#ncis nola fanfiction

[moonlight-breeze-44]

Bad Things Happen Bingo Prompt Fill - "Disowned by Family"

Shelter From the Storm

When Gregorio comes out to her mother, the fallout leaves her falling back into old habits. Pride, however, is determined to remind her that she isn't alone in her struggles and that there are people that care about and love her just as she is right there in New Orleans. Sometimes, family doesn't have to be blood. Sometimes family can be found.

Pairings: None main; background PerSalle

Rating: Teen

Warnings: Self-harm, self-worth/esteem issues, general mental health issues, homophobia, disownment, blood/injury

Read on AO3

Gregorio knew it was only a matter of time before she had to make the phone call, but it didn’t mean getting the courage to dial her mother’s number and press call was any easier.

Now, alone in her apartment, she wished her heart would stop pounding into the beginnings of a panic attack and let her fucking breathe. Her hands were so clammy with sweat that she half-expected the phone to slip and fall to the ground. She wondered if maybe it would be better if it did. It would mean she didn’t have to face this.

Gregorio loved her mom, but that was half of the problem. Her mother could be old-fashioned, and Gregorio had been raised in the countryside of New York with two dogs, an old cat, and no father to speak of. In some ways, Gregorio was a lot more like LaSalle than she wanted to admit.

As she waited for Emily Gregorio to pick up her phone, Tammy paced; she was her mother’s only child, and if what she said today devastated her like she feared it would, she doubted there would be another chance for them. This stupid fucking phone call was going to define their entire relationship, and the fear was enough to make Tammy grab the chair in front of her for support, nails scrabbling for purchase along the worn fiber.

No turning back now.

“Tammy?” Her mother’s voice, pragmatic as always, filled Gregorio’s ears and she flinched. Maybe she wasn’t as ready for this as she thought. “What’s wrong?”

It was a response that most other people would consider harsh or brusque, but in reality, Emily was just being realistic; Tammy almost never called unless she was backed into a corner and needed something. Her mother never called unless someone had died. It was a routine that Tammy couldn’t bring herself to feel bad for, considering her mother’s part in it and the lack of warmth between them. But their lack of contact made what Tammy had to say even harder to reveal.

“Mom, I have something to tell you,” Tammy breathed, trying to keep her voice as steady and strong as she could while the panic rattled in her ribcage. She could do this. She had to.

“Oh my god, are you pregnant?” Emily exclaimed, and Tammy heard the blatant delight in her voice at the thought. She shook her head, even though she knew her mother couldn’t see her. This was going to make it even harder to burst her bubble. When the silence stretched on a beat too long, she rolled her shoulders, shaking them out, trying to calm her nerves.

“Uh, no, Mom, I’m not pregnant,” Tammy replied, heaving a deep breath. “I, uh…I-I’m…”

“You’re what, Tammy? Spit it out.”

“I’m gay,” Tammy burst out, chest heaving with having the pressure of her secret released. She felt herself begin to tremble and leaned more of her weight onto the old chair in front of her. “I’m, uh, I’m a lesbian, Mom. I like women.”

The silence that followed her revelation felt like claws around Gregorio’s neck, choking and scratching into her windpipe. She waited with bated breath. Everything hinged on her mother’s reaction. Tammy’s hands were shaking with fear. Even if they weren’t close, she still loved her mother. She still wanted her to be a part of her life.

“Tammy, I…I’m not sure what to say.”

“Anything,” Gregorio begged, hating how desperate she sounded, but she couldn’t wait any longer. “Just say something, please.”

“Well, you know this isn’t what I wanted for you,” Emily stated, and Tammy knew it was true. Memories of her bisexual phase in high school rushed to the forefront of her mind, and suddenly she couldn’t breathe past the mental images of her mother’s disdain when she was fifteen and dating Zara Matthews. The coldness in her mother’s voice, then and now, felt like Tammy had swallowed a burning hot coal that was beginning to scorch her insides.

“How will you have children, Tammy?” Emily continued, obviously distraught. Tammy’s fingers tightened on the phone, and she tried to take a deep breath; get herself under control.

“I can adopt,” she replied calmly, “Or find a surrogate. Or…” She paused, hesitating. She was already six feet deep and buried with her mother, it seemed; why not put the nail in her own coffin? “...or maybe I won’t have kids.”

“Tammy,” her mother said reproachfully, “You have to have kids!”

“Says who?” Tammy retorted, her hands trembling where they still held the back of the living room chair for dear life. “I mean, look at me. I’m okay, aren’t I? I’m happy. I, I don’t have to have kids. Besides, I’m an NCIS agent. Who would want a mom who does what I do?”

“A child that understands the meaning of sacrifice,” Emily snapped. “Which you clearly don’t.”

“Mom, I…”

“No, Tammy, just don’t.” Gregorio fell silent, biting her lip hard to avoid letting out the tears that had gathered in her eyes sometime during the phone call. Her mother loved her, she was sure. But Tammy could never be who she wanted, either. And if she had learned one thing from her time in New Orleans with Ethan, before NCIS, it was that sometimes love wasn’t enough.

“Look, dear, I’m not going to say that this is the end of things.” Gregorio’s breath hitched, and she had to fight to keep her emotions in check. She knew that tone well enough to know what her mother was really saying, and it was the end of things. God, she knew her mother wouldn’t approve, but to know it and to have it confirmed were two very different feelings.

