THE DOLPHIN HERO

Chapter 14

A/n: Hi to you all … our patient and devote readers !!..

Finally we are approaching to the end of our story, this chapter and the next two are about what's going on with Gibbs and Kate (separately, by now) .They will have to find themselves before finding each other… and there are two characters ready to help them up in the process… you guess, yep!!!… They are Sedna, and Stolzer.

Please, R& R and remember… we love to get reviews and suggestions. Even when the story is almost done, we ´d like to know what do you think: Would you like to read some hot scenes before Kate and Gibbs get together? … I mean… they are going to live their short stories this night: Gibbs is just spending some time in Sedna´s companion. He likes her strength and sense of humor. From his last divorce he is used to have light relationships, no strings attached.

But Kate, this is a quite different story. She is trying desperately to find someone that make her to forget her impossible crush with her impossible boss… find someone to spend her life with. Has the blond SEAL an opportunity with her?

"Well…."

Sedna sighed and tried to get her messy hair tied, forming a thick roll and fixing a loose chignon behind her left ear. She kept her eyes off him while doing her hair, looking to the darkness outside the window, trying to calculate how much time they have before the tempest would discharge its fury over them. At any rate, they have to wait till the harbor guys ring their bell. A sip of bourbon wouldn't hurt in between.

"Let's go to my cabin then…we can receive the call there…."

And Sedna made her way beneath the deck. Gibbs followed her closely trying to make his steps shorter so as not to bump into her at some point of their way to the cozy core of the boat that he had came to know and appreciate during the long of the nights he had slept there.

Sedna could feel his eyes up and down her bare back as they walk and the feeling was peculiarly strong. She felt the hair of her neck tingling.

Why does he have this power over me? And if it's not my own creation, where is this sudden… "desire" , coming from? Is it really him wanting me?... Or maybe it is just me, projecting my own feelings of loneliness….

She cursed herself, hadn't been enough the experience with DiNozzo? What's going wrong with her?... Besides… what was he doing there?

Why did he seem to almost materialize in front of her when he had promised to stay at hospital overnight?.

Suddenly, the unspoken questions come in, yelling at her as though it were a horde of people.

Had he gone after his team, after all?

Maybe he went after Kate and had seen her with Stolzer … if that was the case, why he wasn't in a rage? …Or perhaps he was, and coming to her was a kind of fruitless revenge….

"Fruitless…." ha!!! … You should upgrade the concept about yourself, Sedna… she thinks. And what if he had seen she and DiNozzo kissing ?.

Well… she had to accept that that scene could be a sort of … well, not properly hot thing … but she had gone afar from the behavior she should have had there, where almost everyone knew her.

"Damnit Gibbs…I hate to be such transparent to someone … but well, we can talk and may be we can stop beating around the bush… You pretending I don't know anything and you doing the same about me … but if that's the case and you really know and you saw Kate making out with Stolzer… why you are not affected? … may be he was… he was so good at disguising his emotions … because , what was he doing here, anyway…?... What was he going to do with her… was he looking for a friendly companion and some bourbon… or it was about something more ?... Not I wouldn't like to sleep with you… marine…"

"You have the perfect place in here… do you know that, doc?"

His voice sounds smooth and low in the limited space of the wooden walls, has a smooth and caressing quality underlying the tone.

"Don't call me " doc" again… or…"

He smirks and stands at his full height towering her….

"Or…"

"Or I'll regret to had offered you Bourbon… Gibbs….".

"It's ' Jethro'"…

"Jethro …"

She repeats the strong name whispering, almost reverently. She knows that no much people should be allowed to call him by his given name.

"A very uncommon name for a not common man…. It means "friend of God" … but you surely know that …"

"I knew, yeah… and speaking about names… Sedna is not the name that you could hear everyday too…"

She laughs openly now.

"Is not…. It was given to me after the name of the Eskimo goddess… 'Sedna' is their queen of the deep seas and seals… my father was an anthropologist…. he worked around the polar circle and Greenland …so, he named me after her" , Sedna explains.

"And he was right , and wrong."

"Wrong?" She repeated arching her eyebrow… "in what way?"

"You look like a goddess, yes… but not just for the Eskimos…"

She mirrors his smirk.

"Are you flirting with me… Jethro?"

He blinks innocently, his gleaming blue eyes showing her that the hard ass marine was in his best flirting mood despite his next words.

" Flirting? Me? Nah… I just saying the whole truth"

She really was enjoying all this, enjoying having him there, his companionship, the teasing….and why not, the man himself.

She opened a small oak cabinet and took a beautiful carved crystal bottle filled with a dark amber liquid; she got a pair of heavy crystal glasses as well, and put it all in front of him.

" Feel home….".

He nodded , a ghost of a smile curving his lips, he grab the heavy bottle that seemed to be smaller in his big hand and poured a double shot for him and then, poured slowly the amber aromatic liquid for her to stop him: Sedna straight her palm up.

