Stuck (1/1)
Title: Stuck
Author: Calliatra
Rating: FR13
Category: Het
Pairing: Gibbs/Jenny
Character(s): Gibbs, Jenny
Genre: Romance, Fluff
Words: 3,011
Warnings: Fluff!
Spoilers: None.
Disclaimer: All recognizable NCIS characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. No money is being made from this work. No copyright infringement is intended.
Summary: Jenny. Gibbs. A malfunctioning elevator. Need I say more?
A/N: My SeSa gift for Liina, who asked for a happy, shippy story about Gibbs and Jenny spending Christmas together. This was the closest I could get.
* * *
As she waited for the elevator to arrive, Jenny fought the urge to rub her eyes. Christmas was apparently most politicians’ favorite time of year for harassing federal agencies. The ones without families, at least, seemed to have nothing better to do. Congress wasn’t in session and all their constituents were too busy with the holidays to be receptive to any sort of campaigning - the perfect time, then, to question other people’s work.
This was why, rather than doing anything useful, Jenny had been answering phone calls all day, forced to justify NCIS’ actions on cases past and present, and fighting the urge to relay her strongly-worded opinions of several senators who had clearly only just discovered NCIS’ existence and were now demanding she justify that, too. These were the people who voted on her funding, she reminded herself, which meant that she had to reign in her temper and act like the well-mannered professional she was.
The elevator dinged and she stepped into the familiar space, grateful to see it was empty and eager to get out of the building. Before the doors could slide shut again, however, swift and well-known footsteps carried a second person inside. Jenny didn’t have to turn around to know who it was.
“Agent Gibbs,” she said, sighing internally. It appeared she was going to have to be well-mannered and professional a bit longer. Well, professional, in any case.
“Director.” As always, there was a slightly mocking tone to the way he said her title, and as always, she ignored it.
Aware that she was running dangerously low on patience, she fixed her gaze on the cold glint of the steel doors, not willing to get into an argument. Which effectively meant not speaking to Gibbs. Out of the corner of her eye she noted that, after a measured glance at her, he was doing the same. Good. It seemed that, for once, he was going to respect her wish to be left alone.
Then the elevator jolted to a halt, and she chastised herself for her moment of wishful naiveté.
“What?” she snapped, turning to glare at him.
Gibbs raised his hands in defense. “Wasn’t me.”
A glance at the emergency stop switch confirmed this; it hadn’t been flipped. She scowled at him for good measure anyway. When the elevator remained still, she stepped towards the control panel and pushed the emergency call button. She wasn’t really worried. The building was old, and despite the fact that it was held to high security standards, technology did malfunction once in a while. Whatever the problem was, it would be fixed. Hopefully within a few minutes, since at the moment she wanted nothing more than to get home, relax in a hot bath, and forget all about the fact that she had responsibilities and would be forced to be civil to patently uncivil congressmen again tomorrow.
The call button glowed, but no voice came from the small, embedded speaker. She pushed the button again, to no effect. Seeing her hot bath move from the immediate future to an undetermined later point in time, she huffed in irritation. Pointedly ignoring Gibbs’ amused look she hit the elevator’s alarm button several times in quick succession. Then she stood back, recognizing that she was unable to do anything more at present but not at all eager to admit the fact.
Standing by the unresponsive control panel, seconds crept by so slowly that Jenny almost wondered if time itself held some sort of grudge against her. Sooner or later she would have to deal with the fact that she wasn’t alone in the small space, and she was very much hoping to be saved by the proverbial bell. The bell, or more literally the loudspeaker, as the case was, remained stubbornly silent. She gave it her best glower, but, much like Gibbs, it refused to be intimidated into obliging. Maybe it had absorbed some of his personality during the many hours they had undoubtedly spent together.
She pressed the red button again, longer this time. Again nothing happened. If there had at least been an audible alarm, she might have had the satisfaction of knowing her actions were at minimum having some kind of physical effect. The way the security system was designed, however, the alarm signal was merely silently transmitted to the guard post in the lobby. Apart from the faint red glow of the button there was no indication that it was working. It was slightly unnerving.
“Remind me to run a full security systems check after the holidays,” she said, because the silence, too, was becoming slightly unnerving. “We obviously have some issues.”
Gibbs seemed unconcerned. “It’s Christmas. Skeleton staff. No one to see the signal if the guard’s away.”