“But you should know how I feel about this,” Emily continued, ignorant to her daughter’s pain. “I don’t think it’s right. I don’t think it’s natural. I always thought you grew out of that phase you had in high school, especially after you married Ethan. Which, I know that didn’t work out, but one bad apple doesn’t mean the whole barrel is bad. I-I don’t know what you want from me here, Tammy. You are my daughter, and I love you. But I will not support this lifestyle. When you’re ready, you can come back home. We can work this out. But until then, don’t - don’t call. Don’t visit. Please. Spare us both. I’m sure you won’t feel this way forever, Tammy. When you change your mind, I’ll be here. I’ll be waiting for you.”

“Mom - ”

“Tammy, please. Don’t make this any harder than it already is. Just-Just sort yourself out, okay? I’ll be here when you need me. I love you.” With that, the call dropped, and Gregorio sank to her knees behind the worn out chair, breathing hard and fast, on the verge of a fucking panic attack from the call. Emily was gone. She recognized the situation for what it was; her mother had given her an ultimatum. Become straight, or say goodbye to her and their home back in New York forever.

It wasn’t a choice at all.

With the sound of the dial tone in her ear, her mother’s final words before she hung up way too loud in her head, Tammy allowed herself to cry, the weight of the emotions she had struggled to hold back before escaping in full. She sobbed into her knees, her shoulders shaking. She couldn’t be something she wasn’t. She couldn’t change, even though there had been more than enough times that she wanted to. She couldn’t give her mother what she had asked for.

In all the ways that mattered, it was over.

She and her mother had never been close. The truth was that Tammy expected the call to end like this, but it was still more of a blow than she had ever expected to know that the woman who raised her would never accept her for who she was. Tammy felt lost, and cut open, like someone had twisted a knife in her and then left her to die on a street corner. She didn’t know what her next steps were, if there even were any, and more than anything, she felt vulnerable.

It was a feeling she wasn’t used to, between her secrecy about her private life and the walls she built around her heart, but it made her want to hide and protect her six from whatever was going to hurt her. But there was nothing to shield herself from, no imminent threat or dangerous gunman; just her own damage and that goddamn dial tone still humming in her ear, a reminder that she would never be able to call home again.

The thought of home sent a fresh wave of tears cascading down her cheeks, and Tammy finally ripped the cellphone from her ear, throwing it across hardwood until it crashed into the side of her refrigerator. She would regret that later, she was sure, but for now she didn’t care. She couldn’t. The only piece of herself that seemed to matter was in New York, probably opening a bottle of whiskey and no doubt planning to pray for her in church the next day.

Home was gone forever now, even if she hadn’t called it that in years. It was still the place where she was raised, and where she’d learned how to fight for herself in more ways than one. She loved the sprawling hills on their property, and the well where she had nearly drowned once as a child. She loved the fucking tire swing and the garden beds and the old barn where she used to go with the dogs when she needed to be alone. Their house and grounds were so beautiful that sometimes Gregorio hardly believed that she lived in New York growing up. All of it would become a memory now, and she would never be able to touch the wildflowers that grew along the fence line ever again. It shouldn’t have affected her so much, considering it had been years since she even wanted to go home, but the thought of losing it all forever was more than she could handle.

The tears, which hadn’t stopped or slowed in the slightest, were becoming overwhelming and almost nausea-inducing, so Gregorio took a deep breath, moving her hands roughly down her legs, then her calves, then her ankles, trying to ground herself and move away from the precipice of her breakdown. But instead of finding stability in her old brown Doc Martens, like she had hoped, her hand brushed a cold piece of metal, and it sent her heartbeat racing again.

She knew what it was, the feeling unmistakeable against her fingers. It was a sterling silver razor blade, years old at least, tucked into a fraying patch on her boots since November of 2018. She had played a dangerous game with it, allowing it so close; on one hand, it could become dislodged at work and she ran the risk of someone investigating her for psychological issues if they saw where it had been hiding. On the other hand, she could lose it in the field, and she would never have to worry about it, or remember the temptation, ever again.

Neither of those things had happened, apparently, and she knew from the feel of it against her fingers that, somehow, it hadn’t even been scuffed. It was the perfect deadly instrument, even after all these years. Gregorio’s hand trembled.

She hesitated for a second, but pulled the razor blade from the patch on her boot, turning it over and over in her palms like precious gold. A coil of longing hit her like a punch to the gut, and Gregorio tried to suck in a deep breath, wanted to put it back, wanted to throw it away and pretend it never existed, but she couldn’t bring herself to.

If this razor blade had somehow managed to survive three years working as a field agent for the FBI, and one as an NCIS agent, not to mention the countless parties and clubs she’d been to, it had to be a sign. Gregorio didn’t believe in fate, but maybe the gods that weren’t were trying to tell her something now.

It had been five years. It had been half of a lifetime. Part of Gregorio didn’t want to risk it, after fighting so hard to get clean in the first place, but the other, larger part of her that wanted for the quick pain of metal against her skin argued that because it had been so long, it wouldn’t matter now. A relapse wasn’t really a relapse if it only lasted a day, and if she got her act together right after. She could do this, and hide it, then throw it away the next day and no one would ever have to know.

“It’s not like last time,” Gregorio muttered to herself, trying to believe it. “I won’t let it get out of hand.”

She didn’t know if she could keep the promise to herself or not, but it didn’t matter. Her mother’s words were still burning like acid in her lungs, and she just wanted the pain to be replaced with something new, something better, until she was able to get ahold of herself. It was the best, most efficient option, and then she would stop. One cut, she told herself, and after that she would curl up in bed and watch Desperate Housewives or something. One cut, and she would be okay.

