Title: Seasons
Author: WriterKos
Rating: FR18
Parings: Tim/Joy, plus Team Gibbs.
Characters: McGee/OC
Genres: Character Study, sex
Warnings: sex
Summary: What do you see when you look at me? How the team is seen through the eyes of a profiler. Fic 12 in the Joy Buchanan series.

a/n: Thanks for the wonderful LadyTwila for her wonderful work in beta reading this.

Chapter 1: Spring - McGee

Love is an act of endless forgiveness, a tender look which becomes a habit. Peter Ustinov

The early morning light filters through the gaps of the curtains in the bedroom, shining softly over the bed. There, lovers move slowly against each other in a rhythm as old as time. Words weren't needed. They know each other's defects and scars and are not bothered by the imperfections which mar their skins and souls.

The bruises from their last battle are still visible and tender to the touch, yet their need to reconnect lead them to ignore doctor's orders and start a slow dance in the early Saturday morning.

Joy moans loudly when Tim bites her ear. He soon starts to leave kisses all over her earlobe. She can feel his smile against her skin as he devotes himself to leaving his mark of ownership on her skin. At the same time, another part of him tries to make an even more enduring impression on her body.

He moves one of his hands that until then, was softly massaging the fleshy mounds of her breasts, to slide it down to where his body meets hers. He used his fingers to softly roll the delicate button, bringing a gasp to her breath and a twitching that he felt in the soft warm cavern in which he dwelled.

He presses more into her and is rewarded with rhythmic pulses that make him grimace. He begins to recite the periodic table in an effort to hold off the climax he feels building up deep inside him.

Joy moans loudly as she succumbs to the orgasm that finally takes her. Tim manages a few more thrusts before his final dive deep inside her releases him; his eyes closing with the intense pleasure he feels coursing throughout his body.

His body goes limp on hers. His brain turns into mush. Moments later, he feels her trying to move his bigger frame. Finally able to support his upper body on his shaking arms, he gives her some breathing space.

They kiss softly, mindful of his still tender nose and move apart, trying to catch their breath. He lays back on the pillows and studies this woman who had entered his life on a Saturday night not long ago. In a short span of time, she had become as important to him as the very air he breathes.

She stretches like a cat, trying to get the kinks out of her back under Tim's watchful gaze. She languidly lies by his side with her head on his shoulder, sliding her hand to caress his heaving chest.

Her soft fingers glide over bruises still dark from his encounter with his father's thugs. His cracked rib has healed well, nothing more than a nuisance now. His nose, after some visits to the doctor and under the tender touch of Ducky's medical expertise, has finally gone back to its normal size, only a faint bruise still visible of the break.

NCIS NCIS NCIS NCIS

While McGee had gone back to desk duty the previous week, Joy was still on unpaid leave for one more. She had visited the mandatory shrinks as ordered by Vance and was still waiting for his final decision on her status as field agent.

The investigation on the shootings, thanks to Hope's careful gathering of evidence, proved that in all cases both the FBI and NCIS agents had acted purely on their instinct for survival. All wounds and bruises were carefully documented and shown as evidence of the battle that they had engaged that night.

During the hearings, the most heartbreaking video she showed to the Board was the one filmed in McGee's small apartment. The angle of the cameras showed perfectly McGee's anguished face as the head thug shot his dog and his vain struggles against his torturers when they dragged Sarah to his bedroom.

It also recorded the brutal attack inflicted on him and the rape he escaped. They saw Joy arriving at the very last moment shooting the attackers and how they had then, simply crumbled into each others arms.

Due to the violence on the video, she showed it only to Vance, Gibbs and two other senior agents who were on the Internal Affairs Board. As she played it, Hope noticed how Gibbs first paled, then a blush started to bloom on his neck moving up to his face, his eyes turning like cold blue stones. He slowly started to open and close his hands into fists as he tried to control his fury. She knew how close to insubordination he had been the night Kieran was arrested, as he later commented to Joy that he had gone to the reception fully intending to introduce Kieran's face to a close encounter with his fist.

Gibbs had insisted to know the destiny of the arrested Commander, but both Maggie and Joseph Buchanan refused to reveal what they knew. They simply told him, that since the Commander had tried to mess with things that were not his business, he would be judged and tried by the ones responsible for the project. Further, Gibbs could rest assured that General O'Neill had a very fitting punishment to this man who dared hurt their children.

Sarah, after two weeks with the Buchanan parents hovering over her, claimed her independence again and moved out of the townhouse back to her Waverly dorm. She had blossomed during the time she stayed under the Buchanans' wing but had decided to go back to pursue her degree. She also wanted to be part of the student support group created for the survivors who were there in that fatidic morning.

Matthew had to report back to duty and kept in touch constantly either by satellite phone or by email and skype. He and Sarah had apparently reached an agreement on where they were and where they wanted to go with their relationship.

That left McGee and Joy with two beloved - but extremely nosy - parents sharing the same roof. Of course, chaos would follow anywhere.

NCIS NCIS NCIS NCIS

"What are your plans for today?"

"I'm going out with my dad today. He asked me to go with him to the Library of Congress to look for some type of old ratty sheet music from 1800s."

Oh. He was planning on a relaxing Saturday, just the two of them, but he could understand her devotion to her family. He was equally devoted to his.

"What time will you be back to the townhouse?"

