The Way Home
This was originally done for feenixandashes as part of the ncis_tinsel fic exchange.
Title: The Way Home
Author: lonelywalker
Pairing: Gibbs / Ducky
Rating: PG-13
Summary: 'Home' is a difficult concept.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
The Way Home
1. Sunrise
November
They made love to the sound of the wind in the trees, to an audience of songbirds and fallen autumn leaves. In their fortress above the earth, there was no time, and there were no worries. They felt young and fearless, and made love as if it was the end of the world, and the beginning. Long, lazy hours were spent in each other’s arms, sometimes comfortable, sometimes passionate. Real life had done them the favour of looking the other way for a while, and they were grateful.
Jethro woke up with no real sense of urgency, no sudden need to look at the time or at his schedule for the day. His lover had taught him to relax. It was sunlight outside the treehouse, its light gently warming the wooden floor. The smells of pine and cut grass filled the air as he stretched out aching muscles and leaned over to kiss the lips of his still-sleeping best friend. The kiss got the reaction he had hoped for, as he was pulled down by strong arms into a warm embrace.
“Good morning,” a voice with a tint of laughter whispered in his ear.
“Douglas!”
The two men froze, stunned by the loud, shrill voice. “Who’s Douglas?” Jethro asked.
Ducky sighed and grabbed for his glasses. “I believe that may be me. Excuse me.” He lightly pushed Jethro away and got out of their makeshift bed - a mattress on the treehouse floor. Pushing his glasses onto his nose and pulling on his discarded trousers, he made his way to the open doorway. “Yes, Mother?”
A smile on his face, Jethro found his cellphone lying on the floor beside the mattress, and checked the time. After ten. He frowned - hadn’t he set his alarm for a much earlier hour? Yawning, he sat up. At least he had no urgent messages from any of his team demanding to know where he was, or dispatching him to a crime scene. Despite it being a Saturday, most of his team usually put in at least a half-day, either to work new cases, or to make some headway with the previous week’s paperwork. They would miss his presence, but they would probably assume that he was off on some urgent, top-secret mission. He hoped that none of them would discover that he had really been sleeping in Ducky’s treehouse. He might never live it down.
Despite its fairytale qualities, the treehouse had distinct disadvantages as a permanent residence. The nights were getting colder, and Jethro had no intention of sleeping there while icicles formed on the boughs around them. Unfortunately, Ducky needed to be near his mother in case of emergency, so staying at Jethro’s house was, at least for the moment, out of the question. Secretly, Jethro suspected that Mrs. Mallard got along just fine without her son around, and that nothing short of a nuclear holocaust would do her any harm.
They had tried using Ducky’s bedroom, but that idea had come to an end when his mother, deciding that her son was being murdered, had called the police. Jethro had spent five minutes wearing only handcuffs and his boxer shorts before the whole issue was cleared up. Fortunately he hadn’t needed to produce his NCIS badge. If he had, he could have been sure that the incident would have been all over the city by the next day. In any case, the treehouse remained their place of residence for the time being.
Ducky re-appeared, carrying a handful of envelopes. “Sorry about that - I had to sign for some post.”
“Anything interesting?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact, but I had to leave it in the house,” Ducky said, turning over one of the envelopes. “A friend of mine in the British Museum sent me a skull. Quite fascinating, really.”
“A skull?” Jethro was gradually becoming convinced that Ducky’s friends were just as bizarre as the medical examiner was himself. He wondered what that said about him.
Ducky nodded. “Yes - a fine example of trephination. Mr. Palmer will be excited.”
“Jimmy gets excited about just about anything,” Jethro replied. “Did you switch my alarm off?”
“Jethro, it’s the weekend,” Ducky started.
Jethro placed a finger against his lips. “I wanted to say thank you.”
Ducky frowned. “Okay, now I know you’ve been possessed,” he grinned, poking Jethro in the stomach with a finger. “Out, evil spirit!”
They spent the next couple of hours idling in the treehouse, the autumn sun straining through the gaps between the logs in the walls. Jethro took up his tools and set to work on the desk he was repairing. Ducky lay on his back, reading through his mail, and occasionally making the odd comment about the life experiences of his friends. Neither of their cellphones rang, and Ducky’s mother was nowhere to be seen.
