Transference
by B. Cavis

Transference
by B. Cavis

He comes to her apartment at the few hours between true night and morning, fucks her, and leaves. After the fifth time it happens, she stops trying to tell herself she doesn’t feel cheap. Admitting it to herself doesn’t make her feel any better.

Kate is very bad at things like this.

She’s had experiences like this before-- “flings with names” like this before. One night stands that continue on for more than one night, and develop into their own category. Tim had been a man like that; a relationship that had developed out of casual sex, and therefore was never as strong as if it had developed out of mutual caring and respect.

Once a man hears you holler for him to fuck you harder, it is hard for him to look at you in any way but as a piece of tail.

She never speaks, never says a real word when he comes to her for that very reason. Never.

He doesn’t complain.

It doesn’t hurt the team dynamic the way she always imagined fucking one of her team mates would. When she would sit in her room late at night (something she only did for the first month of being at NCIS before she got bored and went out and practiced “transference”) she would run her hands down her body, discovering the new protrusions of bone and hard muscle that had developed in her because he demanded that they did, and think about what it would be like to fuck Tony. Gibbs. Abby.

She never wanted to fuck Ducky. She doesn’t have time or energy to wonder why that is.

Of course, some people made cameos in those “what if” dreams more than others. And Tony was never the one pounding her ass in those dreams. There are certain things that, even in her head, she has always reserved just for him.

That sounds too much like a trait of commitment. Of a real relationship. She shakes it from her brain and leaves it on the ground like so much dead skin.

At work, they act exactly the same as they always do. Their hands are kept firmly at their sides. He still half teases, half chides her at random intervals during the day. She still makes fun of his hair. If anything, they’ve only grown… quiet. More understanding. Kate never thought it possible, but the silence that she maintains during their fucking has transferred over into their day to day lives, for a different reason.

Now, when she doesn’t speak during the day, it’s because he knows what she’s going to say. When he doesn’t speak, it’s because she understands without him having to vocalize what he’s thinking. They’ve learned each other; learned their habits and their thought processes.

Sometimes, Kate misses the talking, though. It used to ground her-- his voice. The sound of him pointing something out or agreeing with her observations… it was comforting in a strange, all too normal and bland way. Its absence is a lacking that she feels quite keenly.

And, as much as their night times have slipped over into their days, sometimes the days slip over into the nights. In their place of no names and no words and no endearments, sometimes the littlest bit of tenderness; of need will intrude. When he almost dies, something that happens a bit too often for her comfort, she’ll find herself touching him with all of her desperate worry in her hands. Running cold fingers over his chest to check if he’s whole and safe and sound.

Sometimes, when she goes off and does something that almost gets her killed, something she really doesn’t know if he thinks happens too often, when he’s done and she’s done, he’ll just… hold her. Squeeze her. Like he’s afraid to let her go and let the world have her again. He’ll trap her in the prison of his arms, and it isn’t until she wakes up the next morning alone that she truly feels like a captive.

His captive. But not… his.

Never his. Because this is a “fling with names.” This is nothing in the long run, to either of them, and she knows it. She accepts it. Because Gibbs doesn’t allow her to delude herself or melt into the sweet narcotic haze of denial. He doesn’t allow her to forget that this isn’t a relationship, this is fucking.

But he doesn’t allow her to forget the fucking either, and that makes her hate him, just a little bit.

If it was bad, she could move on. If it was mediocre, she would buy new locks and get a dog. Find someway to make him aware of his dissolved welcome and the end of their union. If it was normal, vanilla, clean and sweet sex that had her coming once and then falling back on the sheets contented, she could have moved on months ago. Left him and his memory in the dust and never looked back.

But it’s not. And she can’t.

He does it just to make her miserable, she’s sure. Takes her apart piece by piece and marks it with his name. Imprints his ownership into every part of her skin and flesh and muscle. He makes her moan and wail and scream and shout out (sounds, of course-- never the commitment of words and phrases) and she lets him because it’s all just too good.

All just too… encompassing.

After a session with Gibbs-- after the hours upon hours of him working her over and making her body shake and dissolve under his touch-- she sleeps like the dead, and a little bit more of her is his. A part of her is under his control and command, and she can’t fight it. Because the parts of her that already belong to him, that have belonged to him since the moment she placed her hand in his, won’t allow her to.

He makes it good. Always-- so good. And because of it, she can’t kick him out. She can’t forget him and her and how they will never be an “us.” She just… can’t.

Which makes her hate him. Which makes her hate herself. Which makes her hate him more. Gibbs is apparently very good at inspiring vicious cycles. She wonders if this is why his first three wives all got as far away from him as possible, and thinks that maybe she should’ve followed their lead when she had the chance.

Knows it’s too late.

And hates him again.

The biggest problem is that neither one of them is a victim. They both… participate. And they both continue to put themselves in situations like this.

She doesn’t go out and buy a few more security chains and a deadbolt. If she did, he couldn’t get in. He’s a great agent, not Superman, and neither of those locks can be broken covertly.