"Ok for me…. Jethro…Bourbon is not my thing….and I need to be sober enough till have her safe into the harbor …"

He touches his glass with hers, which ´s still over the table, sips and nods approvingly.

"For not being your thing, this is a hell of a Bourbon… Sedna."

"John liked it…. he liked to drink it while putting his field notes in order… he had filled this bottle himself… and then…."

Gibbs keeps looking at her with a knowing face .She had her eyes fixed on the fine design of the crystal and suddenly had felt his eyes on her and looked up his face, into his deep blue eyes finding… sadness and unexpected tenderness into them.

He speaks in a whisper more for himself .

"Yeah… I know… I keep some of her toys in the attic…still."

He stopped talking then, not knowing why he allowed himself to say that. Sedna was looking directly into his eyes now, expecting for him to finish the sentence… but he didn't, averting his eyes instead, he shook his head almost imperceptibly.

"It doesn't matter". and he took another sip of his drink.

Sedna took her glass, and caressing the cold and smooth surface asked him in a quiet voice:

"Do you want to speak ab…"

His abrupt "nope" didn't surprise her… maybe they were going into delicate matter that would be better to avoid for now.

"Ok… Jethro, please forgive me, I wasn't trying to invade your privacy or something… I just thought that you wanted to share …"

" Nothing to be forgiven… and no, I don't want to share .. don't feel bad… the problem is not you… but me. "

She nods.

"Don't worry… I'm somewhat familiar with your feelings Jethro…."

She sips, blowing a little gasp at the sharp taste.

"Strong thing you like…."

He smiles, a brilliant sparkle shinning at the bottom of his eyes.

" Strong´s better…"

She couldn't help but laughing at that. His words could be taken in so much different ways…he is a very uncommon man. There is much more than a gruffly temper under his well built appearance she decides.

Sedna repeats his last words:

"Yeah… so, … strong is better. This is for John … and Kenny … and for you… thank you…to all of you, Jethro." And with it, she engulfs down her throat the pungent liquid that still remains in her glass, blinking and wrinkling her nose at the burning sensation down her chest.

"Oh my God" , she gasps " I'm a beer girl ya know? "…

He smiles, quietly. Sedna wonders if he knows about what his little brunette would be doing just now. She is not going to tell him, anyway… Kate has her rights and she is respecting her privacy at this point… after all, sex is nothing more than sex… if it'd grow to b love… well, this would be a problem…

They drink together for a while, in a tacit accorded silence. None of them voicing the questions they have in mind. They were similarly private persons with this old fashioned sense of honor and proud, she was not going to pester him with her own story and neither was he.

Having finished her drink, she took his glass that had been refilled at some moment, sipping from it. They share the glass and refused to share their feelings with each other and time goes by…the effects of bourbon overpowering her mind rapidly, summoned up with the exertion of the hard day they had had. Sedna blinks sleepily… surely he was rested a bit at hospital before run away, he looks fresh and relaxed… but she had been moving no stop and the bourbon in an empty stomach had made her body starts its own protest. He shot her a playful look.

"Are you going drunk?...may be you need a doctor , doc….."

This worked and Sedna laughed again.

"No… coffee will be enough… coffee and some scrambled eggs may be…"

She works efficiently and fast, and soon, the nice smell of toasts and scrambled eggs, fills the cabin, coming in join with the spell of the fresh strong coffee.

They sit and eat eagerly… Gibbs notes that she had used spices and may be some cream to cook the eggs… they are superb. And the coffee… well, no enough words for it.

When no ….of food rest on the table she sigh contently.

"I feel much better now… artic tribes say that food replaces sleep you know?"

"I didn't know… but have experienced the feeling before; by the way…good cooking… doc."

"Well… fast and tasty cooking is a must when sailing…. I learnt very young … I used to sail a lot along the arctic waters with my father…( her voice had got unexpectedly dreamy and soft as she remembers) He used to lean his six feet two inches against the partition and peeled his lighter and one of his stinky cigars before going upstairs… and he used to say at this moment …. " Good cooking, boy" . She laughs… "He always called me boy when I did things well… such a chauvinist. Even tough, he taught me things as if I had been a boy... I mean…sailing, diving, fishing… firing a gun, harpoons and bows…he was really great and I still miss him a lot.

"Did he teach you how to dance…, 'Doc'… It seems to me that you don't do that like a " boy."

His voice was dangerously low and still soft. And it took ten seconds for her to process the real meaning of his last words. " Damn it !!! he had seen them early…..and the remaining question was if he had seen Kate and Stolzer too …damn it…of course he did".

TBC.

A/n: Waiting for your reviews and suggestions… and please, answer the question: Would you like it turns into a hot night for them with their occasional partners…????

Next chapters and already done, but we could keep it smooth or get the "decibels" higher . It´s up to you!!!!