Jenny narrowed her eyes at him. He was being decidedly too blasé about this. “Or the alarm isn’t working and there’s no signal for him to see.”
“There’s also an automatic warning signal when the elevator stops between floors.”
Well, he would know that. After all, in ninety-nine percent of those cases, he and his longsuffering emergency stop button were the cause. What was to tell the guard, then, that Gibbs wasn’t just hijacking the elevator once again?
“I don’t stop it this long,” he answered, before she even had a chance to express that sentiment.
They stood in strained silence for another interminable minute before Jenny violently jabbed the alarm button again. This time she made sure it stayed depressed, sending out a continuous signal. Then she pulled out her cell phone. She hadn’t honestly expected it to have any reception, but the confirmation was still a disappointment. Turning back to Gibbs, she saw him snapping his own phone shut. “Do you-?”
“Nope.” He appeared perfectly untroubled by the fact that he was now effectively breaking Rule Three. For a moment Jenny wondered if it might be a calculated move on his part just to drive her crazy, but dismissed the thought almost as quickly. Even Gibbs wasn’t that brave, not when he was trapped in here with her.
Briefly, she contemplated banging loudly on the heavy sliding doors. Apart from the fact, however, that it would hardly do for the Director of NCIS to start pounding on doors after being in an elevator mere minutes, it was also very unlikely to do any good. It was Christmas Eve and it was late; there would be no one left in the building to hear the noise except the obligatory guard. And for his own sake he had better be either literally tied up, or lying unconscious somewhere, she thought grimly. In any case, the elevator had stopped too far above the lobby for anything short of its explosion to be audible there. No, there was no way out of this for her.
Gibbs seemed to have realized the same thing. He had slid down to the floor and was now sitting there, leaning back against the steel wall and sipping his coffee with a disconcerting degree of relaxation.
“How can you take this so casually?” she growled.
He shrugged his shoulders with almost infuriating nonchalance. “You got somewhere to be?”
“No,” she admitted, reluctantly.
“So why worry?”
Jenny glared at him, unwilling to admit his point, but lowered herself to the floor until she was sitting opposite him. He, meanwhile, continued to sip his coffee, and studied her with interest. She could almost physically feel herself pierced by his gaze. She didn’t like it.
“Agent Gibbs.” She spoke in a tone that would have had any other agent rapidly backing away. It had never worked on him, but she hoped he would at least take the hint.
To her surprise, it made him chuckle. “We’re trapped. In an elevator. You’re not going to drop the formalities?”
“It’s not that easy,” she replied, stiff and uncomfortable even as she said it.
“Sure it is. Director,” he added, pushing himself to his feet.
She eyed him with suspicion, but barely had a second to wonder what he was up to before he had dropped down next to her, invading more of her personal space than she should have felt comfortable with. “Hey, Jen.”
His self-assured look was one she knew only too well. Any resistance would be in vain. And, if she was honest with herself, she didn’t even feel like making a perfunctory effort. So she took a deep breath, closed her eyes for a moment, and tried envision the hot bath she was clearly not destined to take soaking away all her responsibilities and worries.
When she opened them again, there was a sparkle there that Gibbs hadn’t seen in a long time.
“This is all your fault,” she said, pointing a finger at him.
“How?” he asked, raising his voice in exaggerated exasperation and almost managing to suppress his satisfied grin.
“I’m pretty sure no one else uses the elevator as their personal interrogation room,” she said drily. “There was only so long it was going to put up with your constant abuse.”
“Then shouldn’t you, as Director, have stopped me?” he asked, raising his eyebrows.
“I have an agency to run; I can’t spend my days trying to keep employees from vandalizing the building.”
“Vandalizing?” It wasn’t as if he left actual bloodstains behind.
“‘The non-standard use of equipment and property shall also be considered vandalism if, either immediately or through prolonged exposure to such misuse, damage is likely to occur,’” she quoted. “Why can’t you just use a supply closet or something?”
“Can’t surprise someone in a supply closet,” he said sagely. “Not soundproof, either.”
She grinned. “And just think of the scuttlebut if you started dragging Fornell into a closet with you.”
“They wouldn’t.” He spoke with the weight of absolute certainty. He was Leroy Jethro Gibbs. The only time people were allowed to talk about him behind his back was to scare new probies.
Jenny snorted. “They already do. Every time the elevator stops moving, people start talking. You really don’t want to know what some of them are thinking.”
