Chapter Text
Title: Just My Dad
Author: CJ aka WritinginCT
Fandom: NCIS
Pairing: Kelly Gibbs/ Jimmy Palmer
Rating: PG
Warnings: AU
Categories: Romance, Fluff, Humor
Feedback: Love it? Hate it?
Disclaimer: I don't own the recognizable characters I'm just inspired by them. Hopefully they've had fun playing in my sandbox.
Notes: Little AU fic brought on by a MEME on LJ that carried over to the NFA - in this AU Gibbs' wife Shannon did die but his daughter Kelly lived. I have a detailed theory about Kelly and Jimmy's ages meshing up - email me if you are truly interested.
Summary: Seventeen-year old Kelly Gibbs gets asked to the prom by boy she really likes, what happens when she brings him home to meet her father?
Status: WIP
---------------
"Dad?"
Gibbs heard the nervousness in his daughter's voice and wondered if it had anything to do with why she had been flitting around the house like a drunken butterfly before dinner. He washed the last dish, rinsed it, and put it in the strainer. He wiped his hands and turned towards her, leaning his hip against the sink. "What's up, Doc? he asked playfully as he watched her dry the last of the dishes.
Sometimes, like now, she looked so much like her mother that it almost hurt. Almost seventeen now, and a junior in high school, she had somehow turned into a woman when he wasn't watching and he wondered every now and again were his grungy, pigtailed princess went.
Kelly wiped the plate, and kept wiping it even though it was dry, trying to put together the right words. Finally she went with the facts. Her father loved getting "just the facts". And most of the time if he had just the facts, he would let her do what she wanted within reason. She prayed this would be one of those times. "I got asked to the senior prom by a really nice guy."
She turned to face her father, chewing on her bottom lip, half expecting him to immediately say that she couldn't go.
Gibbs just blinked, he knew that this was big deal to a teenage girl. And in all fairness, the few boys that she had gone out with had all been good kids. Kelly was a smart, responsible girl. Top of her class scholastically, captain of the softball team, and secretary of the science club, she wasn't one to do anything stupid. She was popular and had many friends both male and female and just tried to live life to its fullest. She was so like her mother. And himself, he realized.
"So does this nice guy have a name?"
She beamed at him, and Gibbs knew he was done for, "His name is Jimmy. Jimmy Palmer."
He just had to chuckle, "Don't make me interrogate you. Just give me..."
"The Facts. Okay. He's a senior, obviously. He's in the science club with me. He gets straight A's, well, except for gym class but you can't really hold that against him, Dad, not everybody is a Marine-in-training."
Gibbs snorted at that but let her continue, "He's really funny and smart. He's going to Georgetown in the fall for pre-med. He wants to be a doctor. He's a really, really nice guy, Dad, and a perfect gentleman."
He saw a dreamy look on her face that worried him a little. He remembered seeing that same look on Shannon's face directed at him back when they were in high school. In the years since she had been killed he had wished for her guidance in dealing with their daughter on more than one occasion, today was another.
"So when do I get to meet this Jimmy Palmer?" he teased with a raised eyebrow.
Kelly's eyes grew huge. Not just because he hadn't said no, but because she didn't know about Jimmy meeting her dad. Her dad was, well, intimidating. And protective, and she would swear that he enjoyed scaring the pants off of the few boys she had actually dated in the past.
She really didn't want him to scare Jimmy off. She liked him a lot, and they had so much in common. They had been friends in the science club since last year. He was funny in a dorky kind of way, but he always made her laugh. He had surprised her by offering to keep the stats for her softball team and they studied in the library together often. She kept hoping he would ask her out sometime, but he never did. Some of her friends teased her about him, wondering what she saw in him when practically every jock in school was hounding her to go out with them. But she didn't want a jock for a boyfriend just to say she was dating a jock. She wanted a boyfriend that was nice, and that would understand if she said she had to study, someone that would hold her hand and just listen if she were upset about something, someone that would say silly things just to make her smile. Someone that would treat her like she remembered her dad treating her mom.
And she just knew that person was Jimmy. When he had finally worked up the nerve to ask her to the prom as they were walking down the hall to the library she almost couldn't believe it. He had stammered through it, and gotten side tracked a time or two, but eventually he just got frustrated with himself and spit it out, "Kelly, what I'm trying to say is, will you go to the prom with me?"
She was so excited that she couldn't even reply she just beamed that Gibbs' smile at him and shook her head yes.
Jimmy pushed his glasses up, not caring that they sat crooked on his face and asked with his own wide smile, "Really?"
"Really." Then a thought flickered in her mind and she groaned. Her father.
"What?" Jimmy asked concerned.
"I really do want to go to the prom with you, but I have to run it by my dad first."
"Oh. Okay. Makes sense I guess."
She grimaced, "He's going to want to meet you, you know."
Jimmy paled, he had heard rumors about Kelly's former Marine father, and his voice squeaked, "No problem. I'd, um, love, to meet your father."
"Are you sure?" she asked in a little voice.
Seeing how crestfallen Kelly had gotten, Jimmy found a little courage, he really liked Kelly, and if it meant dealing with her dad, then so be it. He put his happy face back on and said, 'Positive." And was rewarded by the return of Kelly's smile.
And as Kelly stood there staring at her father she prayed that he would be nice to Jimmy. "I could invite him over on Saturday, we've got to finish up our science club project plan anyway and you could meet him."
Gibbs could see that she was nervous, more than she had been with anyone else that she had ever brought home, and decided to play good cop this time. "Sounds good. I'll even buy the pizza."
---------------
tbc...