A/N: People kept posting nostalgic pictures of blonde!Jenny on Tumblr, so this happened. End of author's note.

She was being stared at.

She sat against the headboard lazily, trying to read over the last few case files, her fashionable glasses perched on her nose, and she was being stared at. It was the kind of irksome glare one usually got when one was doing something offensive, in most cases, this glare was from disapproving parent to errant child.

Except he wasn't her parent, he was her lover, and the stare-slash-glare was starting to piss her off.

He had no reason to be watching her so intently. She did not know what he could possible expect to gain from it, as they had already had sex. Twice.

And she wasn't about to give it up again.

She cleared her throat warningly, turning a page over very deliberately without looking at him.

Jenny Shepard had been brought up in a vein of thought that defined staring as unsociable and rude, and that left her with a distinct dislike of being stared at. Her reaction to it ranged from feeling angry to self-conscious to panicked.

She could not particularly decide between angry and panicked right now, considering who was staring at her.

She pulled the robe she'd put on closed a little, wriggling her nose. She cleared her throat a little louder.

He narrowed his eyes; she saw him move out of the corner of her eye.

And then, in a move both unexpected and unprecedented, Leroy Jethro Gibbs pulled her hair.

She slapped his hand forcefully, slamming her folders down and twisting to look at him in total outrage, her eyebrows shooting up somewhere between surprise and ferocity. It had only been a gentle tug, but she was mortally offended by the action.

"What the hell has gotten into you?" she demanded, narrowing her green eyes threateningly.

He returned her look brazenly, cocking his head a little. He reached up and tugged a loose strand of her hair again, catching her off guard enough to be able to get away with it. She leaned away, this time aiming a kick straight at his kneecap under the covers.

"Are you trying to sabotage this relationship?" she hissed seriously, scooting away from him.

"Fix it," he growled in response, his eyes fastened pointedly on her messy hair.

She lifted her eyebrows high.

"Excuse me?" she inquired icily.

He nodded at her hair, reaching for it again.

"Fix it," he repeated.

She grabbed his sneaky, offensive, hair-pulling hand tightly. She was considerably taken aback, naturally interpreting his words to mean he was offended by the tangled, mussed state of her post-coital, pre-bedtime hair.

"You are the bastard who messed it up," she hissed at him, twisting his wrist violently.

He yanked his hand away, his jaw twitching slightly in discomfort, and shook his head, his brow knitting a little.

"Didn't mean that," he retorted. He inclined his head. "Colour," he grunted distastefully. "Fix it. Didn't leave one blonde for a different blonde," he growled.

Jenny stared at him unblinkingly, her lips parted slightly. She was currently at a loss for words.

Was the man who had failed to notice for three and a half weeks that she cut all of her hair off really laying in her bed ordering her to wash the blonde out of her hair as if his opinion was actually a factor in her hair care regimen?

Never mind the fact that his opinion was a factor in her hair care regimen, she was bound by female law to be outraged.

Not to mention, she was fairly sure his arrogant self had his facts wrong.

"I believe that one blonde left you," Jenny reminded him saccharinely, her eyes glinting a little malevolently.

He made a face, rolled his eyes, and scoffed.

Jenny snorted derisively.

"Oh pardon me. I do suppose your drinking your way through a bourbon distillery and then showing up on my doorstop drunker than an Irish Catholic on Saint Patrick's Day was a sign that you had triumphantly walked away from the Colonel," she drawled sarcastically. "Sorry for that misunderstanding."

He glared at her, setting his jaw. They generally didn't talk about his semi-brief but kind of too long little romantic interlude with Hollis Mann. It was just a weird subject. The fact of the matter was, she was in Hawaii, and he said yes when Jenny asked him to stay.

And all was right with the world.

Well, it was until he pulled her hair three point eight minutes ago.

He glared balefully at her hair, his eyes flicking to her face.

"I don't like it," he said bluntly. He looked dead serious. "Fix it."

She removed her glasses from her face in a sharp movement, pushing her folders away and then placing them delicately on her bedside table. She looked at her lamp for a moment, contemplating ways to make him regret the audacity of his actions.

She smirked to herself in a small way and very slowly placed her glasses down, mustering up some misty, watery eyes and a forlorn quaver of the lip as she turned back to him hesitantly. She pursed her lips slightly.

"You hate my hair?" she asked pitifully, really milking the hurt act.

She made sure her bottom lip trembled just a little.

He seemed to be confused about what was happening for a moment. Then he leaned back, his eyes widening just a little, and tensed defensively, apprehension flooding his blue eyes.

"I didn't say I hated it, Jen," he said carefully, as if navigating a minefield.

"Yes, you did," Jenny insisted forlornly.

He sat up a little.

"I like the red better," he soothed. "It doesn't look bad," she watched him try desperately to backtrack in order to prevent her from crying. He knew good and well he was in hot water.

Jenny looked at him for a moment and then curled up on her side, tugging the covers towards her face theatrically. She sniffled exaggeratedly, but she was really trying very hard not to giggle.