It was interesting that she kept so close an eye on what he was or was not doing in the elevator. Then again, considering some of the things they had once gotten up to in here, maybe not. “Didn’t know you were so in touch with office gossip.”
“I have my sources.” She smiled in a way that told him someone from his team was involved. It made sense; Cynthia alone couldn’t have her ears everywhere and valiantly defend the Director’s door at the same time. He made a mental note to investigate the matter later.
“I’ve got to know what’s going on in my agency, after all,” she said. “It’s not my fault if people assume you’re doing unmentionable things in this elevator.” She paused, looking suddenly horrified. “Tell me no one saw us get in here. If anyone finds out how long we were stuck…”
“They’ll be surprised we didn’t kill each other.”
There was entirely too much truth to that statement, and Jenny pushed it aside, not wanting to dwell on it right now. Instead, she put on her most wicked smirk. “There’s still time for that…” Fully intending to break his sacred Rule Twenty-three she made a grab for his coffee, only to find him holding it out to her already, his lips twitching in amusement.
It was nostalgic, in a way. Smiling, she leaned back and took a long sip of his Jamaican blend, pretending not to enjoy the warmth of his arm as she shifted slightly closer. “You know what this reminds me of?”
The look on his face indicted that he had an idea, but he didn’t voice it.
“London,” she said.
“That wasn’t an elevator.”
“But it was a very confined space,” she drawled. “And we were stuck there for quite a while.”
“Weren’t bored, though.” A definite mischievous gleam danced in his eyes at the thought.
No, they certainly hadn’t been… “You wrecked my jacket,” she accused, remembering suddenly.
He shrugged, utterly unrepentant. “It was in the way.”
That much was true, and she certainly hadn’t minded at the time. It was, however, probably not the best thing to be thinking about when she was already too aware of the heat from his body soaking into her side. She needed to get out of this elevator before it started getting to her.
The chances for that weren’t looking good, however. The alarm button hadn’t stopped giving off its annoyingly pointless red glow, but there was still no sign of life from the speaker.
“We could be here all night,” Jenny said, realizing for the first time that this was a real possibility. And that, for some reason, she wasn’t nearly as opposed to the thought as she should have been.
She felt his shoulder move in a shrug. “Could be worse. Could be stuck here with DiNozzo.”
“Or Ziva.” Having been on several stakeouts with her, Jenny had firsthand knowledge of just how the Israeli reacted to being cooped up, and no desire to repeat the experience.
“You’d be dead,” Gibbs said. “Ricochets.”
That was most likely true. Upon reflection, Jenny had to admit that there honestly wasn’t anyone she would rather be stuck in an elevator with than Gibbs. Which told her, more clearly than anything else, that she really needed to get out of here before these kinds of thoughts got her into trouble.
“We should try to escape,” she said with sudden determination.
He gave something halfway between a snort and a chuckle, which she decided to interpret as an expression of support.
She got to her feet. “If we can get the doors open, we can probably climb out.”
Struggling to get a grip on the smooth contours of one of the door, she started tugging at it. When it didn’t budge at first, she threw all her weight behind an almighty heave. It still wouldn’t move.
Turning to Gibbs for additional force, she found him still seated on the floor, watching her efforts with interest. Well, not so much her efforts as her.
“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?” she accused.
“Only a little bit… more than a lot.” He smirked and ran his eyes unabashedly along her form.
“Well, stop it and help me!”
“Won’t work.” From his tone he might have been telling her that shooting at a television wasn’t going to make the newsman change the story.
“Why not?” If she hadn’t known better, she would have said he was being obstinate just for the sake of it. Come to think of it, did she know better? He seemed to be getting entirely too much enjoyment out of her growing frustration.
“Safety mechanism. Doors won’t open in between floors.”
It made sense, objectively. People could be seriously injured if they tried to climb out of a stalled elevator and it suddenly started moving again. From her current perspective, however, it was hard to appreciate the wisdom of this safety feature.
There had to be some other way out of here. She searched the ceiling with her eyes, trying to make out the maintenance hatch she knew was there. She could probably reach it if-
“Screwed shut from the outside.”
Jenny glared down at Gibbs, who was clearly still more interested in staring at her than in assisting with her escape plans. It was flattering, but also unhelpful. “You’re incorrigible. We could be stuck in here for days!”
