm, and they know how to hide. But Ethan said he'd do his best, and I believe him. I guess I'm just lucky all around today."
“Ethan was special forces before he was NYPD, SEAL actually. I have confidence that he’ll find them, Abby.”
“Sure he will.” Abby needed to believe that, needed to know that there was a chance for her parents. “I thought you Marines didn’t trust anyone but your brothers to do work like this? If you trust a Navy boy, then I guess I have to accept that he’s going to find them.”
“I worked side by side with him for almost thirteen years. He’s a squid I can trust.”
"Then I can trust him. Just still a little nervous. My parents, they're independent. They aren't going to like knowing that my brother and I don't believe they can take care of themselves." Being the only member of the family with full hearing capacity was hard enough, but to have to worry this way about her parents was driving Abby crazy.
"My brother, he's deaf same as my parents. Dad lost his hearing in an accident during the war, met my mom at school learning sign language. She was born unable to hear, so I had a fifty/fifty shot at being able to hear. I guess I won the coin flip. But it means I sometimes have to do things for my family that other kids don't. Like getting them out of town, if they like it or not."
“This is a bad storm, Abby. As bad as the one in the Sixties. How did they cope then?” In a different world, where neighbors cared for neighbors and didn’t brandish guns and loot at the first sign of trouble.
“Neither my mom nor dad are natives, they moved after they got married, so they got there after Betsy. We’ve had mini storms since then, but nothing like this.”
He couldn’t imagine being the only hearing child in a family. “You and Jethro ever chat in ASL?”
She smiled, thinking about all the conversations she’d had with Gibbs, including a lot of yapping about coworkers. “I was thrilled to find out that he spoke ASL, it’s really like a native language to me. From the time I could talk, I was learning to talk with my hands as well. I was tutoring at a local school, and some of my students are pretty good, but Gibbs is very good. He can keep up with me when I’m babbling, and that’s a real skill.”
“Did he tell you how he learned it?” Jet had taught Mac back in West Virginia and while he wasn’t fluent, he could carry on a conversation.
“No, and when I looked like I was going to ask, he got all quiet and thoughtful. That’s when we all know to back off. When Gibbs gets pissed, he’s still approachable. He might take your head off, but you’ll survive.” Abby had been monitoring her boss’s moods for years, and always let the new people in the office know the basics about navigating NCIS without pissing off Jethro Gibbs. “When he gets quiet, it’s all over, you have to let him be until he approaches you. Figure there are some things you just don’t mess with. That’s Rule #1864.”
Mac looked over at his lover, who was staring at the TV intently. “I know. I’m well acquainted with his moods and when to push. We have a lot of history there and some of it involves screaming fights when I push too hard.” And Mac knew that he could get away with a lot more than most people could.
“Maybe he’ll tell me when I get you both drunk and pick your brains. If not, it’s still nice to have someone to practice with. My mom and dad appreciate it, I don’t stutter as much if Gibbs and I have been signing at work.” She could see herself totally hanging out with Mac; he was cool and not just because he was sleeping with her boss. She’d have liked him if she had run into him at a conference or on the street. “You going to give me good stuff to use at work to keep him in line? You know better than most I bet.”
“Better than anyone,” Mac said softly. “Been through life and death, Abby. Stopped each other from doing stupid things. I know his every mood, every heartbreak, every bit of agony or pain he’s been in since he was twenty. Every happiness. Was there when Kelly was born, just after Shannon died, when Kel was so badly injured.” He tried to lighten the mood with a smile. “You want the goods on him, I’ll be glad to comply. I could maybe even rustle up some sleeping Gibbs pics. Or just ask him about Toronto and body shots.”
“Body shots? Wow, any chance I can get a replay of that? I don’t even know what happened, at least not really, and it sounds like pure sex.” Abby could imagine the two men together, and it was a pretty clear picture helped by the information Gibbs had given her. “Oh yeah, I’m going to like knowing about you. Plan on getting lots of calls and emails from me.”
Mac grinned, remembering that night. “Have to ask my repressed beautiful boy that, Abby. Compared to him, I’m loose. Wasn’t always that way. He took me to Toronto for a birthday.” Yeah, that had been an incredible night. “Body shots, right on the bar, crowd watching him drinking tequila off me.”
Could her eyes get any wider?
“Never would have guessed it. He hides his wild side well.” At least now she knew where Kelly got her wild streak. Guess the apple didn’t fall too far from the tree after all. “I plan on asking, maybe some Friday night after a long week at work. Gibbs and shots, that’s too much to pass up.”
“Doesn’t come out much,” Mac agreed. “And hardly ever in public. Just not what guys like us do, Abby.” But he was different back then, too. A bit freer. They’d both changed far too much, become too remote, since Claire had died.
“And never in the States right? You’re both repressed.” She understood why, neither was in a field where they could be real open. It just didn’t sit well with her. “You don’t have to be around me. If you haven’t guessed, I’m pretty open. I want you to be able to be that way with me too.”
“Never in the States. Yeah, we’re overly controlled, repressed, you name it. We have to be in our careers. Doesn’t translate very well to personal lives. Good thing we have each other.” Of course she was open; he knew that. It was as clear as the ink on her neck. “Can’t promise but we have a better shot than most with you around. Especially Jet.”
There were very few people Jet felt comfortable with, and Mac knew Abby was one of them.
"Why with me? I'm just one person who wants to see her boss happy."
“You’re enough like Kelly for him to completely relax, that’s why.”
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