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Talking Hands (NCIS) PG
Talking Hands
An NCIS story
An NCIS story
Summary: Five ways Jethro Gibbs may have learned sign language.
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: CBS owns all NCIS. I'm only borrowing and will return all at the end of the fic.
Spoilers: Spoilers for season three on NCIS, nothing more recent.
Characters: Jethro Gibbs, mentions of Shannon, Kelly, Jen, Abby.
Word count:: 1,400
Note: Because we know why Abby knows sign language, but not Gibbs. I came up with five different ways it might have happened, and worked in my favorite theory in the end because the relationship between Gibbs and Abby is such a paternal one.
1. It's a Marine thing.
His first drill sergeant is a total bastard, but he's ten times the man that Jethro's father was. Jethro didn't join up at eighteen for the laughs, and he lives for the drills, the routine, the exhaustive work. The Marine Corps is where he belongs.
His first CO has them running drills all over the place, training for anything. The squad leader has a deaf kid and starts teaching the squad ASL for use in the field, for silent conversation in enemy territory.
Like everything else in the Corps, Gibbs throws himself into it with a passion.
2. It's a Shannon thing.
Shannon's first job after high school is as a teaching assistant at a school for the deaf. She helps the teachers with program work and learns signs along with the kids. When Jethro's on leave, she teaches him the signs and squeals with laughter as he tickles her with signing hands.
He proposes to her with signs. She tells him she's pregnant with her hands. She teaches Kelly sign language in the evenings and the first time Kelly signs, "I love you Daddy," Jethro thinks he's the luckiest man in the world.
It takes him a year after their deaths to go to the cemetery, and he can't speak, only signs, "I'm sorry," before his hands fall silent to his sides.
3. It's a Jen thing.
He's got a problem with redheads, he's aware of this. When he gets saddled with a newbie NCIS agent with red hair and green eyes and a smart mouth, he almost hands in his badge.
Almost.
He teaches her to fire a gun at someone without flinching and she teaches him to talk without using words and after a few years, the thought of her teaching any other man to talk with his hands makes him jealous and that's when he knows he's so deeply screwed.
4. It's a professional development thing.
He's always found sign language to be sort of cool, like the signs Marines use to communicate in the field. After he joins NCIS he finds himself at a loss for things to do in the evenings, so when he's not at the office he falls into the habit of going to the library and reading books on ASL just so he doesn’t go insane or on a bender or anything.
When yet another change in directorship happens, directives start to come down demanding people become bilingual. Gibbs already speaks Spanish and some bad Russian, but just to be a real pain in the ass he marks "ASL" on the paper and ships it back up to the office.
Of course, now he has to actually learn enough ASL to survive a conversation. He doesn’t mind the work.
5. It's a Gloria thing.
He's four when his mommy goes to the hospital all fat and comes home with a red, screaming, squirming baby girl. His parents name her Gloria for reasons Jethro can never understand. She's not glorious, she's just loud and all she does is sleep and eat and poop.
But he grows used to her, and he protects her from monsters under the bed and gets her blankie when she's unhappy and he's the first one to realize that she doesn't hear anything when he talks to her.
Mommy and Dad come back from the doctor and Mommy's crying and Jethro doesn't understand, but he carries Gloria to the kitchen and gives her some juice while his parents talk. "How are you going to learn to talk if you can't hear?" he asks Gloria, and she gurgles and waves her hands for a cookie and he understands that, at least.
They move to a city with a school for the deaf and Gloria goes there during the day while Jethro's at normal school, and she learns signs faster than he does and it's annoying, so he studies ASL hard because no little sister of his gets to be smarter than him.
Then Dad leaves and it's just him, Mom and Gloria, and Gloria's school costs so much that Jethro knows he'll never get to go to college, and he doesn't bother his mother, just tells Gloria that he's going to join the army and Gloria signs at him so violently that he's afraid she'll put his eye out.
Two days after the fight, a pile of papers appear on his bed with a note telling him that if he's going to join up, he'd better join the right branch of the military or else.