“Nah.” He shook his head with such certainty that she almost couldn’t help believing him. “We’ll be out of here in,” he checked his watch, “four minutes.”
That was far too precise a statement to be based solely on optimism, and it brought Jenny’s suspicion back with a force.
“What do you know that I don’t?”
“Guard shift change. Agent Carpura’s on duty in three minutes. He always checks the alarms.”
She wasn’t surprised that he knew the guards’ duty roster. It seemed like the kind of thing he would know. It also wasn’t the thing she took issue with. “You were going to tell me this when?”
He smirked. “When you started doing something dangerous.”
Before she could find an appropriate reply, the loudspeaker crackled and hissed.
“Is anyone in there?” a wary voice asked.
“Gibbs,” Gibbs said, pushing himself to his feet.
A litany of muffled swearwords broke out in the background of the transmission. The recently relieved guard was obviously still there, and obviously regretting his lack of attention.
Gibbs caught Jenny’s eye, sending her a conspiratorial grin. “And the Director,” he added. They had the pleasure of hearing the curses turn into the terrified whimpering of a man now afraid for his life.
Carpura’s voice showed no signs of intimidation, however. “It looks like something triggered the automatic emergency stop. But the system is fine, no warnings, so I’m going to go ahead and override that. You should be out of there in just a sec.”
Almost as soon as he had spoken, the elevator jerked into motion, sending Jenny stumbling. She landed, undignifiedly, in Gibbs’ arms. He made no effort to disguise his chuckle, and held her quite a bit more closely than was strictly necessary.
Jenny arched an eyebrow at him. “This was your plan all along, wasn’t it?”
“You objecting?” It was clearly meant to be a rhetorical question.
Jenny didn’t answer, gazing up at the ceiling instead. At his inquiring glance, she smiled impishly. “Where’s mistletoe when you need it?”
He flashed her a roguish grin. “Who needs it?”
Carpura was waiting by the elevator, inspection kit in hand, when it finally arrived in the lobby. As the doors slid open to reveal the interior, however, he very swiftly reached the conclusion that it would be best to postpone the security check for a while. He enjoyed living, thank you very much, which was why there was no way he was going to disturb Agent Gibbs and the Director when they appeared so very, very caught up in each other.
* * *
Author: Calliatra
Rating: FR13
Category: Het
Pairing: Gibbs/Jenny
Character(s): Gibbs, Jenny
Genre: Romance, Fluff
Words: 3,011
Warnings: Fluff!
Spoilers: None.
Disclaimer: All recognizable NCIS characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. No money is being made from this work. No copyright infringement is intended.
Summary: Jenny. Gibbs. A malfunctioning elevator. Need I say more?
A/N: My SeSa gift for Liina, who asked for a happy, shippy story about Gibbs and Jenny spending Christmas together. This was the closest I could get.
* * *
As she waited for the elevator to arrive, Jenny fought the urge to rub her eyes. Christmas was apparently most politicians’ favorite time of year for harassing federal agencies. The ones without families, at least, seemed to have nothing better to do. Congress wasn’t in session and all their constituents were too busy with the holidays to be receptive to any sort of campaigning - the perfect time, then, to question other people’s work.
This was why, rather than doing anything useful, Jenny had been answering phone calls all day, forced to justify NCIS’ actions on cases past and present, and fighting the urge to relay her strongly-worded opinions of several senators who had clearly only just discovered NCIS’ existence and were now demanding she justify that, too. These were the people who voted on her funding, she reminded herself, which meant that she had to reign in her temper and act like the well-mannered professional she was.
The elevator dinged and she stepped into the familiar space, grateful to see it was empty and eager to get out of the building. Before the doors could slide shut again, however, swift and well-known footsteps carried a second person inside. Jenny didn’t have to turn around to know who it was.
“Agent Gibbs,” she said, sighing internally. It appeared she was going to have to be well-mannered and professional a bit longer. Well, professional, in any case.
“Director.” As always, there was a slightly mocking tone to the way he said her title, and as always, she ignored it.
Aware that she was running dangerously low on patience, she fixed her gaze on the cold glint of the steel doors, not willing to get into an argument. Which effectively meant not speaking to Gibbs. Out of the corner of her eye she noted that, after a measured glance at her, he was doing the same. Good. It seemed that, for once, he was going to respect her wish to be left alone.
Then the elevator jolted to a halt, and she chastised herself for her moment of wishful naiveté.
