Kate was in a black, black mood. Gibbs had been pushing her buttons too much this week. The good ones and the bad ones. She had to learn to be oblivious to it. She didn’t like feeling at the mercy of his moods. He had her emotionally exhausted trying to keep up with his rapid changes of front. One minute he was looking at her in that way that made her breath stop and her toes curl and the next he was snapping at her like she was an incompetent idiot. She just wanted to punch him. Or kiss him. Both, perhaps. Both would make her feel vastly better. But since Gibbs was her boss she was betting either action would only get her fired or at least severely lectured.
He couldn’t stop her fantasizing about it though. Which is exactly what she’d had planned for tonight, along with alcohol, loud music and a hot bath. She’d already cancelled the date she’d had for that night before Gibbs even called to demand her back on duty. She was too tired, too punchy and too hung up on her boss to care about Kevin, the stockbroker and avid canoeist. How boring he looked next to Gibbs, she thought and inwardly groaned. Gibbs is not an option! she screamed at herself.
The last thing she needed was to be stuck in a dark, narrow space with the man of her current dreams and nightmares, but that’s where she was. One didn’t say ‘no’ to Gibbs, so she was on stakeout, trapped, watching pretty people doing normal things like going out to dinner, to the movies, kissing on doorsteps…..
They’d barely said a word to each other since he’d picked her up. Gibbs seemed entirely oblivious to her ill humour, in fact. He’d been cheerfully guzzling coffee and spotting redheads for over an hour now, while they waited for their suspect to come home. Obviously he had a better social life than either of them, Kate thought, and had better things to do with his Friday night.
Gibbs reached for the radio.
"Please don’t," she warned and from the corner of her eye watched his hand retreat. Unusually compliant, Gibbs went back to his redheads, while his fingers absently drummed the steering wheel. All that coffee, she thought, watching the repetitive motion and marveling that even her present mood could not defend her against finding his hands irrationally attractive. She glanced at him surreptitiously as he turned in his seat to watch a tall, auburn-haired woman pass his window. She rolled her eyes: what is with the redhead thing?
"Excuse me?" Gibbs was looking at her.
Oh, right, so she’d said that aloud. Whoops.
"Nothing," she mumbled.
"Look, there’s another one," he noted casually, taking a sip of coffee. Kate followed his gaze to a burgundy-topped female crossing in front of them. Okay…she had to say it.
"Okay, you realise that isn’t even her true hair-colour."
"So?"
"So, you’d think after years of obsessional behavior, you’d be able to tell the difference."
"Obsessional?" he repeated edgily.
Oooo, she was pushing it tonight. She was looking for a fight. She thought she could take him, on this subject anyway. Gibbs wasn’t biting though. For whatever reason, when he spoke again, it was calmly, rationally:
"We can’t help what we are attracted to. Or who."
Didn’t she know it. She remembers Tony saying something similar to her when she first started piecing together Gibbs’ preference for redheads and felt the sharp sting of injustice at being born a brunette.
"Well, you also can’t judge a person by something so superficial, and I might add, subject to change. You’re dismissing a large percentage of the female population based on hair colour, that’s like, hair-ist. It’s discrimination." Too much, too much, shut up already! --she slapped her self mentally, but that was the least of what she wanted to say, the rest of it not so polite.
"Who’s dismissing?" Gibbs shrugged mildly: "I just happen to like redheads in the same way that women prefer tall men to short."
"Yes, but to only notice or date one or the other, I would call obsessional…."
"Kate, you’re wrong if you think I don’t notice other women," Gibbs tried in a quiet voice but she wasn’t listening.
"…I prefer to judge a person by their character, not the quality of their hair dye,’ she finished resolutely.
"Meaning?" he prompted.
"Meaning, that you can be attracted to a person, not on outer appearance but on inner quality." How pious! - she sounded like a cheap magazine.
"And what qualities would they be? For you that is." The question, posed casually, a touch of humour, perhaps indulgence, brought her up short. How had this become about her? He wasn’t looking at her and she was unable to determine whether he was drawing her out or baiting her. Her guard came up.
She began warily: "Strength, intelligence…" how dull did she sound? "…humour, integrity, compassion…" - she also sounded like she was describing her boss, minus the chronically bad mood, of course.
Gibbs made a knowing sound: "But a good head of hair and decent six-pack help don’t they Kate?"
She narrowed her eyes at him: "What?" - actually she’d recently developed a soft spot for dark grey hair and old blue eyes.
"C’mon, I’ve seen the guys you date," he smiled.
Kate shrugged and looked out the window: "And do you see me with any of them?" she asked, flatly, pleased when she succeeded in shutting him up for a moment. When he spoke again after a long pause, it was the first time she thought she’d heard him ask a question he didn’t know the answer to himself.
"Okay, well, why not?"
"For a smart guy, Gibbs, you’re clueless when it comes to women."
"Why don’t you educate me then, Agent Todd?" he said slowly, with an impatient sigh. A challenge, out and out.
"Firstly," she began, undaunted by the task of educating Gibbs in anything: "it’s nothing to do with hair and a six-pack. It’s so not about that."
"No?" he questioned with mock surprise.
She looked at him. He was enjoying this, she realised- her indignation, getting her all worked up.