He considers the Navy but doesn't really like the sea that much. The Air Force might be fun, but only if he's a pilot and doesn't want to go to college for four years just in case he doesn't get that chance. The Marines look interesting, but Jethro's been bossed around by a man with delusions of grandeur for years and it wasn't that great the first time. Still, he goes to the recruitment office and signs up and comes out to find his teenage sister sitting on his car, glaring at him with daggers in her eyes. She doesn't talk to him until the day before he leaves for boot camp.
"If you get hurt I'm never going to talk to you again," she says in the slightly-off tones she's spent years in school perfecting.
She can read lips now and speak better than he can, but sign language is easiest for them. "I won't get hurt," he signs.
His life becomes the Marines and she stays in school and gets scholarships to college and meets a guy and moves to New Orleans and gets her goddamned self knocked up at twenty-one and stays in school until she has her Masters in child psychology, all while Jethro's away.
When he meets Shannon, he starts spending all of his leave time in Maryland with her. They get married and Gloria comes to the wedding with her husband (whose name Jethro can't ever remember and who signs so fast it's almost like a stutter) and her small daughter Abigail, who stares at Jethro with her mother's huge green eyes and tells him he has a silly haircut and signs to him that she thinks he needs a tattoo.
A couple of decades later, Jethro storms into the NCIS forensics lab, ready to throw down on whoever the hell summoned him with evidence at eight in the evening, to find a woman with tattoos and black pigtails and Gloria's green eyes waiting for him with hands tucked under her chin.
He's signing before he realizes what he's doing. "What are you doing here?"
"I'm your new forensic specialist," she signs with a wide smile. "Look, I've even got Masters' degrees and everything." She points at the wall.
The Director comes into the lab then, wanting to know if Jethro has met their star scientist, and Jethro finally clues in that his niece is the hiring coup of the year the man's been talking about for weeks, and this might not be so bad.
"So, what's so important that I'm here at eight on a Friday night, Abby?" he asks after the Director stops talking and goes away.
"Well, I know you'd want to spend some quality time with your boat after the most recent divorce--"
"Abs."
"But what's even better than sawdust on a Friday night?" Abby spins around the table to pick up an evidence bag. She grins with Gloria's smile. "I have one-hundred percent proof that your bad guy was, in fact, a Navy ensign with an arrest record for..." She bounces on her three-inch platform boots. "Guess."
Jethro stares at her.
"I'll give you a hint. It's really weird."
"Any weirder than that tattoo thing on your neck?"
Abby stops bouncing and pouts at him. "Gibbs! You really need to get out of that basement more often."
"Faster!" he signs.
"Fine," she huffs dramatically, so much like her mother that Jethro feels seventeen again. "Your ensign who's been breaking into animal shelters has an arrest record for bestiality." She hands him a file with enough evidence to arrest and convict the ensign twice over. "Now go arrest him because that's just so many kinds of revolting."
"That's some good work, Abby." He kisses her on the cheek on the way past, so intent on going to arrest a bad guy that it's not even weird that he's just found his niece in the lab.
"Not bad for a first day," he hears Abby saying as he hits the elevator.
Jethro has to agree.
end
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talking hands
Re: talking hands
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And, of course, Abby and Gibbs rock the house, so to speak.
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But Abby and Gibbs are my favorites. Your little ficlets are actually my first foray into the fandom, haven't had the guts to just jump in, till now.
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terrific explanations for Gibbs knowing Sign
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Great work!
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And thank you for your kind words!
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She mentioned you'd written a really good NCIS/SGA crossover, but alas, I can't read that because I'm only up s4 of both shows, and I don't want to majorly spoiler myself for what's coming on either. I thought I'd look back through your other NCIS stuff though in the hope that there was something non-spoilery, and I found and really enjoyed this one.
The last scenario was just beautiful... I don't know much about Gibbs' early back-story from canon yet, but this strikes me as totally plausible given what I do know. Your Gibbs at four was disturbingly cute (and I'm not a kid person), and I actually squeed *out loud* at the 'small daughter called Abigail' bit.
Thanks for a great read
Starfire
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Lovely, lovely fic.
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AWWWWWWW!
(This is keeping me from my frickin' novel, but I WILL read everything you have written tonight!)
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I loved each take on how he learned and the last one was especially good. I like my NCIS family gen or shipped, so seeing Abby as Gibbs' niece was great and explains the sign language and why Gibbs called Abby's mom by her first name that one time. :-)
Sweet!