When he could see again, Gibbs looked down at the woman in his arms. Her skin was flushed, from her cheeks to the tops of her breasts where they were still confined by her bra. He shifted, pulling out of her and drawing them both up to the pillows on the bed. He settled her against his chest, then reached around to unclasp the bra. He started to draw the straps down her arms when she brought her hands up to stop him. “You’re not the only one with new scars, J,” Andrea said quietly when he looked from her hands to her eyes. But she let him brush her hands back down and pull the bra away from her breasts.
His body posture didn't change so much as a twitch when he saw the scar that ravaged the outer portion of her right breast. But she felt his fingers, rough from his work on the boat in the basement, when they gently traced the ragged edges. Again, he met her eyes. “Your turn to tell,” was all he said.
So she took a deep breath and prepared to journey further down memory lane this night. “I told you some things have happened in the last couple of years, J. This was one of them. Three years ago I found a lump. I had stage two breast cancer.” His arms tightened around her and her drew a blanket over them. This would be a long story.
She told of beginning treatment, her fear because her mother and sister had both passed away of the same disease. She told of trying to protect twelve-year-old Amanda from the severity of her mother’s illness. Then she came to the horrifying part of the story. “When radiation didn’t take care of the problem, I started chemo. My first treatment, I ran into someone who worked at the hospital " someone I knew.” From the way she tensed, he had an idea of what was coming. “It was Amanda’s father. And it was awful. God, J, I couldn’t run, I couldn’t change hospitals or doctors because I was already committed. But every time I went, I was afraid I would run into him. And finally I did.” She told of the confrontation, of the man’s inevitable discovery that his daughter was living in the same city, and of her fight to keep the two apart. And her failure.
“He started calling Mandy. She was curious, and of course she couldn’t believe the little I could tell her about the time we were together because I wouldn’t tell her everything. So I agreed to a meeting " the three of us. And that started it.” The man was clean, charming, and had Amanda convinced her mother had run away, depriving her of a caring father. The girl started acting out, disobeying house rules, and believing the worst of her mother. Andrea, four sessions into her chemotherapy, didn’t have the energy to fight the girl as she should have, or to realize when Amanda skipped school once, then twice to spend the day with her father.
“I don’t know what would have happened, J, how it would have turned out if I hadn’t been driving to chemo one day and seen the two of them in his car, during school hours. I felt sick, finding out like that what he was doing. I followed them, hoping she had called him to take her home when she got sick at school or something, but he saw me….” She trailed off and Gibbs’ infamous gut instinct kicked in.
“Andrea,” he started, going very still. “Where is Amanda?” But he already knew the answer, and her words confirmed his fears.
“He was running from me, driving too fast and running stop signs. I could see her in the car, screaming at him to stop, to slow down, I know she saw me behind them because she took off her seat belt and turned around to look at me,” Andrea choked on a sob. “And a truck hit them, on the passenger side. On her side. I was following close enough that I hit the truck, and I don’t know what happened after that. I woke up in the hospital, shattered pelvis, still sick from the chemo, and learned my baby girl, my daughter, my Mandy….” She broke down in his arms, and he held her tight to her chest, letting her cry. From the violence of the breakdown, he wondered if she had ever had a shoulder to cry on over her loss. The story was heartbreaking, more so because he remembered the little girl, as a baby, as a toddler; he had been there for her first tooth, her first word, her first steps. And now she, like his daughter, was gone. And he felt tears escaping his eyes, too. And something in him cracked.
Since Kate’s death, he had held himself together through one crisis after another. He had held himself in tight control, like the Marine he was, like the Marine he had been before meeting his first wife. She had softened him, just a little, and their daughter had gentled him even more. But for the last two years he had reverted to the hard, emotionally distant man Parris Island had trained him to be. But that night, holding Andrea in his arms, their skin still smelling of their lovemaking, as he let her grieve and fall apart, he began to grieve, too. They shared the grief of parents who had lost children, of people who had survived horrible medical traumas, of those who had lost those who mattered the most and been left to pick up the pieces.
By the time Andrea’s sobs had quieted to sniffles, then just little hitches in her breath, tears were running freely down Gibb’s face. She looked up at him, her face red and blotchy, and sighed. “I’m sorry, J. I didn’t tell you right away because I remembered your daughter; I knew this would be the worst thing I could tell you. I’m so sorry; I didn’t want to hurt you like this.” She rose above him and kissed his cheeks where the tears were tracking.
He wrapped his arms tightly around her torso and crushed her to him. “You are amazing,” he said into her ear. “You have had the worst possible thing happen to you, at a time when you were already low, and you’re worried about me? Have you even had anyone to lean on these last two years? Has anyone been taking care of you?” He demanded an answer, forcing her to meet his eyes with a hand on either side of her face.
She stared down at him, wondering if her next words would push their relationship or break it. “That’s when I realized how alone I was,” she whispered.
He pulled her to him for a kiss " a primal, possessive kiss that let her know what he thought of that answer. “You could have called, baby,” he whispered when they broke apart to breathe. “You did not have to be alone. I would have come for you. I would have been there. I would have taken you away from there sooner. It kills me to think of you alone, broken, sick and grieving. I’m mad that you went through that alone. God, even when Kelly…” he broke off. “I wasn’t alone. I didn’t go through that alone. You shouldn’t have had to!” He wasn’t shouting by the time he was finished, but there was so much heat in his voice that she recoiled, sitting up on his belly. That only made him moan, and pull her back down into another kiss. “I didn’t mean to scare you, baby, I didn’t. I’m so sorry. Please, please…” He punctuated his sentences, his words with kisses across her face, her eyes, her nose, her mouth. Little kisses that reassured her; he wasn’t going to turn away from her or hurt her more than she had already suffered. She relaxed into his embrace, and that put them into an interesting position that their bodies were only too happy to take advantage of.
Their lovemaking this time was slow and gentle. There was an intensity to it; the same way a healed bone is stronger in the place it has been broken. They had both been broken, they had broken in each other’s arms, and the sex was a reassurance that they would help each other heal. A first step, with the promise of more. Even as he rushed toward his climax, Gibbs felt something tight in his chest relaxing, some tension he didn’t even realize he had been carrying around seep out of him as she arched above him with her own orgasm.
Andrea, for her part, felt completely boneless afterward. She collapsed onto Gibbs’ chest, not even trying to roll off. It was minutes before she could muster the energy to ask: “I’m not crushing you? ‘Cause you can just shove me over. But I can’t move.”
His chuckle reverberated through her chest. “You’re fine. Don’t move.” She took him at his word and it was only minutes before he heard her breathing even out and knew she was asleep. He waited longer, enjoying holding her, the feel of her weight on him, the pleasure of having her back in his bed, in his life further relaxing him. When he felt himself slip out of her body, he decided cleanup was in order. He rolled her gently to her side, tucking the blanket around her securely. When she snuggled into the pillow and didn’t wake, he rolled off the bed and headed to the shower. As he passed the mirror, he caught himself smiling. Smiling, in spite of the news she had shared, in spite of talking all night about the worst possible subjects, he was smiling.
Author's Chapter Notes:
Bedroom scene, tamed for public consumption. Learn Andie's trauma.
Chapter End Notes:
Warning: minor character death. Get a tissue. I'll wait....