Jethro set down his screwdriver, and looked at his work. “What’s on your mind, Duck?”
There was a pause, and then, “Your sixth sense never ceases to amaze me, Jethro.”
“It’s not a sixth sense,” Jethro explained, giving the leg of the desk a good shove to see if it held. It did. “You’ve been going back to the same letter every ten minutes, looking at me, and then putting it away again. It’s not exactly a brilliant deduction to tell that something’s bothering you.”
Ducky sighed, and rubbed his nose where his glasses sat. “I do wish you weren’t always right, Jethro. Here.” He held out a folded letter, which his lover took. “This is from my nephew, Connor.”
“Bad news?” Jethro squinted at the letter, afraid that perhaps one of Ducky’s siblings or more distant relatives had died.
“No, not really,” Ducky replied, his tone evasive.
Jethro frowned. The enclosed paper, instead of being the formal letter he had expected, was instead bordered by a pattern that strangely resembled Santa Claus. “Uh, Duck? It seems that your family has invited you to Christmas in Scotland. That’s all. No one’s dead.”
“No, no one’s dead,” Ducky smiled. “I’m sorry for worrying you. However, this invitation does raise a rather pertinent issue.”
“You can get time off work,” Jethro shrugged. “Everyone else is taking some time over the holidays. It’s not a problem.”
Ducky raised his eyebrows. “If this were any other time, Jethro, I’d thank my lucky stars that I caught you at a good moment and book a flight.”
“But?”
“But I have one additional request.”
Jethro looked blank. “What’s the problem?”
“I want you to come with me,” Ducky said bluntly.
“I don’t know, Duck,” Jethro sat down beside him on the edge of the bed. “It’s one thing for my agents to take a few days off. But someone has to be here to hold the fort, and I’m the one with the least family. I can’t ask Ziva not to go to Israel, or Abby not to see her parents. Even Tony’s finally been invited to meet his girlfriend’s family.”
“And you don’t consider my family to be so important?” Ducky was obviously battling to keep a level tone, to stop this from spiralling into a true argument.
“Duck, of course they’re important - to you,” Jethro adopted his best diplomatic expression. “That’s why I want you to go and see them.”
Ducky sighed. “Jethro, you just implied that it was important for Tony to meet his girlfriend’s parents. Why is it different for us?”
“I…” Jethro had felt sure that he had a perfectly reasonable answer for that one, but nothing came out. “It just is, Duck. You know that. We’re not going to get married and have kids and be a happy family around the Christmas tree carving turkey. It just doesn’t work like that.”
He looked at Ducky, whose face bore an expression as if a patient father had just told him that there really was no Santa Claus. The medical examiner got to his feet. “Jethro, is this why you don’t want to tell anyone? Because what we have isn’t as important to you - isn’t as real to you - as the relationship you had with your wife?”
Your wife. As if there had been just the one. And there had only been one, when he thought about it, only one with whom he could ever have had that idyllic family Christmas. Ducky sighed, and touched his shoulder. “I’m sorry, Jethro. That was a low blow. Forget I ever mentioned it.”
Ducky had a good way of forgetting things, Jethro had found. Despite his enormous capacity for remembering arcane facts, he was equally capable of completely ignoring arguments. He went to his desk, pulled out a pad of writing paper, and began to compose a reply to his nephew as if nothing had happened.
After a while, Jethro got up. “Duck, you understand, don’t you? Why I don’t want anyone to know?”
There was a pause. “No, Jethro. I don’t understand. But sometimes it has to be that way.”
2. Nightfall
December 31st
“This is the world. All of it. When we look up there, we don’t only see the sky, or the stars. We see the whole expanse of eternity.” Ducky extended an arm, pointed an index finger at the brightest star in the sky.
“Can you imagine, the first sailor, the first man - maybe even just a young boy set adrift on a raft in the middle of the night. He lies alone, cold, wet, his back against the wood, and stares up at the stars. They don’t mean much to him then. Maybe his parents, his priests, have given him some kind of explanation. Perhaps he thinks of them as the souls of his ancestors, or as the auras of distant gods. But neither of those ideas is very comforting to him on that night.”