“What?” she snapped, turning to glare at him.
Gibbs raised his hands in defense. “Wasn’t me.”
A glance at the emergency stop switch confirmed this; it hadn’t been flipped. She scowled at him for good measure anyway. When the elevator remained still, she stepped towards the control panel and pushed the emergency call button. She wasn’t really worried. The building was old, and despite the fact that it was held to high security standards, technology did malfunction once in a while. Whatever the problem was, it would be fixed. Hopefully within a few minutes, since at the moment she wanted nothing more than to get home, relax in a hot bath, and forget all about the fact that she had responsibilities and would be forced to be civil to patently uncivil congressmen again tomorrow.
The call button glowed, but no voice came from the small, embedded speaker. She pushed the button again, to no effect. Seeing her hot bath move from the immediate future to an undetermined later point in time, she huffed in irritation. Pointedly ignoring Gibbs’ amused look she hit the elevator’s alarm button several times in quick succession. Then she stood back, recognizing that she was unable to do anything more at present but not at all eager to admit the fact.
Standing by the unresponsive control panel, seconds crept by so slowly that Jenny almost wondered if time itself held some sort of grudge against her. Sooner or later she would have to deal with the fact that she wasn’t alone in the small space, and she was very much hoping to be saved by the proverbial bell. The bell, or more literally the loudspeaker, as the case was, remained stubbornly silent. She gave it her best glower, but, much like Gibbs, it refused to be intimidated into obliging. Maybe it had absorbed some of his personality during the many hours they had undoubtedly spent together.
She pressed the red button again, longer this time. Again nothing happened. If there had at least been an audible alarm, she might have had the satisfaction of knowing her actions were at minimum having some kind of physical effect. The way the security system was designed, however, the alarm signal was merely silently transmitted to the guard post in the lobby. Apart from the faint red glow of the button there was no indication that it was working. It was slightly unnerving.
“Remind me to run a full security systems check after the holidays,” she said, because the silence, too, was becoming slightly unnerving. “We obviously have some issues.”
Gibbs seemed unconcerned. “It’s Christmas. Skeleton staff. No one to see the signal if the guard’s away.”
Jenny narrowed her eyes at him. He was being decidedly too blasé about this. “Or the alarm isn’t working and there’s no signal for him to see.”
“There’s also an automatic warning signal when the elevator stops between floors.”
Well, he would know that. After all, in ninety-nine percent of those cases, he and his longsuffering emergency stop button were the cause. What was to tell the guard, then, that Gibbs wasn’t just hijacking the elevator once again?
“I don’t stop it this long,” he answered, before she even had a chance to express that sentiment.
They stood in strained silence for another interminable minute before Jenny violently jabbed the alarm button again. This time she made sure it stayed depressed, sending out a continuous signal. Then she pulled out her cell phone. She hadn’t honestly expected it to have any reception, but the confirmation was still a disappointment. Turning back to Gibbs, she saw him snapping his own phone shut. “Do you-?”
“Nope.” He appeared perfectly untroubled by the fact that he was now effectively breaking Rule Three. For a moment Jenny wondered if it might be a calculated move on his part just to drive her crazy, but dismissed the thought almost as quickly. Even Gibbs wasn’t that brave, not when he was trapped in here with her.
Briefly, she contemplated banging loudly on the heavy sliding doors. Apart from the fact, however, that it would hardly do for the Director of NCIS to start pounding on doors after being in an elevator mere minutes, it was also very unlikely to do any good. It was Christmas Eve and it was late; there would be no one left in the building to hear the noise except the obligatory guard. And for his own sake he had better be either literally tied up, or lying unconscious somewhere, she thought grimly. In any case, the elevator had stopped too far above the lobby for anything short of its explosion to be audible there. No, there was no way out of this for her.
Gibbs seemed to have realized the same thing. He had slid down to the floor and was now sitting there, leaning back against the steel wall and sipping his coffee with a disconcerting degree of relaxation.
“How can you take this so casually?” she growled.
He shrugged his shoulders with almost infuriating nonchalance. “You got somewhere to be?”
“No,” she admitted, reluctantly.
“So why worry?”
Jenny glared at him, unwilling to admit his point, but lowered herself to the floor until she was sitting opposite him. He, meanwhile, continued to sip his coffee, and studied her with interest. She could almost physically feel herself pierced by his gaze. She didn’t like it.