Tammy rolled up her sleeve, took a deep breath, and pressed the razor blade to her wrist.

The relief was immediate, almost as overwhelming and euphoric as a drug, and fresh tears rolled down her cheeks at the feeling. It didn’t take away her mother’s homophobia, or the way her abandonment made Tammy feel, but it replaced the worst of it with white-hot pain and the familiar sting of a fresh cut instead. Blood welled like storm clouds in the wound, and slid down her wrist until it began to drip onto her pants. Lazily, Tammy remembered she needed to do laundry and didn’t have another pair of work pants. Another, bigger part of her, however, couldn’t be bothered to care.

Instantly forgetting the one-cut promise, Tammy sliced her way through six pristine cuts before stopping to take a breath, her chest heaving with the relief of giving into the old addiction again. She didn’t remember much from three years ago, the last time she cut, but she could swear it had never felt this good before.

Looking down at her arm, a pageant of crimson lines sluggishly bleeding, Tammy felt the calm settle into her bones, numbness chasing away the pain. She exhaled hard, letting her head thump against the forgotten chair in front of her. She got what she needed. She should stop.

She didn’t.

It was close to midnight before she threw the razor blade down and stopped to admire her work. She wasn’t sure how much blood she would have to clean up, or how much she had lost, and she hadn’t eaten today either. She knew it wasn’t a good idea to just sit there after what she’d done, but her head was swimming, and she was so exhausted that even attempting to get up would have been too much for her. So, instead, Tammy rested her arms on the bloodstained slacks, and let her head loll against the back of the living chair. She had slept in worse places.

~ ~ ~

In the morning, Tammy’s alarm came blaring to life at 6am, startling her awake from where she was slumped over next to the chair. Her arms felt like they were glued to her pants, dried blood sticking to the fabric, and she could feel a telltale crustiness on the seat of her pants that meant, somehow, she had managed to sit in a puddle of blood. “God, make it stop,” she muttered, and struggled to get to her feet to turn off the fucking alarm. She couldn’t remember the last time she felt this bad.

By the time she made it to the kitchen, where her phone was at, miraculously not dead but down to the last 5% of its battery, it was almost 6:30 and she was going to be late for work if she didn’t hustle.

Tammy made it to her bedroom with less difficulty, though she still felt lightheaded, and got to work peeling the blood-soaked slacks off and painfully removing her shirt, which had a few spots of blood on it from her careless cutting the night before. She searched through her closet as fast as she could for the most lightweight long-sleeved shirt she had, that was a dark enough color to mask the blood if her cuts opened up while she was at work. After that, she selected a pair of dark jeans, even though they were against the agency dress code, and headed to the bathroom to do what she could for her appearance.

To her dismay, her eyes were still a little bloodshot from last night, and her hair was a mess. She would need makeup to cover up the circles underneath her eyes, evidence of multiple nights of restless sleep in preparation for the phone call with her mother.

The thought of her mother made Tammy’s heart seize up, and she pressed on one of the new cuts, hissing at the sharp pain it brought. It was enough to snap her out of her head, at least, and she got to work applying makeup to cover up what she could of her turmoil. Finally, she was able to run a brush through her hair, grab her gun, badge, and car keys, and head out the door.

Just before walking into the Navy Yard, Tammy hesitated, and considered calling in sick. But as tempting as it was to go back to her apartment and stay in bed all day, that wasn’t a good idea; the NCIS team was like a big fucking family, and they were sure to stop by if they got word she wasn’t feeling well. Not only was her apartment a mess, but the pool of blood by the chair in the living room, as well as the razor blade that had caused all of this damage, was still out in the open for any prying eyes to see.

Still, Tammy knew it would be hard to keep what she had done from her teammates. She would have to be on her guard. They were perceptive, even if they weren’t trained profilers like her, and much worse, they knew her. It would take all of her skills at hiding and lying and pretending to fool them into believing she was fine.

The cuts pulled tight as the fabric of her shirt shifted, making each step and movement she made towards the office painful. She had learned how to hide the pain a long time ago, but a part of her wished she had bandaged the wounds before coming in today, instead of hiding the first-aid supplies in her bag in case of an emergency and hoping for the best. But Pride was already going to kill her for being late, and it would take another fifteen minutes at least to deal with the fallout of her habit. She didn’t want to come off any more suspicious than she already was.

Taking a deep breath, Gregorio etched a smile onto her face, and walked into the NCIS office like everything was fine, as always. Nothing is different today, she warned herself, trying to drill it into her brain. Nothing has changed.

“There ya are, Gregorio! Was startin’ to wonder if we was gonna have to send out a search party,” Chris greeted her with a smile, and Gregorio gave him one of her patented bitchfaces in return.

“I got caught in traffic,” she lied, and watched his face for any signs of disbelief as she made her way to her desk. She clocked the slight raise of his eyebrows, his posture lengthening, and reminded herself to adjust her tone when she was lying.

“Didn’t think there was hardly any traffic on Bourbon Street,” Chris commented, and Tammy turned to place her bag next to her desk and start up her computer. It was easier to lie to someone when she didn’t have to face them.

“There isn’t usually,” she replied, keeping her tone light and casual. “Guess today was my lucky day.”