He spread out his fingers as if to reach out and touch the night sky. “But slowly, gradually, as he lies there and watches, something occurs to him. It’s a crazy idea. Insane. Heretical, even. But it gives him a flicker of hope. He gets to his feet, even as the raft bobs under his feet and threatens to send him overboard. It’s dangerous, but he has to see, he has to get a little closer, because otherwise he might not believe his eyes.”
“Slowly, ever so slowly, he takes a breath and lets the freezing air fill his lungs. And, just as slowly, a smile comes to his face. Our young sailor is the first person in the whole of history to know what every schoolchild will be taught for thousands of years to come. He has not only seen the world, but he has found a map. Even though he is alone, and cold, and wet, and tired, he is not afraid. Because he knows that the stars, be they his gods or his ancestors, or merely great flaming gaseous balls light years away, will always be his guides. They will always show him the way home.”
Ducky smiled, and turned to the man lying next to him. “It’s a reassuring thought, that you can never be alone, even on the expanse of the ocean, even with no other human being around for miles. It’s the kind of thought that keeps men like us sane. Even thousands of years later, we’re still lying on our backs in freezing air, gazing up at the stars in search of answers.”
“The technology’s improved a little, though,” Jethro cast a look around the rooftop and smiled. “Just you, me, and about three hundred and fifty million dollars of surveillance equipment.”
Ducky closed his eyes. “I wonder if the answers are much different.”
“For me they are,” Jethro sat up, crossed his arms over his knees, and looked out at the bright cityscape below. “Not because of the technology. I think that just makes simple things complicated. But because, for the first time in years, I’m not up here on my own.”
“That’s why we have the New Year, Jethro. A chance to begin anew, to make changes,” Ducky opened his eyes and looked at his friend. “Perhaps you need that chance more than others.”
Just as Jethro was about to reply, there was a sudden grating noise as the door to the roof opened and the sound of excited chatter filled the night air. He turned to see McGee and Abby, both wrapped in warm street clothes, both totally oblivious to the presence of the two other people on the roof. McGee was carrying a large black case, and was obviously in the middle of a lengthy, detailed explanation of its contents. Jethro sighed. “I think we’re about to find out what McGee got in his Christmas stocking, Duck.”
“Gibbs!” Abby said excitedly. “Happy New Year!”
“You’re a little early, Abs,” Jethro said, checking his watch. “It’s only a quarter to twelve.”
“I believe in punctuality,” she grinned. “And wait till you see what McGee has.”
“What have you got there, Timothy?” Ducky asked, in a slightly wearied tone.
“Uh, well,” McGee put his case down on the ground and knelt down to spring open the locks. “Norfolk just sent this over - a new long-range telescope. It’s, uh, it’s pretty powerful for something so small.”
“Sound like someone you know?” Abby asked, sitting down on the edge of the rooftop. “Hi Ducky - I didn’t know you were back.”
“I just got in,” Ducky explained. “Jethro picked me up from the airport.”
“Good Christmas?”
“Yes,” Ducky nodded, glancing at Jethro. “It’s good to be with my family.”
McGee finished assembling his telescope and handed it to Jethro for examination. Jethro frowned: it had far too many buttons, switches, and flickering lights for his taste. He raised it to his eye and attempted to focus it on the star Ducky had pointed out. “I wonder if our young sailor would even recognise this.”
“What?” McGee asked.
“Private joke,” Ducky explained. “And I think you give him too little credit, Jethro. After all, he’s an explorer of the universe just like us. And most people recognise an eye when they see one, even a very technologically advanced eye”
“All the universe to explore, Duck, and you end up back here.”
The medical examiner smiled. “Indeed. But even the most insatiable of explorers, even our young sailor adrift millennia ago, had the ultimate aim of returning home.”
“Isn’t home in Scotland, Ducky?” McGee asked, as Jethro handed him back the telescope and he attempted to adjust the focus.
“Hogmanay!” Abby squealed. “Robert Burns! Auld lang syne! Haggis!”
Ducky laughed. “I can celebrate Hogmanay just as well here as I can in Edinburgh. Even without the haggis.”
“What’s Hogmanay?” McGee asked. Jethro was relieved that someone else had asked the question.
“Ah, an old and venerable Scottish tradition,” Ducky explained. “Mainly involving drunken debauchery. It’s how we see in the New Year.”
Abby raised her eyebrows. “You passed up on drunken debauchery for this?”