"I have to do some laundry so I'll be back before six." She leaves a kiss on his chest and rises from the bed. "I'm running out of clean underwear," she says with a smile thrown over her shoulder to him. Picking up her clothes from the floor, she goes towards the bathroom unashamed of her naked form.

"Do you want something from the shops? I could bring it to you."

"Nahh, I don't need anything. Enjoy your day with your father."

"Ok, I will," she says and closes the bathroom door.

NCIS NCIS NCIS NCIS

After spending hours in the corridors of the Library of Congress, they found the music sheet her father so much wanted. He exalted the complexity and the arrangement of it while Joy simply smiled at his enthusiastic ways.

They go to a shopping center and sit down for a bite. Her father smirks and takes a small travelling chess set from his shopping bag.

"Wanna have a match, just the two of us?"

Joy smiles at her father. They used to play for hours when she was recovering from her kidnappings and during her several hospitals stays.

Joseph is quite good, but she is better. Today however, she is very distracted and when he is able to capture her queen for the second time, Joseph decides to ask what is bothering his child.

"Penny for your thoughts," He offered.

"Uhm?"

"What put that smile on your face?" he studies her and as always, is surprised at her quiet strength while facing adversities. Right now, her career future was in the hands of a Board at NCIS, and yet here she was, calmly playing chess with him. There was even a small smile on her face.

"Uhm?"

"Why are you smiling?"

"Smiling? I'm not smiling."

"Yes, you are."

"I'm happy today. Is that a crime?"

"No, not a crime. Just wondering the reason why."

She smiles at him again and starts reordering the pieces on the board for a rematch.

"And what about Tim? How are things coming along?" he asks having no qualms about being too indiscreet.

"We're fine." She smiles a satisfied smile that doesn't go unnoticed by her father. He sighs loudly and she keeps reordering the pieces distractedly.

"That good, uhm?" She smiles shyly, but doesn't answer.

"You might think I am a very conservative old man, but I ask because I care."

He takes one of her hands in his and squeezes, "I know you girls might not follow my beliefs or moral values; and I have no illusions that you two are living a chaste life, but I don't have to be a beekeeper to know that someone has been taking dips in the honeypot."

She blushes brightly.

"It was never only about sex between us, Dad."

"I just don't want to see you hurt. I have never seen you so invested in a relationship before." He leans back in the chair and tries to find a comfortable position and simply gives up. "You always were very careful about who would get close to you and since you met Tim, it's like you've blossomed and integrated him into every part of your life. I really like him. He has again and again proved his character, but I worry. That's my job."

"I know, Dad. But this is different."

"How?"

Joy sighs and takes the queen in her hand, her fingers slowly tracing the contours of the carved piece, observing the expertise needed to create it.

"Other men in my life, whenever they saw my scars they were either outraged, angry or disgusted by them. After one or two encounters I couldn't stand the way they would look at me anymore," she says, remembering the bittersweet moments she had with other men in her life.

"It always took a lot of courage and time until we finally get to the point of" she looks up and her father still listening to her attentively "becoming intimate and when that happened, they couldn't … they wouldn't …" she struggles to find the words.

Her father stretches his hand and takes the queen from her, setting it back on the board. He takes his daughter's hand in his and squeezes, silently giving the strength she needs to continue.

"With McGee, it is different. From the very beginning when he looks at me, when he looks" she pauses, "at my scars, he doesn't see them as something ugly, as something to be pitied and commented on."

"It is almost like… he considers them badges of honor."

Her father acts in mock indignation.

"But they are badges of honor. They prove that you were refined by the hottest fires, your soul endured the hardest tests man could submit to man, and yet you rose up, unblemished, like a phoenix."

Joy smiled at her father's words, caressing his hand with her thumb in an unconscious, tender move.

"Not unblemished, Dad. I still have the marks."

Her father will not accept her diminishing the values of her life experiences.

"But they are there like a living memorial of what you have been through. They represent who you are."

She looks at her father silently, opens her mouth to say something but reconsiders. Joseph frowns.

"You know you can tell me anything."

She keeps looking at him.

"I felt it again."

"What?" he asks confused.

"It." She says with emphasis. Her father falls silent, continuing to frown as he considers the repercussions of her revelation.

"We thought that, for some reason, I had lost my gift -"

"More like a curse," he mutters, interrupting her.

She ignores him. "Maybe that was why after I grew up, I never felt anything again."

She pauses and squeezes her father's hand. She leans towards him and lowers her voice just for his ears, "But when I met him, I felt the most amazing scent of flowers and something I can't really describe. It was as if I just walked into a field full of flowers in full bloom. It filled my soul with enchantment and revealed something pure and" she looks down at her hands, which are gripping her father's hands "innocent."

She lifts her eyes and looks at her father's face. Joseph sees how emotional Joy is as tears slowly gather in her eyes.

"I haven't felt something like that since the day I met you, when I followed you at the Grand Station and stole your wallet."

He smiles. "It was the best investment of my whole life."

She smiles and looks at their joined hands. "It was the best decision of my life."

He nods. He then starts to recite by heart the words of the Love Chapter in the Bible:

"If I speak in tongues of men and of angels, but have not love,
I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.
If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge,
And if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.
If I give all I posses to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love,
I gain nothing.
Love is patient, love is kind.
It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.
It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered,
It keeps no records of wrongs.
Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.
It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, and always perseveres.
Love never fails."

A comfortable silence followed his words.

"I've always loved that chapter of Corinthians," she softly says, smiling at her father.

"What's not to love?"