“Guess so,” Chris responded, and Tammy turned around just in time to see him giving her one of his famous, milliwatt smiles. She grinned back, bumping his shoulder playfully on her way into the kitchen. One down, two to go.

By the time she caught up with Pride and Sonja, it was almost midday, and the hot, humid weather prompted a picnic invite from Pride to eat lunch at the bridge in town. Chris, Sonja, and the others all agreed, leaving Gregorio as the odd one out. She knew she couldn’t decline without offering an explanation, lest they become suspicious of her motives, but she couldn’t accept the invitation when she knew either Chris or Sonja would try to roll up her sleeves the second they arrived, either to tease her or out of care for her wellbeing. Refusing their help against potential heatstroke when it was summer in the middle of New Orleans was a one-way ticket to having her secret revealed.

“Tammy, you’re not going to lunch with us?” Percy pouted, her eyebrows drawn up in that Percy way, that said she was more concerned than disappointed, but was too proud to put voice to her feelings. “Come on, don’t you want to hang with the gang?”

“As much as I would love to ‘hang with the gang’,” Gregorio used air quotes and gave Sonja a playful smirk, “I have a prior obligation.”

“Oooh, someone’s got a hot date,” Chris said, walking into the kitchen with an ice chest for their drinks. “So who is it, Gregorio? Black-haired beauty? Feisty redhead? That’s my type.”

“Excuse you,” Percy retorted, raising her eyebrow in his direction.

“Pardon me,” Chris corrected, giving Sonja a fond smile, “That’s usually my type.”

“Better,” Sonja affirmed, before turning her attention to Gregorio once more. “But seriously, T, where you goin’ that you can’t come hang with us?”

“Well, Chris wasn’t exactly wrong,” Gregorio replied, lifting her coffee mug to her lips to take a sip so she could avoid having to look either of them in the eyes. “A certain mayor’s secretary asked me out the other day, and I can’t leave her hanging a second time.” Though it was a lie that they had a lunch date, it wasn’t a lie that she’d been asked out, so Gregorio didn’t feel as bad as she maybe should for using Amber as her scapegoat.

“With that one, you better not,” Chris replied, chuckling. “I’ve heard she’s got some high standards.”

“Of course she does,” Gregorio retorted without missing a beat. “She’s going on a date with me, isn’t she?”

Sonja and Chris both laughed at that, the latter ribbing her good-naturedly for a minute or two before they calmed down. She allowed her smirk to play on her lips, knowing she could pass it off as satisfaction at her joke instead of her lie. They weren’t suspicious of her anymore, not after she’d thrown them a bone. For now, she was safe.

~ ~ ~

Later that night, when the team was getting ready to wrap up and head home, Pride caught her eye, gesturing her into the kitchen. Tammy dropped her bag and took a deep breath, heading in to meet him. She could feel her heart skip a beat.

Of all of them, Pride was the most likely to figure out that something was wrong, even if he was the least likely to react with anything other than kind, calm patience. Still, the idea of her boss finding out her most guarded secret was more terrifying than she could fathom.

Without speaking or otherwise acknowledging Pride, Gregorio took a seat on the barstool across from him, crossed her arms, and waited. She could feel her heart pounding in her throat, but forced herself to be motionless and keep her expression blank, lest she give away the anxiety she was feeling.

“So, Gregorio,” Pride said, taking in her position and folding his arms across the top of the bar, “Want to tell me what’s going on with you?”

“Nothing,” Gregorio replied defensively, before she could stop herself and try to temper her tone. “What makes you think something’s going on?”

Pride raised an eyebrow at her, unimpressed. “Well, for starters, you came in late today, said it was traffic when traffic is nonexistent on your street, you’re actin’ awful odd, and then you lied to Christopher and Sonja about who you were with for lunch today.”

Gregorio opened her mouth to protest, but before she could, Pride held up his hand and continued, “I have it on good authority that the mayor’s secretary didn’t leave her office all day.” He softened, giving her a worried look, and said, “Just want to know you’re okay, and if anything’s goin’ on that we can help with.”

“It’s nothing,” Gregorio sighed, letting her shoulders slump in defeat. There was no use pretending she was fine if Pride already knew something was up. She didn’t have to tell him everything, but maybe if she told him about her mom, at least, he’d leave her alone.

“Just a little upset from a phone call with my mother yesterday,” Gregorio admitted, picking at her nails to avoid meeting Pride’s eyes. “I came out to her.”

Pride nodded, his eyes filling with support and kindness for her, and moved to wipe down the kitchen counter, in an effort to give her space to talk as much as she wanted to. Gregorio knew the tactic, was familiar with it from teasing the truth out of LaSalle when he was being particularly stubborn. Though she was loathe to admit it, she appreciated it. “How did she take it?”

“Not well,” Tammy sighed, pressing her nail into the pad of her thumb to resist the urge to burst into tears again. She had already done enough crying in the past 24 hours. “She basically gave me an ultimatum; stop being gay, or stop coming home. Permanently.”

“Oh, Tammy,” Pride breathed, sympathy pouring out of him and into her. “I’m so sorry.” He reached across the bar to lay a hand on her shoulder, and against her will, Tammy leaned into the touch.

“It’s okay,” she murmured, closing her eyes to avoid letting Pride see how glossy they had become. “W-We were never really close.”

“Still, that’s gotta hurt,” Pride said, withdrawing just enough to allow her time to fight back the tears and open her eyes once more. “Parents’ rejection is…one of the worst things that can happen to a child. No matter how old they are.”