“Ah, the innocence of the young,” Ducky joked. “Perhaps I might ask, Abigail, why you are spending the New Year in the same fashion? You more than anyone must have invitations to parties, but yet you’re on the roof with Timothy and his telescope.”
“Uh, here,” McGee handed back the telescope to Jethro. “Try that.”
Jethro raised the telescope to his eye, just as Abby replied, “Some things are more important than parties. And why are you up here, Gibbs? Hiding out from your ex-wives?”
“Some things are more important than that,” Jethro said, giving the telescope to Ducky. “Home. Family. The kinds of things that led even our young sailor to leave the water.”
“So you’re up on the roof of the NCIS building with Ducky?” McGee said, incredulous. Three pairs of eyes turned to glare at him. “Oh. Sorry.”
“Almost midnight, Gibbs,” Abby said, standing up and checking her watch. “I synchronised it with Greenwich before we left.”
“Do you think our young sailor was ever in love?” Jethro asked, sitting back down next to Ducky. “That he took someone out and showed him these stars, showed him the way home?”
Ducky hesitated, and laid the telescope down on the roof. “I don’t know, Jethro. But if I was him, if I had known what he knew, I couldn’t help but tell. There are no wonders in the universe that aren’t meant to be shared.”
“Ten seconds!” Abby alerted them. “Come on, McGee!”
She grabbed an increasingly embarrassed McGee by the arm and led him a few feet away. Jethro watched them go with a smile, and leaned close to Ducky. “You’re the most important thing in the world to me,” he whispered.
“Happy New Year!” Abby cried, planting a kiss on McGee, who was rapidly turning crimson. She turned to share the greeting with Gibbs and Ducky, only to find them sharing a much more passionate and prolonged kiss than she had given McGee. “Uh, Gibbs?”
McGee tugged on her arm, and pointed at the door, silently mouthing the suggestion that they leave. A grin on her face, Abby followed him off the roof.
After a long moment, Ducky drew away, smiling. “A resolution for the New Year, Jethro?”
His lover nodded. “To remember where home is, and that it’s not always a place.”
As the new year unfolded around them, they lay back in each other’s arms, and watched the stars.
Title: The Way Home
Author: lonelywalker
Pairing: Gibbs / Ducky
Rating: PG-13
Summary: 'Home' is a difficult concept.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
The Way Home
1. Sunrise
November
They made love to the sound of the wind in the trees, to an audience of songbirds and fallen autumn leaves. In their fortress above the earth, there was no time, and there were no worries. They felt young and fearless, and made love as if it was the end of the world, and the beginning. Long, lazy hours were spent in each other’s arms, sometimes comfortable, sometimes passionate. Real life had done them the favour of looking the other way for a while, and they were grateful.
Jethro woke up with no real sense of urgency, no sudden need to look at the time or at his schedule for the day. His lover had taught him to relax. It was sunlight outside the treehouse, its light gently warming the wooden floor. The smells of pine and cut grass filled the air as he stretched out aching muscles and leaned over to kiss the lips of his still-sleeping best friend. The kiss got the reaction he had hoped for, as he was pulled down by strong arms into a warm embrace.
“Good morning,” a voice with a tint of laughter whispered in his ear.
“Douglas!”
The two men froze, stunned by the loud, shrill voice. “Who’s Douglas?” Jethro asked.
Ducky sighed and grabbed for his glasses. “I believe that may be me. Excuse me.” He lightly pushed Jethro away and got out of their makeshift bed - a mattress on the treehouse floor. Pushing his glasses onto his nose and pulling on his discarded trousers, he made his way to the open doorway. “Yes, Mother?”
A smile on his face, Jethro found his cellphone lying on the floor beside the mattress, and checked the time. After ten. He frowned - hadn’t he set his alarm for a much earlier hour? Yawning, he sat up. At least he had no urgent messages from any of his team demanding to know where he was, or dispatching him to a crime scene. Despite it being a Saturday, most of his team usually put in at least a half-day, either to work new cases, or to make some headway with the previous week’s paperwork. They would miss his presence, but they would probably assume that he was off on some urgent, top-secret mission. He hoped that none of them would discover that he had really been sleeping in Ducky’s treehouse. He might never live it down.