“Agent Gibbs.” She spoke in a tone that would have had any other agent rapidly backing away. It had never worked on him, but she hoped he would at least take the hint.
To her surprise, it made him chuckle. “We’re trapped. In an elevator. You’re not going to drop the formalities?”
“It’s not that easy,” she replied, stiff and uncomfortable even as she said it.
“Sure it is. Director,” he added, pushing himself to his feet.
She eyed him with suspicion, but barely had a second to wonder what he was up to before he had dropped down next to her, invading more of her personal space than she should have felt comfortable with. “Hey, Jen.”
His self-assured look was one she knew only too well. Any resistance would be in vain. And, if she was honest with herself, she didn’t even feel like making a perfunctory effort. So she took a deep breath, closed her eyes for a moment, and tried envision the hot bath she was clearly not destined to take soaking away all her responsibilities and worries.
When she opened them again, there was a sparkle there that Gibbs hadn’t seen in a long time.
“This is all your fault,” she said, pointing a finger at him.
“How?” he asked, raising his voice in exaggerated exasperation and almost managing to suppress his satisfied grin.
“I’m pretty sure no one else uses the elevator as their personal interrogation room,” she said drily. “There was only so long it was going to put up with your constant abuse.”
“Then shouldn’t you, as Director, have stopped me?” he asked, raising his eyebrows.
“I have an agency to run; I can’t spend my days trying to keep employees from vandalizing the building.”
“Vandalizing?” It wasn’t as if he left actual bloodstains behind.
“‘The non-standard use of equipment and property shall also be considered vandalism if, either immediately or through prolonged exposure to such misuse, damage is likely to occur,’” she quoted. “Why can’t you just use a supply closet or something?”
“Can’t surprise someone in a supply closet,” he said sagely. “Not soundproof, either.”
She grinned. “And just think of the scuttlebut if you started dragging Fornell into a closet with you.”
“They wouldn’t.” He spoke with the weight of absolute certainty. He was Leroy Jethro Gibbs. The only time people were allowed to talk about him behind his back was to scare new probies.
Jenny snorted. “They already do. Every time the elevator stops moving, people start talking. You really don’t want to know what some of them are thinking.”
It was interesting that she kept so close an eye on what he was or was not doing in the elevator. Then again, considering some of the things they had once gotten up to in here, maybe not. “Didn’t know you were so in touch with office gossip.”
“I have my sources.” She smiled in a way that told him someone from his team was involved. It made sense; Cynthia alone couldn’t have her ears everywhere and valiantly defend the Director’s door at the same time. He made a mental note to investigate the matter later.
“I’ve got to know what’s going on in my agency, after all,” she said. “It’s not my fault if people assume you’re doing unmentionable things in this elevator.” She paused, looking suddenly horrified. “Tell me no one saw us get in here. If anyone finds out how long we were stuck…”
“They’ll be surprised we didn’t kill each other.”
There was entirely too much truth to that statement, and Jenny pushed it aside, not wanting to dwell on it right now. Instead, she put on her most wicked smirk. “There’s still time for that…” Fully intending to break his sacred Rule Twenty-three she made a grab for his coffee, only to find him holding it out to her already, his lips twitching in amusement.
It was nostalgic, in a way. Smiling, she leaned back and took a long sip of his Jamaican blend, pretending not to enjoy the warmth of his arm as she shifted slightly closer. “You know what this reminds me of?”
The look on his face indicted that he had an idea, but he didn’t voice it.
“London,” she said.
“That wasn’t an elevator.”
“But it was a very confined space,” she drawled. “And we were stuck there for quite a while.”
“Weren’t bored, though.” A definite mischievous gleam danced in his eyes at the thought.
No, they certainly hadn’t been… “You wrecked my jacket,” she accused, remembering suddenly.
He shrugged, utterly unrepentant. “It was in the way.”
That much was true, and she certainly hadn’t minded at the time. It was, however, probably not the best thing to be thinking about when she was already too aware of the heat from his body soaking into her side. She needed to get out of this elevator before it started getting to her.
The chances for that weren’t looking good, however. The alarm button hadn’t stopped giving off its annoyingly pointless red glow, but there was still no sign of life from the speaker.
“We could be here all night,” Jenny said, realizing for the first time that this was a real possibility. And that, for some reason, she wasn’t nearly as opposed to the thought as she should have been.
