Maggie wasn’t sure what the nature of the problem was, but something was definitely up with Gibbs. He had been barking at everyone all week, even more so than usual. Even Abby couldn’t break through to him.
“286 South Patrick,” Gibbs ordered. “Get there, people, the scene isn’t going to investigate itself. McGee, you’re with me. Noah; Ziva, Tony; meet us there. Quickly, people!” he barked.
“Agent Gibbs,” Maggie began to question. He stopped and heaved a sigh.
“Yes, Agent Sullivan?” he responded impatiently.
“What do you want me to do?” she asked.
“I don’t care,” he said annoyed. He shook his head, “Ride with Agents Diamond and DiNozzo.”
“I’m sorry, but have I done something to offend you?” she asked him. There was silence across the bullpen as everyone held their collective breaths.
“Actually, you have,” he said sternly, getting in her face. “That choice you made last week was a stupid, probie error. You are smarter than that. Not only did you put yourself at risk, but you also cost almost a whole day’s work for two agents. Both of those things are unacceptable!” he shouted, his face mere inches from hers. “You of all people should have known the effect your choice would have had, but your pride was more important than your health.” He continued to point at her. “From now on you will treat this team with the respect it deserves, are we clear?” The silence in the room was almost deafening. People had seen Gibbs upset, but he typically didn’t call people out in public. And they had never seen him this upset at someone not sitting across from him in interrogation. “Are we CLEAR, Agent Sullivan!!??” he repeated at full volume.
“Yes sir,” she answered, meeting his eyes with her own. He stared her down, but she didn’t give an inch. She smiled, continuing to meet his gaze, until he turned away.
“Wow,” Noah said after McGee and Gibbs had left the building. “He really meant every word of that, Maggie. He’s doing a pretty good job of blocking his thoughts now that he knows about me; but when he began reaming you out, he dropped his guard. There was no pretense in that at all.”
“I have no doubt of his sincerity,” Maggie confirmed. “He’s right, you know,” she continued contemplative. “I knew better.”
“I know you did,” Noah answered. “I still don’t know why you tried it.” She sighed. All she knew was when she showed the team her wolf she HAD to change back. She couldn’t explain the compulsion to do it when she did, but she just felt she had to.
“We better hurry,” Tony said, patting Maggie on the back as they climbed into the vehicle.
* * *
“Abby, do you have a minute?” Kate asked over the music in the forensics lab.
“For you? Always,” Abby said with a smile. “Where’ve you been? I haven’t seen you in a few days.”
“I’ve been scouring the city, asking others like me for more information. Tony is so certain that there is some way for me to stay indefinitely. I haven’t heard anything,” Kate sighed in exasperation. “What’s been going on here?”
Abby leveled her a strange look. “Tony’s been acting weird since you’ve been missing. Gibbs is in some sort of funk – I’ve never seen him like this before. Tony said he saw him out over the weekend getting totally hammered. When Tony tried to joke with him about it, he bit his head off.”
“Wow, that’s intense, even for Gibbs,” Kate remarked.
“And I know!” Abby said. “Rumor has it that he just went off on Maggie upstairs before they all left for the crime scene. Agent Lee said he was vicious.”
“Aw, poor Gibbs,” Kate said.
“Poor Gibbs?” Abby questioned. “I’m serious Kate, you know I’m usually the first to defend him but he’s really pissing me off this week.” Abby shrugged as her phone rang.
“You got me, shoot!” Abby said cheerfully, putting the call on speaker.
“McGee and DiNozzo are bringing evidence. Call me when you have something,” Gibbs said shortly, disconnecting immediately after.
“You’re welcome!” Abby shouted at the phone. Kate laughed, and then met Abby’s gaze. They laughed together. “That’s just one more reason why I need you here, my friend,” she said.
* * *
“Where’ve you been, Duck?” Gibbs demanded.
“Obeying the traffic laws, Jethro,” Ducky responded disdainfully. “I informed Mr. Palmer that it was more important for us to arrive alive than not to arrive at all due to our innards being strewn across six lanes of freeway,” he continued, making his way inside the small ranch house. “Now, what do we have here?” he asked indicating the two bodies lying on the floor of the living room.
“Isn’t that what you’re supposed to tell me?” Gibbs responded. He continued, “McGee and DiNozzo already photographed the scene and collected some evidence for Abby to examine. Sullivan is still canvassing the area, and David and Diamond are interviewing the next-door neighbor who reported the incident. They’ve already finished interviewing the police who responded to scene. It would have been nice to have had our medical examiner here while we were still speaking with the police,” he said frustrated.
“I assure you, Jethro, Mr. Palmer and I arrived as soon as we possibly could. Now if you don’t mind…” he skirted past him to begin examining the body. “What we have here, Mr. Palmer, is…” Ducky continued, ignoring Gibbs’ look of impatience “is a case of the lion with a thorn stuck in his paw.” Jimmy Palmer looked at the body, confused.
“It looks like a simple bullet wound to me, Dr. Mallard,” Jimmy replied.
“It is never simple, Mr. Palmer, and I was referring to our fearless leader, Agent Gibbs” Ducky explained.
“Oh,” said Palmer, still a little confused.
* * *
“Gibbs,” he barked into his phone.
“It’s Fornell, can you talk?”
“What you got for me?” he cut to the chase.
“First of all, it took an act of God to find any information at all on NPID, but I finally did. Your Agent Sullivan is totally clean, Jethro,” Fornell said matter-of-factly.
“Are your sure, Tobias?” Gibbs asked, wanting confirmation. “The fate of my whole team is riding on this.”
“I couldn’t be more certain,” he continued. “And as far as her allegations of using… ahem… ‘relationships’ for personal or other gain – you couldn’t be further off. She has a reputation of the highest integrity. Just about every person I questioned was offended on her behalf. Even her credit rating is exemplary.”