"Jenny," he whined. He leaned down next to her and growled at her, anxious, and wary. "Jen, what is wrong with you?" he demanded shortly. Suspiciously.

It just wasn't Jenny-ish for her to burst into tears over some comment about her hair.

She remained silently, biting her lip to keep from laughing.

He ripped the covers back, and saw her shaking with silent laughter.

"Jenny," he barked, narrowing his eyes. She rolled onto her back and looked up at him, arching an eyebrow primly.

"Don't you dare look so offended, Jethro!" she admonished snippily.

"I thought you were really upset!" he hissed.

"You don't think I had a right to be?" she fired back, kneeing him gently. "You insulted my hair!"

"I asked you to fix it," he corrected.

"You ordered me to fix it," she retorted. She glared at him pointedly, pushing her hair back. It was slowly creeping back to its original shoulder length, but she had a ways to go. She stroked a few strands between her fingers, unsure if she touched blonde or red.

"Why did you do it?" he demanded aggressively. He eyed her hair, that look of distaste in his eyes again.

She shrugged.

"To piss you off."

"Why, Jen?"

"Why did you flaunt Colonel Blonde the way you did?" she returned fairly, shifting to her side and staring at him. He looked at her quietly, abstaining from an answer for a minute. Then, it became clear he was not going to answer her at all.

Understandable; he was a tight-lipped, don't kiss-and-tell kind of man, and she guessed the entire affair with Hollis Mann was a sore subject. She lifted a shoulder and an eyebrow nonchalantly; as if it to indicate there was nothing more she could say.

He lay down next to her, resting his arm over her chest while he reached to touch her hair. He fingered it gently, studying the colour.

"You do it to get my attention?" he asked.

"Don't flatter yourself," she scoffed bravely.

He looked at her as if he could see right through the comment.

"It worked, didn't it?" she asked softly, arching a pristine eyebrow. He nodded slowly, pressing his lips behind her ear and burying his face against her skin under the hair. He tugged on her ear with his teeth gently, his brow furrowing.

"I want the red," he murmured huskily.

"It's permanent hair colour, Mr. Fix It," she informed him sarcastically. "You'll have to stick around while it grows out."

"Sounds like a trap," he muttered, grinning a little.

"It is. It's like faking a pregnancy. I streaked my hair with blonde so that on the off chance we started sleeping together again, you would be forced to stay with me at least until my hair was red to your personal liking again."

He snorted.

"I'm not goin' anywhere, Jenny," he murmured seriously. He pressed a kiss to her ear, his nose brushing her cheek intimately. She swallowed, turning her head towards him just a little. She was the one with the leaving track record.

"You sure, Jethro?" she probed dryly. "My hair won't be 'fixed' for a good while."

He made a derisive noise. He snaked his palm up her neck and stroked her cheek, his thumb running delicately along her jaw line.

"Don't care what your hair looks like, Jen," he muttered, lifting his head and looking at her in his own Jethro-ish way.

"I believe you are the same man who just spent ten minutes glaring daggers at it and then viciously pulled and condemned it," she hissed, arching an eyebrow.

He narrowed his eyes at her and lifted his brow. His mouth turned up in that annoying Gibbs-smirk way.

"It's fake," he said. "I liked you the way you were, Jen," he stated simply, shrugging a little.

She blinked, and rolled her eyes upward, avoiding his for a minute. How had this gone from a normal night (for them) to an emotionally charged one? He couldn't just leave it. He, who never offered even a sliver of insight into his own feelings, was always, always the one to probe every single one of hers.

"Just wanted you to know that," he murmured gruffly, placing a kiss to the corner of her mouth.

He shifted, his body curving against hers, warm and familiar, skin brushing hers under the covers. She could feel his heart beat against her shoulder and she twisted into him a little, slipping her arm around his neck just like she used to.

"I think you're reading too much into this blonde thing," she informed him in a voice husky not with lust, but with something else. She snuggled close, sharing his pillow cozily. She felt his hand in her hair, twisting around, massaging.

"Like a high school English teacher and The Scarlett Letter?" he growled mockingly. He grinned.

"There is a lot of symbolism in that book, Jethro," she admonished sharply, defending the literature on instinct. But really, she meant, 'something like that'.

"Didn't mean to hurt your feelings, Jenny," he said sincerely.

She nodded, twisting her fingers into the hair at the nape of his neck. She felt him breathe in and out, and tilted her head a little, resting it on his bicep.

"So you don't love the blonde?" she asked.

"Never loved the blonde," he said with another shrug. She smirked a little.

Perhaps she was reading too much into that, but it satisfied her all the same. They had an interesting way of communicating.

"Then I'll fix it," she said decisively, her voice soft.

She smiled.

For some ridiculous reason, in his playful demands that she fix her hair, Jethro had managed to fix all the insecurities she had about their second attempt at a relationship.

-Turned out much less playful and much more...symbolic? That I meant. Sorry; had a slumber party with an English major the other night.