a/n: Nina made me write this, and then Nina made me post this.

{ the crackiest crack you have ever cracked (say crack again: crack). }

Leroy Jethro Gibbs was having a perfectly normal, pleasant Wednesday morning until Jennifer Shepard walked in with a Styrofoam coffee cup that was different from her usual Styrofoam coffee cup and ruined his day.

Being a highly observant federal agent with magnificent investigative skills, he eyed the differently pattered coffee cup and skipped morning pleasantries.

"You end up letting Fornell buy you that drink last night?" He asked, while he pondered what could have interfered with her morning routine to make her stop at a different coffee cart.

She chucked her backpack into her chair and turned slowly, raising an eyebrow at him. FBI Agent Tobias Fornell was working a case with them, and yesterday he had made some sort of mocking bet with Shepard that he ended up losing. Last Gibbs had heard, they were arguing over whether or not it counted.

"No," she drawled carefully, laughing. She lifted her cup and tapped it primly with a nail. "I let him buy me coffee this morning."

Gibbs stared at her. For a second he thought she was suggesting—

"Did he cook you breakfast, too?" he joked, deadpan.

Her lips curled into an innocent sort of smirk.

"After the night I gave him? Of course. I deserved it."

This time Gibbs stared at her with his mouth open. He blinked—well, it was more of a horrified flinch.

"What?" he growled.

"I slept with him," she said bluntly.

Gibbs considered the possibility that he was having some sort of paranoid delusion. His eyes narrowed, and he squinted at her warily.

"Is that some kind of joke, Agent Shepard?" he demanded, his voice rising in pitch slightly.

She took a long, silent sip of her coffee.

She smirked.

Two hours later, he still hadn't figured out if that smirk was her relenting, and admitting it was a joke, or if it was her silent way of confirming she had literally slept with Tobias Fornell.

Gibbs had not uttered a single word all morning.

Burley had attempted to talk to him and, upon receiving only stony glares, had decided instead to remain as far away from Gibbs as possible. Shepard, on the other hand, was chipper as some sort of really annoying, adorable songbird.

She stood up from a crouched position at the crime scene they were examining. She winced and rubbed her thighs.

Gibbs glared at her suspiciously. Sore? Or just a reaction? He narrowed his eyes, and glared more closely at her thighs—she had nice thighs, so it was nice that he had an excuse to glare at them.

Wasn't Fornell supposed to be dating his ex-wife, anyway? What was he doing shacking up with Gibbs' probie? Was he so determined to siphon off Gibbs' seconds that he went in for the kill before Gibbs even had a chance to sweet-talk Shepard?

"Hey," Shepard said.

He grunted, startled.

She popped chewing gum, and raised her eyebrows. She squinted in the sun.

"Look, I don't think we're gonna find anything out here," she groused. She looked around her in distaste. "Besides, you can't really expect us to find finger nails and hairs out here in the damn woods."

"Job too hard for you, Shepard?" he asked, annoyed.

She turned her gum over in her mouth and shrugged, flicking up her NCIS hat.

"Not as hard as your FBI friend was last night."

That was when his day went from ruined to demolished into tiny microscopic pieces.

Gibbs stormed into the elevator, damn near ready to strangle Shepard's pretty little neck—if he could find Shepard. She wasn't in the lab, she wasn't in autopsy, she wasn't in the bullpen—she wasn't anywhere, and he needed to ask her something.

He dialed her number and held his phone to hear ear.

After two rings, a male voice answered.

"Must've got the wrong number," Gibbs grunted, and was about to hang up. He stopped dead. "Who the hell is this?" he growled.

"Fornell. Gibbs? That you?"

Gibbs held his phone out about as far from his face as he could get it and glared at the screen.

He had definitely dialed the right number.

He jammed the phone back to his ear.

"Why do you have my agent's phone?" he demanded rabidly.

"She left it—"

He hung up.

It seemed Shepard wasn't joking.

Which made him start to think that he wasn't living in Washington D.C., but instead had actually been transported to some vast, incomprehensible hell.

Gibbs was fuming visibly when they met Fornell at another recent crime scene to go over a possible re-enactment of the crime.

He had seen Fornell pulled Shepard aside to give her the cell phone, and she'd laughed and put her hand on his shoulder.

Gibbs crossed his arms, supervising the scene with a sort of cold, violent rage. He refused to admit he was jealous—except for the fact that he was madly jealous—and tried to convince himself he was just confused because never in his life would he have guessed Jenny would go for Fornell.

Fornell stood next to him, shielding his eyes from the sun. He watched Shepard crawl through a hole in a chain link fence, and had the nerve to whistle.

"She's flexible," he commented.

Gibbs turned to him and glared daggers.

"Thought you were dating Diane," he remarked loudly.

Fornell looked bewildered.

"I…am," he said uncertainly.

Gibbs set his jaw.

Shepard put her feet up on the dashboard, holding an elastic band in her mouth as she twisted her long red hair up on top of her head. She yawned, and the rubber band dropped to her lap. She swore.

"Tired, Jen?" he demanded rudely.

She nodded, lacing the band around her wrist and trying again.

"Four, five times in a row, that'll do it to you," she sighed dramatically.

Gibbs hit the gas. He tried to remain calm and not react but—

"You really sleep with 'im, Jen?"

She looked at him with wide eyes.

"Does it bother you that I might know how big his," she paused, and held up her hands, indicating obviously, "is?" She grinned. "That I might know if it's bigger than yours?"

"YOU HAVEN'T SEEN MINE."

She blinked. She whistled and turned to face straight ahead.

"Yes. I have."

His brain nearly imploded in his skull. When had she—how had she—was she kidding about that, too?!

He made a sharp right turn for coffee—he needed it.

She burned her tongue on the coffee he shoved at her, and spit the liquid back into the cup.

"Ah," she gasped. "Damn, and I never spit," she groused. She shrugged, while he stared at her in complete horror. "My throat's sore from all that swallowing—" She stopped, giving him a sudden sweet look. "Oh, Gibbs, I'm sorry, is that too much information?"

"This is completely inappropriate Shepard. I'm filing a disciplinary report."

She was sitting at her desk running her hands through her hair at six o'clock, and his entire day had been filled with a manic, unquenchable desire to throttle her, but he couldn't throttle her until he knew if she was kidding or not.

She puckered her lips thoughtfully.

"Gibbs," she said. "If you and I ever sleep together, does that mean you've slept with Toby?"

He slammed his palms down on his desk.

"Shut-up," he growled.

She burst out laughing, throwing her head back.

"Relax, Jethro, I'm screwing with you," she confided finally, clutching the edges of her hair.

"You're joke—"

"It's a prank," she giggled. "I'm sick of you acting like a bastard because you want to sleep with me. It's a damn lesson."

He spluttered angrily for a moment.

She clicked her tongue soothingly.

"He just bought me a drink," she cooed. "I left my cell phone at the bar, is all."

Gibbs glared at her violently.

"I'll buy you dinner," he countered.

She smirked.

"Men," she drawled. "It's always a measuring contest."

He narrowed his eyes. He tried not to let her provoke him but once again—

"You really seen my—"

She did that thing again. She just cocked her eyebrow and smirked.

nobody look at me, just review
-alexandra

story #156