“Thank you,” Gibbs said softly, disconnecting the line. That was one last thing for him to worry about. Gibbs drove off without a word, leaving the others at the scene.
* * *
Working furiously to get as much information as possible before Gibbs yelled at her again, Abby didn’t notice when he walked into the lab. He put the Caf-Pow! next to her. “Hey Abs,” he said.
“Gibbs?” she asked, turning to look him in the eyes. She smiled, “It’s you! You’re back! I thought aliens had abducted you and you were an imposter!” she exclaimed, giving him a huge hug. He chuckled.
“No aliens, Abby, just having a bad week,” he answered.
“I’ll say,” she whispered under her breath. He chose to ignore her comment.
“What’ve you got?” he asked, looking over her shoulder.
“What we have here are at least two different perpetrators, Gibbs. You see, the blood on the fibers found near the couch aren’t even the same blood type as the blood on these fibers found near the door. And neither blood sample matches either victim. I’m working on reconstructing the scene,” she said, pointing to her monitor. “So far, I can’t come up with a scenario that would come even close to leaving things the way we found them. But I’ll keep working on it,” she quickly added, “and let you know as soon as I have something.” She smiled and saluted him. Gibbs leaned down and kissed her on the cheek.
“Good work, Abby,” he said and left the room.
* * *
Maggie was completely flabbergasted. She had assumed doubts about her were one of the reasons for Gibbs’ attitude problem that week. But she had also assumed that those doubts were rooted in what he was feeling for her. She knew he was attracted to her, and she also knew he had no desire to break the personal code he had developed for himself. But it never even crossed her mind that he might question her motives or integrity. She reviewed the conversation she overhead between him and Fornell in her mind for about the twelfth time. She respected him all the more for following up on his suspicions. But what she couldn’t believe was that he suspected she had a history of using her feminine wiles, so to speak, for nefarious reasons. That he would mistake her attraction for him as something cheap or sneaky made her furious.
What he needed was to be brought down a peg or two. She thought about the way he had been treating everyone this week. She had been excusing his behavior, but the more she thought about it, the angrier she got. What right did he have to treat people that way? Being someone’s superior does not give you the right to act like a toddler on a temper tantrum and get away with it. She decided at that moment to give him a piece of her mind.
* * *
She had no sooner made her decision than Jethro stepped onto the elevator beside her.
“I was looking for you,” he began.
“And I was looking for you,” she interrupted, fire flashing in her green eyes. She hit the elevator stop button. “You need to come down off your high horse and look around you for a minute. You’re leading one of the best investigative teams out there, Jethro! And you’re treating them like idiots. You’ve made Abby cry. Twice! And you’ve put Ducky all out-of-sorts. And I know you may be confused about me, but that doesn’t give you the right to treat me like something you scraped off the bottom of your shoe!” she shouted.
“Maggie…” he attempted to speak, but was cut off.
“I put up with your reprimand earlier because you were right. I will submit to your authority, Jethro, and I respect you as the leader of this team. But I WILL NOT have my integrity questioned and I refuse to allow you, or anyone, to call me a slut or a liar!!” She paused, breathing heavily.
“If you would let me speak for a moment,” Gibbs interjected. “I was looking for you because I wanted to apologize for how I’ve been acting. I just left Abby’s lab from doing the same.”
“Oh, so once Fornell tells you everything’s okay, then you apologize?” she asked with indignation. “I don’t think so!”
“How did you…” he began.
“I’m a werewolf, remember?” she met his eyes. “I was canvassing the area this morning when you took the call from Fornell. I was less than 20 yards away from you. Not only could I hear every word you said, I could clearly hear everything he said through your phone.”
“I’m sorry, Maggie, I just had to check to…” he tried, again, to speak.
“I know – you had suspicions you had to research. I respect you for following up on your instinct. You have a responsibility to your team to do so. You wanted to make me see what a bastard you really are? Well, you succeeded. Not because you protected your team, but because you couldn’t see ‘into’ me enough to know that what you were seeing was the real thing. I told you about my family, Jethro? Did you really think that was all put on? You wanted me to back off? I have,” she continued.
“Darn it, you’re stubborn!” he interrupted. “Would you just be quiet and let me talk for a minute,” Gibbs gazed into her eyes which were still flashing with anger. “I said I was sorry. I admit I didn’t want to think anything negative about you. What I wanted to do was take you to bed for about twelve hours. But I can’t do that, Maggie,” he continued, starting to raise his voice. “There are reasons why I am so adamant about not getting involved with someone I work with. It can be messy and complicated.”
“You think I’m upset because you didn’t sleep with me?” Maggie asked incredulously. “Jethro, don’t flatter yourself. Yes, I’m attracted to you. More so than anyone I’ve ever met in 114 years. But it’s not like I’m in love with you. It’s not like hearing you say ‘no’ is going to make me suicidal. I’m not some teenager with a crush. I’ve lived a long time, and learned a lot about life. I’m upset because you couldn’t see how sincere I was. I’m upset with myself for thinking you weren’t like everybody else,” her voice was finally quiet. “You have made rules for yourself, and you think it’s because it’s what works best. But in reality, they are to protect you. You’ve been hurt so many times in the past, and you think setting a few ground rules will protect you in the future. You can’t live behind a fortress wall, Jethro. Do you think you are the only person who has loved and then lost someone? Do you think you’re the only person who has been betrayed? Get over yourself,” she said, shaking her head. She reached over and restarted the elevator. “I’m taking a walk to clear my head, call my cell if anything comes up,” she said, stepping off the elevator.
Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. No money is being made from this work. No copyright infringement is intended.