She felt his shoulder move in a shrug. “Could be worse. Could be stuck here with DiNozzo.”
“Or Ziva.” Having been on several stakeouts with her, Jenny had firsthand knowledge of just how the Israeli reacted to being cooped up, and no desire to repeat the experience.
“You’d be dead,” Gibbs said. “Ricochets.”
That was most likely true. Upon reflection, Jenny had to admit that there honestly wasn’t anyone she would rather be stuck in an elevator with than Gibbs. Which told her, more clearly than anything else, that she really needed to get out of here before these kinds of thoughts got her into trouble.
“We should try to escape,” she said with sudden determination.
He gave something halfway between a snort and a chuckle, which she decided to interpret as an expression of support.
She got to her feet. “If we can get the doors open, we can probably climb out.”
Struggling to get a grip on the smooth contours of one of the door, she started tugging at it. When it didn’t budge at first, she threw all her weight behind an almighty heave. It still wouldn’t move.
Turning to Gibbs for additional force, she found him still seated on the floor, watching her efforts with interest. Well, not so much her efforts as her.
“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?” she accused.
“Only a little bit… more than a lot.” He smirked and ran his eyes unabashedly along her form.
“Well, stop it and help me!”
“Won’t work.” From his tone he might have been telling her that shooting at a television wasn’t going to make the newsman change the story.
“Why not?” If she hadn’t known better, she would have said he was being obstinate just for the sake of it. Come to think of it, did she know better? He seemed to be getting entirely too much enjoyment out of her growing frustration.
“Safety mechanism. Doors won’t open in between floors.”
It made sense, objectively. People could be seriously injured if they tried to climb out of a stalled elevator and it suddenly started moving again. From her current perspective, however, it was hard to appreciate the wisdom of this safety feature.
There had to be some other way out of here. She searched the ceiling with her eyes, trying to make out the maintenance hatch she knew was there. She could probably reach it if-
“Screwed shut from the outside.”
Jenny glared down at Gibbs, who was clearly still more interested in staring at her than in assisting with her escape plans. It was flattering, but also unhelpful. “You’re incorrigible. We could be stuck in here for days!”
“Nah.” He shook his head with such certainty that she almost couldn’t help believing him. “We’ll be out of here in,” he checked his watch, “four minutes.”
That was far too precise a statement to be based solely on optimism, and it brought Jenny’s suspicion back with a force.
“What do you know that I don’t?”
“Guard shift change. Agent Carpura’s on duty in three minutes. He always checks the alarms.”
She wasn’t surprised that he knew the guards’ duty roster. It seemed like the kind of thing he would know. It also wasn’t the thing she took issue with. “You were going to tell me this when?”
He smirked. “When you started doing something dangerous.”
Before she could find an appropriate reply, the loudspeaker crackled and hissed.
“Is anyone in there?” a wary voice asked.
“Gibbs,” Gibbs said, pushing himself to his feet.
A litany of muffled swearwords broke out in the background of the transmission. The recently relieved guard was obviously still there, and obviously regretting his lack of attention.
Gibbs caught Jenny’s eye, sending her a conspiratorial grin. “And the Director,” he added. They had the pleasure of hearing the curses turn into the terrified whimpering of a man now afraid for his life.
Carpura’s voice showed no signs of intimidation, however. “It looks like something triggered the automatic emergency stop. But the system is fine, no warnings, so I’m going to go ahead and override that. You should be out of there in just a sec.”
Almost as soon as he had spoken, the elevator jerked into motion, sending Jenny stumbling. She landed, undignifiedly, in Gibbs’ arms. He made no effort to disguise his chuckle, and held her quite a bit more closely than was strictly necessary.
Jenny arched an eyebrow at him. “This was your plan all along, wasn’t it?”
“You objecting?” It was clearly meant to be a rhetorical question.
Jenny didn’t answer, gazing up at the ceiling instead. At his inquiring glance, she smiled impishly. “Where’s mistletoe when you need it?”
He flashed her a roguish grin. “Who needs it?”
Carpura was waiting by the elevator, inspection kit in hand, when it finally arrived in the lobby. As the doors slid open to reveal the interior, however, he very swiftly reached the conclusion that it would be best to postpone the security check for a while. He enjoyed living, thank you very much, which was why there was no way he was going to disturb Agent Gibbs and the Director when they appeared so very, very caught up in each other.
* * *