“Yeah,” Tammy breathed, the weight of her own exhaustion hitting her as she slumped on the barstool. She couldn’t remember the last time she had let something damage her like this. Who knew her mother’s decision would have such an impact on her? She sighed and tugged lightly on one of her sleeves, until it was down far enough on her arm to cover her fingers. Pride caught the movement, but said nothing. “To make matters worse, she tried to frame it like she loved me, and she was going to be there for me.” Tammy laughed bitterly, emotion swelling up in her throat. “She’s so convinced I’m going to change, Pride.”

“Not the way it works,” Pride said fondly, giving her a warm smile. His hand, still on her shoulder, was like a grounding wire, keeping her settled, and she felt like she was being comforted by the father she never had.

“Yeah,” Tammy said, again, and her voice wobbled on the last syllable. Under Pride’s kind, supportive words and gentle ministrations, she could feel the dam in her chest threatening to explode, and she slid sideways off of the barstool, grabbing for her coat and heading towards the door. She had to get out of here, before she lost it completely. “Anyway, I should go - ”

“Wait,” Pride called, and moved to follow her, grabbing her wrist to stop her from leaving. Without thinking, still trying to calm the tidal wave of emotion in her chest, Gregorio hissed in pain.

“Tammy,” Pride said slowly, releasing her wrist with some reluctance, “There something wrong with your arm?”

“Ah, it’s nothing,” Tammy replied, giving him a quick, panicked smile. “Just bruised it on the countertop when I was getting ready for work this morning.”

“That so?” Pride asked, and he sounded suspicious enough to make Tammy’s heart skip a beat in fear. She curled her fingers around her sleeves protectively. “Mind if I take a look at it?”

“Don’t bother,” Gregorio replied, trying to keep the panic out of her voice. “I told you, Pride, it’s nothing.”

“Didn’t sound like nothing,” Pride replied, and he reached for her wrist again. Determined not to give anything away, Tammy kept her face purposefully blank, allowing him to hold her arm in his hand even as his fingers pressing against the cuts felt like a sharp knife against her skin. “Thing is, Tammy…” Pride moved to grasp her sleeve, and Gregorio’s entire body tensed, waiting for his next move. This was not happening.

“You haven’t worn long sleeves this dark, especially during summer, all year,” he continued, “and that first time we talked, up on the balcony in your hotel when you first came here – you wore a tank top, and I don’t think you thought about it then, but I noticed something the others didn’t get the chance to see.” He lifted his gaze to meet Gregorio’s eyes, and she knew, without having to ask what he meant, that she was done for.

Pride knows.

“I’ve seen the scars on your wrists, Tammy,” Pride said softly, “And I’ve never mentioned it, because it’s not my business and I don’t want you to think I’m judging you for it. But if your arm is hurt…after all you’ve been through in the past few days, you understand why I need to check, right?”

Tammy nodded tightly, trying not to cry, as Pride moved to roll up her sleeve. At the last second, just before he could grab the cuff of her shirt, she blurted out: “And what do you think you’ll find, if you check?”

“I think you and I both know the answer to that,” Pride responded, his voice as kind and understanding as ever. Tammy choked on a sob, losing the battle against her emotions, and pulled away from him, running her hands through her hair so hard that she was sure she’d left red, inflamed scratches on her scalp. She heaved a deep breath and choked on it, trying to hold in the breakdown that wanted to happen, fighting to remain in control. Pride couldn’t see her like this. No one could.

“Just - Just please don’t demote me,” Tammy begged, straightening up and gasping for breath, wiping her sweaty palms on her jeans. “D-Don’t put me on desk duty. I can still handle myself in the field, I promise I’m not a liability, Pride.”

“We’ll talk about that later,” Pride said, and her heart sank. “For now, we need to get you taken care of.” He glanced at his watch, and muttered, “Loretta might still be here, I’d have to check the morgue.”

“No – please,” Gregorio pleaded, embarrassment creeping up to settle like fire on her cheeks. “No one else needs to know about this.”

“They do, Tammy,” Pride argued, raising his eyebrows at her. “They’re your teammates. Your family. They care about you. Of course they should know about this.”

“Please,” Tammy said, raising her arms to hug herself, trying to get some semblance of comfort in the least embarrassing or incriminating way possible.

“Look,” Pride said, gesturing for her to sit down across from him in the kitchen once more, taking a seat opposite her on the island, “I know you’re scared. You’re worried about what the others might think. But they love you, Tammy, and they want to help you. I do too.”

“What if they hate me?” Tammy breathed, fresh tears welling up in her eyes. She knew she looked like a wreck, pathetic even, but this was her worst nightmare come true and she couldn’t pretend anymore. “Pride, I’m weak.” She gestured haphazardly at her arms, at herself, and shook her head, avoiding his gaze by staring down the marble kitchen tile. “They’ll see me differently.”

“Maybe so,” Pride conceded, “but not in the way you think. They won’t consider you weak, Tammy. I don’t.” He reached out to lay his hand on her arm, comforting and grounding her with the touch. “You’re one of the strongest people I know, Gregorio.”

“Even now that you know I - ” Tammy gestured to her arms once more, at a loss for words. “ - Again?”

“Even now,” Pride confirmed, giving her a firm nod and a steady look that swore honesty. “Tammy, no one on this team will think any less of you for struggling with this.”

“Promise?” Tammy whispered, letting some of the vulnerability she was feeling slip into her voice as she asked the question.