Despite its fairytale qualities, the treehouse had distinct disadvantages as a permanent residence. The nights were getting colder, and Jethro had no intention of sleeping there while icicles formed on the boughs around them. Unfortunately, Ducky needed to be near his mother in case of emergency, so staying at Jethro’s house was, at least for the moment, out of the question. Secretly, Jethro suspected that Mrs. Mallard got along just fine without her son around, and that nothing short of a nuclear holocaust would do her any harm.
They had tried using Ducky’s bedroom, but that idea had come to an end when his mother, deciding that her son was being murdered, had called the police. Jethro had spent five minutes wearing only handcuffs and his boxer shorts before the whole issue was cleared up. Fortunately he hadn’t needed to produce his NCIS badge. If he had, he could have been sure that the incident would have been all over the city by the next day. In any case, the treehouse remained their place of residence for the time being.
Ducky re-appeared, carrying a handful of envelopes. “Sorry about that - I had to sign for some post.”
“Anything interesting?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact, but I had to leave it in the house,” Ducky said, turning over one of the envelopes. “A friend of mine in the British Museum sent me a skull. Quite fascinating, really.”
“A skull?” Jethro was gradually becoming convinced that Ducky’s friends were just as bizarre as the medical examiner was himself. He wondered what that said about him.
Ducky nodded. “Yes - a fine example of trephination. Mr. Palmer will be excited.”
“Jimmy gets excited about just about anything,” Jethro replied. “Did you switch my alarm off?”
“Jethro, it’s the weekend,” Ducky started.
Jethro placed a finger against his lips. “I wanted to say thank you.”
Ducky frowned. “Okay, now I know you’ve been possessed,” he grinned, poking Jethro in the stomach with a finger. “Out, evil spirit!”
They spent the next couple of hours idling in the treehouse, the autumn sun straining through the gaps between the logs in the walls. Jethro took up his tools and set to work on the desk he was repairing. Ducky lay on his back, reading through his mail, and occasionally making the odd comment about the life experiences of his friends. Neither of their cellphones rang, and Ducky’s mother was nowhere to be seen.
Jethro set down his screwdriver, and looked at his work. “What’s on your mind, Duck?”
There was a pause, and then, “Your sixth sense never ceases to amaze me, Jethro.”
“It’s not a sixth sense,” Jethro explained, giving the leg of the desk a good shove to see if it held. It did. “You’ve been going back to the same letter every ten minutes, looking at me, and then putting it away again. It’s not exactly a brilliant deduction to tell that something’s bothering you.”
Ducky sighed, and rubbed his nose where his glasses sat. “I do wish you weren’t always right, Jethro. Here.” He held out a folded letter, which his lover took. “This is from my nephew, Connor.”
“Bad news?” Jethro squinted at the letter, afraid that perhaps one of Ducky’s siblings or more distant relatives had died.
“No, not really,” Ducky replied, his tone evasive.
Jethro frowned. The enclosed paper, instead of being the formal letter he had expected, was instead bordered by a pattern that strangely resembled Santa Claus. “Uh, Duck? It seems that your family has invited you to Christmas in Scotland. That’s all. No one’s dead.”
“No, no one’s dead,” Ducky smiled. “I’m sorry for worrying you. However, this invitation does raise a rather pertinent issue.”
“You can get time off work,” Jethro shrugged. “Everyone else is taking some time over the holidays. It’s not a problem.”
Ducky raised his eyebrows. “If this were any other time, Jethro, I’d thank my lucky stars that I caught you at a good moment and book a flight.”
“But?”
“But I have one additional request.”
Jethro looked blank. “What’s the problem?”
“I want you to come with me,” Ducky said bluntly.
“I don’t know, Duck,” Jethro sat down beside him on the edge of the bed. “It’s one thing for my agents to take a few days off. But someone has to be here to hold the fort, and I’m the one with the least family. I can’t ask Ziva not to go to Israel, or Abby not to see her parents. Even Tony’s finally been invited to meet his girlfriend’s family.”
“And you don’t consider my family to be so important?” Ducky was obviously battling to keep a level tone, to stop this from spiralling into a true argument.
“Duck, of course they’re important - to you,” Jethro adopted his best diplomatic expression. “That’s why I want you to go and see them.”