"No," she whispered back and couldn’t help a slight smile. "For instance," she turned in her seat to face him and adopted a calmer tone: "Tony."
"Tony?"
"Yeah. Good-looking guy," she stated, one eyebrow and one corner of her mouth lifting: "Some might say gorgeous. Good head of hair, nice eyes, nice smile, perfect teeth. Good body…" she was getting to him, she could tell - he was not liking the direction that she’d taken. " And beyond the twelve-year old mentality, there’s a guy with a good heart and head on his shoulders-"
"But?" he interrupted, urging her to make her point.
"But I’m not attracted to him," she finished simply.
"Because?"
"Because of how I see him. He’s like a brother, he’s a buddy, a workmate-"
"But people become attracted to the people they work with all the time. Fall in love even."
Everything in her froze - her brain, her heart, her mouth, her breath. He’d just spoken her truth aloud, her big secret. They were facing each other, bare inches away, he was looking right at her when he said it and she had no hope of disguising her immediate reaction to those softly spoken words. Even in the darkness, she doubted he missed her sudden flush and unease. She looked to the side, to the other side, opened her mouth and closed it again, searching for remnants of the conversation they’d been having up until then. A few minutes ago she’d had so much to say, and now she had nothing: no words, no thoughts, na-da. And what was worse than the effect he was having on her was that it was a dead give away. ‘He must know! He must realise!’ was all she could think, mortified. She took a breath and held it as some part of her brain decided to stall with nonsense sounds:
"Well, yes, but…what I mean is that…"she stopped and bit her lip.
She met his eyes in the dark but didn’t dare try to read their expression. She was not gifted at reading ordinary men let alone this man. With any other man who made such a statement, she would hazard a guess that he was flirting with her, teasing her, baiting her…but Gibbs she knew was different to others, more complex. While his verbal communication was always clear and concise, his non-verbal communication was anything but. For every primary emotion, there was a secondary and tertiary lurking behind it, a multitude in fact, swirling in the blue of his eyes. And there was always an element of secrecy, of a private undiscovered depth that Kate felt confident existed, but had no actual proof of. She let out her breath. His eyes glinted in the darkness, as he waited for her to speak, but she couldn’t trust herself to unbiasedly attribute that glint to anything relating to her. Her eyes ran over his face, as her mouth tried to form a sentence and her brain tried to recover from the fact that she’d just blatantly shown him her hand. A Royal Flush.
"So Tony doesn’t exactly light your fire, I can see that," Gibbs leant back in his seat and cleared his throat: "What about all the others? All the doctors and lawyers I see picking you up from time to time? What’s the matter with them?"
She couldn’t believe it -- he’d just rescued her. She’d been drowning and he could’ve let her flounder, but he threw her a lifeline. The spotlight was still on her, she still had to come up with an answer but she didn’t feel paralyzed at the prospect. Leaning back in her own seat, she tried to honestly pinpoint what all those guys had lacked. Aside from the fact that they didn’t distract her from preferring her boss above all men. She’d considered all the angles before of course, so it wasn’t likely that the answer was going to come now.
"I don’t know," she admitted, with a shrug: "No chemistry, I guess."
Gibbs hummed and nodded: "Yep," he said to himself: "Chemistry’s a killer."
A silence settled over them. Kate’s mood had lifted, she had to admit but she still didn’t feel that being in such close proximity to Gibbs was doing her any favours. She’d shot her mouth off and as usual, when she did, she’d embarrassed herself. High on her list of priorities was getting the hell away from him and forgetting this entire conversation, preferably before she faced him again on Monday.
"Look, here’s one for you," Gibbs spoke up, pointing with his coffecup.
She looked up and saw a man with curly red hair that was thinning on top. He had pale skin and was slightly pudgy, his suit brown and wrinkled, but his eyes crinkled kindly as he chatted on his cell.
"Looks like man of humour and integrity," he added, stealing from her previous words. He grinned and she passed him a withering look. "Tall, too," he added but she ignored him. She watched the redhead cross the street to a bus stop where two women were talking.
"Well, I’ve got yours," she announced gleefully: "Check out the blonde."
Gibbs squinted at where she pointed. The woman was tall, long legs in black stocking and blonde hair in thick curls. She looked sleek and sophisticated - what she imagined was Gibbs’ type, minus the hair colour, of course, but then this was a test. She turned to him for his reaction.
"She’s okay," he shrugged.
Kate rolled her eyes: "Talk about hard to please."
"I prefer her friend," Gibbs said and Kate looked at the figure beside the blonde; shorter, dark hair in a bob with a straight fringe and little black specs. "The brunette," Gibbs added and was it her imagination or did he lean in quite deliberately to drop that piece of information in her ear? Kate smiled secretively and dropped her eyes. She didn’t dare look at him, but could feel his gaze on the side of her face and knew he was studying her reaction.
Okay, so maybe he wasn’t so oblivious to her after all.
She looked up in time to see the brunette across the road approach the redhead and ask a question. He looked at his watch and signaled to a bus just rounding the corner. The brunette waved to the blonde who took out a book and candy bar. From their car, Kate and Gibbs could see the redhead and the brunette board the bus, he made an ‘after you’ gesture then took the seat next to her.
Gibbs chuffed. Kate stuck out her bottom lip and shrugged:
"Their loss," she said.
Gibbs smiled and nodded.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~