She doesn’t tell the 24 hour doorman not to let him up. They know Gibbs-- they’ve seen him and Tony before, and they trust the both of them because once upon a time she told them that they should. If she ever changed that status, Gibbs wouldn’t be allowed into see her. And he knows it just as well as she does.

Kate has the power to stop this by denying him. He has the power to stop this by denying himself.

Neither one of them do.

She can’t see herself as a victim, because she’s really not. The only thing she is a victim of is her own libido and need. Her own deadly attraction to things that will only hurt her in the end. The same thing that led to her attraction to Mr. Moore in high school. To Thomas Harold, husband and doting father. To Tim.

And now to Gibbs.

Kate is self destructive in her relationship choices. Maybe it’s the fact that her father and mother divorced and her mother got custody. Maybe it’s the fact that her grandfather never acknowledged her as his heir because she was a girl. Maybe, hell, it was just in the cards. But whatever the reason, she tends to seek out men in charge. Men who lead.

Men who lead her. Around the dance floor, around the party, around the bedroom. Men who fill the image of the in-charge, take charge, no charge kind of guy she wants more than anything to find, and can never control by their very nature when she finds them.

And Gibbs is that kind of man. The boss. Her boss. Her leader, as it were, and the man who represents all of the power and control that she has to respect in her professional life. Possibly one of the most destructive decisions she could ever hope to make in her life, professionally, is to get involved with the boss. Possibly one of the most destructive decisions he would ever hope to make in her life, personally, is to get involved with a thrice married asshole who looks at her and sees an immature little girl in need of growth.

But hell, if you’re going to be destructive, do it all the way. No use in being half assed about it. If she is going to slit her wrists, she might as well take the whole hand off.

He rolls her over and pops the buttons on her night shirt open with one hand while undoing his belt and dropping his gun to the floor. She blinks sleepily up at him and shakes the sand from her eyes and the cotton from her head.

The clock radio is flashing. Her power must have gone out some time before he woke her up. There’s rain outside against the windows, soft and pattering, and she tries to decide what it sounds like before settling on kittens feet on glass. She wonders when she became a Hallmark poet.

Her bra is dismissed as she sits up and works his shirt off his shoulders to tumble to the floor. It half covers the gun and the badge that slipped out of his jacket when he threw it off. The remnants of professionalism.

She kneels up on the bed in front of him, nude and smooth skinned, and he stands in his boxers and undershirt, watching her as she waits for him patiently. Her eyes are dark tar, dragging him down and making his head and body heavy with the weight of her. Her hair is thick and mused on her shoulders, and it slips down the front of her to lick at the top of one of her breasts.

She is a darkness-kissed Aphrodite without the back fat, and he hates that she has the kind of power over him that she does-- that she can make him have romantic notions of her body and her beauty right now. His cock is hard and thick and fat for her under the cotton of his boxers, and he is standing by her bed at three in the morning with his clothes on her floor, and she has him thinking of ancient Greek goddesses.

He pushes her down on her stomach angrily and pulls his boxers down one handed. That’s not going to happen. He won’t let it happen.

This is fucking. This is nothing else.

This is nothing else.

And then he’s in her, and she feels that rush of adrenaline and need and ache that always happens at his first thrust. When her body moves to make room for him and shifts to be open and wide and accepting. When her sex and the heat in her stomach betrays her mind and what she knows to be the truth.

What she knows to be real.

His hands are bruising on her waist, and she knows that it will hurt to wear a belt tomorrow and maybe that’s okay. She shifts up higher onto her knees and grabs two handfuls of the sheets for purchase before pushing back at him and hearing that wet squish sound of them joining together that should sound disgusting and for some reason really doesn’t.

This is real, her body whispers as he withdraws and rocks his hips back before pushing forward again. This is very real.

This is too real.

Two hours later, she is aching and hurting and whimpering. Two hours later, this has ceased to be fun and ceased to be pleasurable and just started to hurt.

She wasn’t meant to be used like this. No one was.

They’ve changed position half a dozen times, and she has started to subtly wipe her hands on the sheets to keep the sweat under control. She knows that she stinks of perspiration and sex and her own cunt. Knows that he smells of the same.

She’s come five times, which is twice more than she ever has before, and three times more than she can stand. Her skin is over sensitized and her clit aches with overuse. There is a burn that accompanies every thrust of him into her, and it started to become a burn of pain almost an hour ago.

He is hard inside of her. Still.

She hasn’t said anything yet. She’s never experienced this before, but she’s pretty sure that the “it happens to lots of guys” talk that she has had to give before for other reasons wouldn’t be appreciated. She has a feeling that he might just hurt someone if she told him that. That he might just hurt himself.

And if someone has to hurt because of this, she would rather it be her than him. Because she is that kind of fucking martyr. Lying in bed, skin covered in sweat, taking it rough and hard from a man who she is afraid to admit to herself she cares about, as he hurts her without meaning to and needs her without wanting to acknowledge it.

He is moaning constantly, but it hasn’t been a sound of pleasure in a while.

He stops, and for a moment she almost lets herself believe that he’s finished and that everything can go back to their dysfunctional, fucked up version of normal and safe. But instead, he drops her ankle from his hand and pulls on her arms so that she’s kneeling up on the bed, half slipping out of her, before ramming back in and grabbing her around the waist to keep her upper body pressed against his.