“Promise,” Pride affirmed, and gave her arm a soft, gentle pat.

Gregorio nodded, her shoulders slumping in relief as some of the tension was alleviated. “Do you have to tell them tonight?”

“No, not tonight,” Pride responded. “But soon.”

“I understand.” Gregorio looked away, the fear thundering back to life in her chest. For an instant, under Pride’s reassuring words, it had disappeared.

“It’s gonna be okay, Gregorio,” Pride promised her, moving from the opposite side of the bar to wrap her in a tight hug. “The team’ll take care of you.”

“Shouldn’t have to,” Gregorio protested weakly, but Pride shushed her with a hand in her hair, stroking gently.

“We want to,” he said, and Gregorio was struck with how much she wished he could have been her real dad. Maybe her future would’ve turned out better if he was. “This is somethin’ that everyone is more ‘n willin’ to help you with. We’re gonna get it taken care of. Got your back, Tammy, not just for work.”

“Thanks, Pride,” Gregorio whispered, too emotional to express her gratitude any further. She was sure Pride understood. In his arms, trembling, Gregorio could admit that maybe what she had really needed was the support and acceptance of her loved ones. Maybe her mother would never love her the way she was, but she had an entire family here in New Orleans that did.

Maybe that was what mattered.

And if, the next day, when Loretta called her down to the morgue and told Gregorio about her mother’s issues with self-harm while she bandaged the fresh cuts on Tammy’s arms, she felt a small piece of her heart begin to heal, she didn’t mention it. And if, when Sebastian gave her a hug and a kiss on the cheek and offered to call her and ramble about whatever came to mind when she was having urges, she started to tear up, well, no one could prove it (she had threatened Sebastian with removing his Power Rangers collection from the lab if he told anyone). And if, when Chris said nothing but drew her into the tightest hug she could ever remember receiving, and Percy showed up at her house without warning to sit on the couch with her and watch basketball, she began to realise this was all the family she needed, she knew she could blame Pride for most of it.

Getting clean again, and resisting the urge to take a blade to her arms whenever she felt like her world was falling apart, was a fight that took months, and she did end up on desk duty for some of it, but despite the silence that stretched between her and her mother, she found that the most important thing was the family that she had right here.

Maybe she didn’t need what used to be her home when she had a better one here in New Orleans.

[writeandsurvive]

Welcome on writeandsurvive! ❤️

I’m Fio, from @navalcriminalimagines and as I said I wanted to start fresh, so here we are.

The content will be the same; fanfictions.

Eventually I’ll take requests, but for now, I want to get back into writing slowly.

Main Fandoms/Characters I’m writing for:

NCIS / NCIS LA / NCIS NOLA (I have no interest in Hawaii 😬) ~ Jethro Gibbs, Alden Parker, Dwayne Pride, G Callen, Marty Deeks, Tobias Fornell

Fire Country ~ Vince Leone (Billy Burke, ily), Manny Perez, Luke Leone

The Last of Us (outbreak/no outbreak/games/series) ~ Joel Miller, Tommy Miller, Perry

Fandoms/Characters I could be tempted to write for:

Criminal Minds ~ Aaron Hotchner

The Mandalorian ~ Din Djarin (Pedro Pascal, loml)

Characters played by Raúl Esparza.

This list is non exhaustive. More could be add, some could be taken off if I’m not comfortable with them after all.

Yes, those are very specific. I have a thing for older men, and I’m not sorry about it.

So, yeah! Enjoy!

love!

[improvidus]

The One About Naps

Warnings | None

Rating | K+

Genres | Friendship, Humor, Family, 5+1

Characters | Tammy Gregorio (POV), Patton Plame, Sonja Percy, Christopher LaSalle, Dwayne Pride, Loretta Wade, Raymond Isler

Pairings | Persalle (undertones)

Word Count | 4K

Summary: Five times Gregorio finds her new co-workers sleeping in strange places, and one time they find her.

1. Percy

The first time it happened, Gregorio was pouring herself a cup of coffee. She had yet to acquire a taste for the “essence de chicorée,” but with the way this case was going—had been going, non-stop, for nearly forty-six hours, now—she needed every drop of caffeine she could get. She had just finished a brief stint of sleep on the sofa upstairs, but she was fairly certain it had left her more exhausted than before.

She blew a stray strand of hair out of her eyes and reached for the container of sugar, growling when the little metal spout fought her as she tried to open it. Under normal circumstances, she didn’t take sugar, but she was banking on the chance that if she dumped in enough, it would give her the high she needed to last a few more hours. She clanked her spoon around inside a few times before tapping the loose drops free and tossing it in the sink. A couple of boxes of pizza had been left on the table and she grabbed a slice of Hawaiian, tearing off a bite and making a face. It had long ago gone cold. She swiped up a paper plate and shook her head, grumbling under her breath.

She was about to head back to her desk when she tripped, letting out a less-than-dignified yelp as she flailed to catch herself, wrapping her arms around a chair and spewing an impressive stream of colorful words as coffee sloshed over her hands and her paper plate fell to the floor. Her pizza would have gone with it, were it not still hanging from her clenched teeth. Balance regained, she looked down to see what she had tripped over. The lights in the kitchen were dim, but she could just see the toe of a small black combat boot peeking out from beneath the table. She frowned. Someone had left their shoes in the floor?

Unless…

She set her mug on the counter, slapped her pizza, plate-less, beside it, and got down on her hands and knees, squinting into the shadows under the table. Gregorio felt her eyebrows climb.

