In the beginning, it was the thing that they had in common.
Where other people – normal people, he reminds himself sardonically – bonded over old movies or college experiences or appreciation for a good shot of bourbon, their bond had been death in the line of fire. A never-acknowledged, slender connection that ran between the two of them like a thread of steel. It was on record, that his partner in Philadelphia had been killed by a suspect in a homicide investigation, but he was pretty sure that Gibbs had known what his deal was without ever touching his file. They didn't swap war stories. He had never told Gibbs how Daniel had died, and Gibbs had never seemed to feel the burning need to share what had happened that day in the desert with Cameron, but it was right there. It was, in the beginning, the thing that set them that little bit apart from Viv. On the bad days, the days with murdered kids and too many dead ends and not enough sleep, they could look at each other and see the raw pain of too many losses reflected back.
He had packed up when Daniel died. Left his badge and gun on his precinct captain's desk in the middle of the night, mailed his apartment keys back to his landlord, thrown a few boxes in the 'Vette, and started driving. To this day he doesn't know how he ended up in Baltimore. He knows that he was running from something. He shut himself off, went undercover every chance he got, faced down clinically deranged murderers solo, was given six commendations in less than two years, and came as close to getting himself killed as makes no difference.
He can't do that this time.
Pacci was hard.
Kate will be fucking awful.
She was his coworker, and his brother-in-arms, and his best friend, and his big sister, and losing Kate is a thousand times worse than losing Daniel was, but he's not the only one grieving, and much as he'd like to be anywhere but here, even he isn't as selfish as all that. She died protecting Gibbs. McGee lost his partner up there, too, and Abby lost her best friend. They aren't innocent, either of them, but they're his people, his and Gibbs's, and of all the things he could ever have wanted to protect them from, this was the worst, the nightmare scenario, the look he would give anything to not have seen in their eyes.
He can see the bullet hole in Kate's head every time he closes his eyes.
Having his eyes open doesn't make a lot of difference, either.
He would live it again a thousand times, her and Chris and Daniel and Gerald, if it meant that he could erase the memory of the hitch in Abby's breath and the tiny break in McGee's voice and Ducky older than he had ever seen him.
So he'll stay.
For them, and, if he's honest with himself, for him, a little bit too, because he doesn't think he can do this on his own.
But for right now, he can't deal with people. Can't deal with the too-obvious sympathy on the faces of the other teams, or his own team looking lost, like they don't know what to do with themselves because they don't. Can't handle Gibbs being nice. Knows that he'll probably start howling on the first person to touch him, whether that's Ducky or Abby or McGee or Gibbs, or Palmer, or, God, right now, Morrow, probably. He had fled to the shower on the excuse that he was sweaty and sticky and bloodstained, and nobody had stopped him, although he doesn't have any delusions that they didn't all know that what he really needs is ten minutes alone to pull himself together, and the decontamination showers had seemed like a good idea because they were the most likely to be deserted at this time of day.
He had groped blindly for the bottle of shower gel that he had seen on the side...
...and that had been his undoing.
Nobody used these showers. Ever. It made sense that they had probably been the last people in here; the Navy Yard wasn't the subject of chemical spills or biological attacks on a daily basis, no matter what the media might have you believe.
And now, with the smell of Kate all over his hands, he finds that he can't stop shaking.
He doesn't know how long he stands there, but the water is running cool by the time Abby comes looking for him. He doesn't know how she knew he would be in there, thinks that she probably didn't but that she's searched the building. He doesn't know why she's in the shower with him, really doesn't know why she's naked, thinks that seeing her like this probably borders on indecent, decides that he doesn't care that much. She's reassuringly warm, she's there, and, when their mouths meet in a painful crash, it's the most alive he's felt since he was running from that car bomb, and Jesus, was that only this morning? His hair is full of Kate's shower gel, and the salt from his eyes and the water from the shower head meets the bubbles running down his face, fruity and herbal and Kate, and, as rivulets get past the fusion of lips and tongues, he can faintly taste it.
When her nails score a line down his back, he feels the sting but doesn't even consider objecting, and when he pushes into her hard and fast and her response is to bite his bottom lip, bordering just this side of painful, he vaguely thinks that maybe she needs this as much as he does.
Orgasm doesn't feel euphoric as much as it feels like a release, of pain and tension and grief and guilt and everything he's been hanging onto since he dropped to his knees on that roof. In one way or another, he's been hanging onto it for longer than that, since he dropped to his knees in a back alley six years ago, trying to stop Daniel from bleeding out when Daniel had been dead since before the bullet left the gun. When he slips his hand between Abby's legs to finish her off, she chokes into his shoulder and clenches around his fingers, and he hangs on to her like he's scared to let go.
She's the only thing keeping him from drowning.
Story Notes:
Written for jadekitten01 in the 2005 Bubbleficathon. Nods to Em Meredith for the organisation and general awesomeness, and to REM.
Author's Chapter Notes:
Post-ep for Twilight
Chapter End Notes:
Written for jadekitten01 in the 2005 Bubbleficathon. Nods to Em Meredith for the organisation and general awesomeness, and to REM.