Ducky sighed. “Jethro, you just implied that it was important for Tony to meet his girlfriend’s parents. Why is it different for us?”
“I…” Jethro had felt sure that he had a perfectly reasonable answer for that one, but nothing came out. “It just is, Duck. You know that. We’re not going to get married and have kids and be a happy family around the Christmas tree carving turkey. It just doesn’t work like that.”
He looked at Ducky, whose face bore an expression as if a patient father had just told him that there really was no Santa Claus. The medical examiner got to his feet. “Jethro, is this why you don’t want to tell anyone? Because what we have isn’t as important to you - isn’t as real to you - as the relationship you had with your wife?”
Your wife. As if there had been just the one. And there had only been one, when he thought about it, only one with whom he could ever have had that idyllic family Christmas. Ducky sighed, and touched his shoulder. “I’m sorry, Jethro. That was a low blow. Forget I ever mentioned it.”
Ducky had a good way of forgetting things, Jethro had found. Despite his enormous capacity for remembering arcane facts, he was equally capable of completely ignoring arguments. He went to his desk, pulled out a pad of writing paper, and began to compose a reply to his nephew as if nothing had happened.
After a while, Jethro got up. “Duck, you understand, don’t you? Why I don’t want anyone to know?”
There was a pause. “No, Jethro. I don’t understand. But sometimes it has to be that way.”
2. Nightfall
December 31st
“This is the world. All of it. When we look up there, we don’t only see the sky, or the stars. We see the whole expanse of eternity.” Ducky extended an arm, pointed an index finger at the brightest star in the sky.
“Can you imagine, the first sailor, the first man - maybe even just a young boy set adrift on a raft in the middle of the night. He lies alone, cold, wet, his back against the wood, and stares up at the stars. They don’t mean much to him then. Maybe his parents, his priests, have given him some kind of explanation. Perhaps he thinks of them as the souls of his ancestors, or as the auras of distant gods. But neither of those ideas is very comforting to him on that night.”
He spread out his fingers as if to reach out and touch the night sky. “But slowly, gradually, as he lies there and watches, something occurs to him. It’s a crazy idea. Insane. Heretical, even. But it gives him a flicker of hope. He gets to his feet, even as the raft bobs under his feet and threatens to send him overboard. It’s dangerous, but he has to see, he has to get a little closer, because otherwise he might not believe his eyes.”
“Slowly, ever so slowly, he takes a breath and lets the freezing air fill his lungs. And, just as slowly, a smile comes to his face. Our young sailor is the first person in the whole of history to know what every schoolchild will be taught for thousands of years to come. He has not only seen the world, but he has found a map. Even though he is alone, and cold, and wet, and tired, he is not afraid. Because he knows that the stars, be they his gods or his ancestors, or merely great flaming gaseous balls light years away, will always be his guides. They will always show him the way home.”
Ducky smiled, and turned to the man lying next to him. “It’s a reassuring thought, that you can never be alone, even on the expanse of the ocean, even with no other human being around for miles. It’s the kind of thought that keeps men like us sane. Even thousands of years later, we’re still lying on our backs in freezing air, gazing up at the stars in search of answers.”
“The technology’s improved a little, though,” Jethro cast a look around the rooftop and smiled. “Just you, me, and about three hundred and fifty million dollars of surveillance equipment.”
Ducky closed his eyes. “I wonder if the answers are much different.”
“For me they are,” Jethro sat up, crossed his arms over his knees, and looked out at the bright cityscape below. “Not because of the technology. I think that just makes simple things complicated. But because, for the first time in years, I’m not up here on my own.”
“That’s why we have the New Year, Jethro. A chance to begin anew, to make changes,” Ducky opened his eyes and looked at his friend. “Perhaps you need that chance more than others.”
Just as Jethro was about to reply, there was a sudden grating noise as the door to the roof opened and the sound of excited chatter filled the night air. He turned to see McGee and Abby, both wrapped in warm street clothes, both totally oblivious to the presence of the two other people on the roof. McGee was carrying a large black case, and was obviously in the middle of a lengthy, detailed explanation of its contents. Jethro sighed. “I think we’re about to find out what McGee got in his Christmas stocking, Duck.”
“Gibbs!” Abby said excitedly. “Happy New Year!”