There, sprawled on her stomach in the middle of the floor, was Sonja Percy, sound asleep. At least, soundly enough that Gregorio plowing over her foot hadn’t seemed to make a dent. Her head was pillowed on her arms, right foot tucked beneath her left knee. At first glance, Gregorio had thought she was covered by a small blanket, but a closer look revealed it to be a jacket—or, more specifically, a shirt-jack. A denim shirt-jack. LaSalle’s denim shirt-jack.

She smirked. Interesting.

The way the garment was able to fully cover not only her trunk but half the length of her legs,  as well, paired with the way she was scowling in her sleep only served to reinforce the “grumpy warrior dwarf” image Gregorio had had when she first met Percy.

“You havin’ some kinda breakdown down there, or were you just tired of chairs?”

Gregorio straightened so fast she nearly whacked her head on the table’s edge. Patton was stopped in the doorway that led to the courtyard, his head cocked, eyeing her quizzically where she squatted in the floor.

“No, I just—” She broke off, gesturing at the sleeping form before her.

Patton caught sight of the wayward toe and a knowing look crossed his face. “Who is it?”

“Percy. Does she do this often?” Gregorio was unable to hide her surprise at Patton’s lack thereof.

He snorted. “Girl, you got no idea. They all do. Cases go long like this, they catch their Z’s whenever—and wherever—they can. They just plop down wherever they at, and abracadabra—they out light a light.” He straightened his tie and patted it back beneath his vest. “Dang near given me heart attacks on more than one occasion.”

Gregorio frowned, turning her attention back to Percy as she processed this new information. She was growing accustomed to her colleagues’ laid back work environment, but this was…She shook her head. “Wow.”

“You’re tellin’ me. I almost ran over LaSalle, once.”

Her ankles and the backs of her knees complained as she straightened, scooping up her plate and chucking it before she retrieved her mug and took another bite of pizza. “Now that’s a story I wanna hear.” They made their way back into the bullpen, leaving Percy to her strange napping grounds.

2. Sebastian

The second time it happened, she had been sent to the lab to see how Sebastian was doing with the forensic analysis of some powdery substance they had found on their killer’s most recent vic. That made six, total. For now. She ran a hand over her face and sighed, offering up a short prayer that their gangly forensic geek would be in an English-speaking mood before rapping on the pane of glass in the door and breezing through. “Sebastian, where are you with the—”

She frowned. The man in question was nowhere to be seen. “Sebastian?”

There was no response.

She ducked back into the hall and poked her head into the morgue. Even Wade was showing signs of exhaustion. If they didn’t catch this guy soon...“Hey, Doc! Sebastian in here?”

“Hello, Tammy. I’m afraid not. You checked the lab? He was in there just a few minutes ago.”

“Yeah, I didn’t see him. Huh. That’s okay, I’ll just wait for him. Probably just went to the bathroom or something.”

Back in the lab, Gregorio picked up one of Sebastian’s dolls (“Action figures, Gregorio. They’re action figures. Have some class.”) and fiddled with it as she leaned back against his desk. A few minutes ticked by, and there was still no sign of Sebastian. She shook her head, slamming the doll back down on the desk, and was about to go looking for him when she heard a contented sigh.

She straightened, frowning. Her hand went to her service weapon, senses on alert. What if their killer was here, in the lab? What if he’d already taken care of Sebastian? Another sound led her to a multi-layered cart. There it was again, near her feet. It was almost like a...snore.

An idea formed in her mind as she slowly crouched before the cart.

Shoving her weapon back in its holster, she blew out a huff and rolled her eyes at herself and the sight before her. Yup.

Sebastian was curled on the cart’s bottom rack, sleeping peacefully in the single most odd position she had ever seen. It looked like he had sat down cross-legged and just...folded the rest of him over his legs. His face was smashed against the metal, gentle breaths whooshing in and out through slightly puckered lips. Gregorio snorted. He looked like an over-grown baby. Or a pretzel.

She decided ripping off the proverbial band-aid was the best option in this case. Well. At least the most entertaining. “Sebastian!”

The man jerked upright, eyes going wide and then becoming slits when he smacked his head on the rack above him.

Gregorio smirked. “Sleeping Beauty awakes!”

Sebastian rubbed at his head. “That was mean.”

Gregorio shrugged, watching with some amusement as he carefully maneuvered himself out of his chosen bed. “Maybe so, but that’s what you get for napping on the job. How tall are you, anyway? What, six-two, six-three?”

“Six-two. Why?”

“Six-two. You wanna tell me how the heck you fit in that thing?”

He shrugged, stretching as he stood. “I’m flexible.”

“I noticed that.”

Sebastian’s eyes cut to hers sharply as his ears began to glow a bright red. “Oh. Did—did you—was I—”

“Oh, yeah. For sure.”

The red spread to his cheeks.

Gregorio gave his arm a pat. “Don’t worry, Pretzel Man. Your secret’s safe with me.”

3. LaSalle

Isler wasn’t supposed to be here. Not now. Anytime but now.