Her knees are killing her. She tries to shift, but he’s not letting her have the room she needs to do it. His eyes are closed and his face is scrunched up and he is focusing so hard she is almost afraid he’s hurt himself and is in pain.

He can’t finish. It was clear to her thirty minutes ago that this wasn’t just a particularly mind blowing marathon fucking, and she has absolutely no idea what to do with him right now. She knows that sometimes this happens. She’s never experienced, but she know it happens. She imagines that it must be like what happens to her when she can’t come-- her brain is working to hard or her nerves are getting to her or the stress in her body has taken over everything that might even be close to pleasure and turned it into another way of making her feel miserable.

She wonders if that’s her fault and decides it’s not. She doesn’t have that big a pull over Gibbs to make him feel anything he wasn’t feeling already.

His head comes down to rest on her shoulder, mouth open and hot on her skin, and he bites and it hurts. She makes a gentle “eep” in her throat, a whining cry, but he shows no signs of having heard it. Or anything else for that matter.

He is in his own place. She is just… there.

The hands holding her pressed against his front are hardened by sand paper and calloused from a hand saw. His chest hair hurts her nipples; they ache from all of the hormones rushing through her right now, and she rubs helplessly against him because whatever he offers her is something that she is taking and never giving back. Even if it hurts, even if it’s not something either one of them will admit to during the day.

She’ll take it. All of it.

His teeth come again on her neck; he’s getting frustrated with this position as well. In a second, he is going to pull out of her and find some other pose to put her in-- some other attempt to try and get his completion. He is going to hurt her again, and himself in his own inadequacy and inability.

He is hurting them both.

And maybe she wants it, but she can’t let him do it to his own body at the same time. She’s masochistic, not sadistic.

Her hand is cool and sweaty against his cheek, and when she touches him his eyes open. She doesn’t touch his face usually. He’s never asked why.

Kate untangles herself from him and pulls back. His cock bobs up against his stomach, red and swollen, and she looks down at him with something akin to softness in her eyes.

Don’t be soft, he wants to tell her, and can’t find the words.

Kate takes him by the shoulders and slowly eases him back onto her bed. The sheets cling to his overheated and sticky skin, and he resists the urge to tear at everything around him for some space of his own. All of the stimuli in the room make his nerves feel like they are being flayed alive over an open flame.

Everything hurts right now. Everything… hurts.

Kate straddles his stomach, careful not to sit on him or touch him with any part of her body, and her swollen red mouth comes down on his lips like he is being blessed from on high. Her tongue strokes over the marks his teeth made on his own lips, and when she pulls back he tries to go with her. She pushes on his shoulders once more and he stays where he is.

He doesn’t have the strength to argue with her right now. Everything has evaporated. Only the burn, the ache, the need remains, and he has to focus on that alone because any other sensation would overload his mind and send him spinning into the wind.

She could break him. She doesn’t.

Kate wiggles down to his cock and slowly, gently, kisses the head with all of the tenderness she can muster up. Her hand goes around him like it has so many times before, and all of the cheapness she was feeling earlier has disintegrated into someone else’s problem, because she has to focus on him and this right now.

She has no room for her own feelings of inadequacy when he needs her like this.

Her mouth is hot and tight over him, and he usually watches her as she does this, eyes glued on hers as she takes him in inch by inch and fucks her mouth on him. He can’t lift his head up. This is too hot. This is too embarrassing. This is too… intimate.

Her hand jerks what she can’t handle with her tongue, and the hand cupping his balls tightens and pulls softly every now and then. Her teeth are a threat behind her lips, and when they scrape over him his hips jerk up without meaning to.

He is addicted, and she is his dealer.

He spurts into her mouth after another moment, and she takes all he gives her without complaint of trouble. He throws his arm over his eyes in embarrassment, feeling something hot and thick in his throat that feels dangerously like tears and refusing to give them any ground to stand on. She hops off the bed and walks into the bathroom, and he hears the faucet running as he tries to sink into the mattress and die.

The soft touch of a washcloth on his lower stomach makes him pull his arm away and look down at her. She doesn’t say anything and she doesn’t move to stop. Her hand, soft and strong, drags the scrap of terrycloth over his skin.

She soaks up the sweat, the remnants of her own pleasure, and the other, invisible remnants of their fucking into the cloth, taking it all in and not looking contrite or nervous at all. He watches the steady movements of her hands as she cleans him, and says nothing.

She dumps the washcloth back in the sink and climbs up next to him in bed. She bounces up towards him, and he looks at her and sees a little girl in her movements, but a woman in her eyes and skin.

She drops her head onto the pillow next to his, eyes closed, and makes no movement to go towards him.

When he touches her stomach with the back of his hand, cautious and testing, she doesn’t protest. When he rests his arm across her waist, turning towards her and her warmth, she doesn’t move away.

She doesn’t fight the kiss he drops on her throat. And he doesn’t know how to help himself from dropping one to the other side as well.

FIN