“You’re a little early, Abs,” Jethro said, checking his watch. “It’s only a quarter to twelve.”
“I believe in punctuality,” she grinned. “And wait till you see what McGee has.”
“What have you got there, Timothy?” Ducky asked, in a slightly wearied tone.
“Uh, well,” McGee put his case down on the ground and knelt down to spring open the locks. “Norfolk just sent this over - a new long-range telescope. It’s, uh, it’s pretty powerful for something so small.”
“Sound like someone you know?” Abby asked, sitting down on the edge of the rooftop. “Hi Ducky - I didn’t know you were back.”
“I just got in,” Ducky explained. “Jethro picked me up from the airport.”
“Good Christmas?”
“Yes,” Ducky nodded, glancing at Jethro. “It’s good to be with my family.”
McGee finished assembling his telescope and handed it to Jethro for examination. Jethro frowned: it had far too many buttons, switches, and flickering lights for his taste. He raised it to his eye and attempted to focus it on the star Ducky had pointed out. “I wonder if our young sailor would even recognise this.”
“What?” McGee asked.
“Private joke,” Ducky explained. “And I think you give him too little credit, Jethro. After all, he’s an explorer of the universe just like us. And most people recognise an eye when they see one, even a very technologically advanced eye”
“All the universe to explore, Duck, and you end up back here.”
The medical examiner smiled. “Indeed. But even the most insatiable of explorers, even our young sailor adrift millennia ago, had the ultimate aim of returning home.”
“Isn’t home in Scotland, Ducky?” McGee asked, as Jethro handed him back the telescope and he attempted to adjust the focus.
“Hogmanay!” Abby squealed. “Robert Burns! Auld lang syne! Haggis!”
Ducky laughed. “I can celebrate Hogmanay just as well here as I can in Edinburgh. Even without the haggis.”
“What’s Hogmanay?” McGee asked. Jethro was relieved that someone else had asked the question.
“Ah, an old and venerable Scottish tradition,” Ducky explained. “Mainly involving drunken debauchery. It’s how we see in the New Year.”
Abby raised her eyebrows. “You passed up on drunken debauchery for this?”
“Ah, the innocence of the young,” Ducky joked. “Perhaps I might ask, Abigail, why you are spending the New Year in the same fashion? You more than anyone must have invitations to parties, but yet you’re on the roof with Timothy and his telescope.”
“Uh, here,” McGee handed back the telescope to Jethro. “Try that.”
Jethro raised the telescope to his eye, just as Abby replied, “Some things are more important than parties. And why are you up here, Gibbs? Hiding out from your ex-wives?”
“Some things are more important than that,” Jethro said, giving the telescope to Ducky. “Home. Family. The kinds of things that led even our young sailor to leave the water.”
“So you’re up on the roof of the NCIS building with Ducky?” McGee said, incredulous. Three pairs of eyes turned to glare at him. “Oh. Sorry.”
“Almost midnight, Gibbs,” Abby said, standing up and checking her watch. “I synchronised it with Greenwich before we left.”
“Do you think our young sailor was ever in love?” Jethro asked, sitting back down next to Ducky. “That he took someone out and showed him these stars, showed him the way home?”
Ducky hesitated, and laid the telescope down on the roof. “I don’t know, Jethro. But if I was him, if I had known what he knew, I couldn’t help but tell. There are no wonders in the universe that aren’t meant to be shared.”
“Ten seconds!” Abby alerted them. “Come on, McGee!”
She grabbed an increasingly embarrassed McGee by the arm and led him a few feet away. Jethro watched them go with a smile, and leaned close to Ducky. “You’re the most important thing in the world to me,” he whispered.
“Happy New Year!” Abby cried, planting a kiss on McGee, who was rapidly turning crimson. She turned to share the greeting with Gibbs and Ducky, only to find them sharing a much more passionate and prolonged kiss than she had given McGee. “Uh, Gibbs?”
McGee tugged on her arm, and pointed at the door, silently mouthing the suggestion that they leave. A grin on her face, Abby followed him off the roof.
After a long moment, Ducky drew away, smiling. “A resolution for the New Year, Jethro?”
His lover nodded. “To remember where home is, and that it’s not always a place.”
As the new year unfolded around them, they lay back in each other’s arms, and watched the stars.