The team had been running on fumes for nearly a week, frantically trying to stop an impending terrorist attack. They had averted the bombing planned for a Mardi Gras parade through the Quarter two days ago, but there was no time to celebrate their victory. Their man was still on the loose. Pride and LaSalle had been working triple overtime to let the junior agents get rest where they could during the hunt, and they were beginning to look like the ghoulishly pale masks their would-be bomber left behind him. Pride was consuming coffee by the pot, and when she asked why he wasn’t taking a break, he just shook his head and said he’d sleep when they got their man. For his part, LaSalle just flashed a very subdued version of his usual grin and said he never slept much over Mardi Gras season, anyway. When she’d shoved her half-full mug of lukewarm coffee into his hands, he’d stared into it longingly for a full thirty seconds before reluctantly passing it back and shaking his head. “Can’t. Messes with my aim.”

It was now nearly ten o’clock at night on day three since the bombing attempt and tensions were high, a feeling of dread clogging their usually comfortable workspace as they waited for the next shoe to drop. Pride and Percy were interrogating their suspect’s cousin, and LaSalle was...Well, Gregorio didn’t actually know where he was, but she couldn’t bring herself to care. She was too busy wallowing in self-pity as she sat with her face planted in the files spread over her desk, grumbling under her breath.

And of course, that was when Isler showed up. “Am I interrupting something?”

Gregorio squinted up at him, wishing she could wipe the smug expression off of his face. “You couldn’t have called first?”

“No. For all intents and purposes, I’m not here.”

“Okay.” She sat up and pushed her hair out of her face, not allowing herself to feel sheepish about the compromising position he had found her in. He could judge from his easy chair all he wanted. No way he knew what they had been through the last few days. “If you’re not supposed to be here, why are you?”

“I may have a lead.”

She sat up straighter, all contention forgotten. “Really? That’s great, let me get Pride, and we can—”

“Text him. We won’t need backup, and he’s interrogating Miles Ortega, isn’t he?”

“How did you—” he quirked an eyebrow and she rolled her eyes. “FBI. Right.” She tugged on her jacket and pulled out her phone. “Address?”

He gave it to her, and she shot off a quick text to Pride before following him out the door. “Where’s your car?”

“I’m not here in an official capacity, remember? I took a taxi from the airport.”

“Okay. We’ll take the truck.” She climbed in the driver’s seat and sent another text, this one to LaSalle.  Got a lead. Borrowing your baby. Don’t worry, I’ll get her back to you in one piece. She smirked. Probably.

“You sending a Dear John, Gregorio? Let’s go!”

She put her phone away and made a face. “Yes, sir.”

As they pulled out into the street, a sudden burst of recorded drums and a chant of “Roll! Tide!” filled the truck. It lasted less than a second, but it was enough to nearly give Gregorio a heart attack.

Isler looked at her with raised eyebrows. “That’s your text alert? I never pegged you for an Alabama fan.”

She snorted. “I’m not. That would be LaSalle’s. He must have left his phone in here.” She frowned, feeling around for it in the center console with her free hand.

“Huh. Professional.”

“He is! Usually. We’re all a little frazzled right now, is all,” she said defensively, despite her surprise that LaSalle would have neglected to grab his phone with all of this going on. Her hand drifted into the back, shuffling through a quilt that she didn’t remember being there yesterday. “It won’t happen again.”

Isler shrugged and looked out the window as Gregorio continued patting down the quilt. Where had he left his phone? She was about to give up, deciding she’d search for it later, when her hand came into contact with a limp something that was very hot, very rough, and very dry.

A hand.

She let out a squawk and the truck swerved a little as she jerked her hand back.

“Gregorio, what the—”

“I—there’s a—” LaSalle. It had to be LaSalle. That would explain the phone. And the quilt. Her jaw clenched. “Sorry, I um—I think that quilt has been on a few too many camping trips. There was a spider or something.”

“You’re afraid of spiders?”

She leveled a steely glare on Isler. “Are you gonna sit there and tell me you’re not?”

He shifted in his seat and returned to looking out the window. “No comment.”

“That’s what I thought.” She glued her eyes to the road ahead and cautiously reached back beneath the quilt to find the hand again. It squeezed her fingers. Uh-huh. Her eyes narrowed. She patted around until she found what she guessed to be chest or stomach and smacked it. Hard. There was a hollow thunking sound and a soft “oomph!” She smiled. Stomach, then.

Isler’s eyes cut from her to the quilt piled between the front and back seats a few times before lingering on her, eyebrow quirked, mouth opening and closing once, twice, and then again before he wisely chose to leave his questions unasked.

She spared him a prim glance. “Spider. Got it.”

4. Loretta

“Hey, Doc, you in here?” Percy poked her head in the door of the morgue and stopped short. “Well, now.”

Gregorio leaned in to see over her shoulder. “What?” She blinked. “Oh. That’s, uh, that’s a new one.”

“Yeah. Should we, uh—”

“Nah. She’s been on her feet for even longer than we have on this one.”

Percy shot her a doubtful look.

“Okay, well. At least as long,” she amended.

They stood in silence for a few moments before Percy broke it. “She looks so…”

“Peaceful.”

“Yeah.” Percy’s face scrunched up. “She’s been in this line of work too long.”

“For sure.”

A beat.

Gregorio shifted on her feet. “This making you uncomfortable, too?”

“Oh, heck yeah.”

“Great, just checking.”

Gregorio didn’t notice the door to Sebastian’s lab open and close until a whisper, loud, hot, and mockingly conspiratorial, brushed past her ear. “What’re y’all lookin’ at?”

The girls whipped around in unison to find LaSalle, smirking down at them and looking very pleased with himself.

Percy put a finger to her lips and shushed him fiercely, despite the fact that her yelp as a result of his whisper had been much louder than the whisper itself.

He held up placating hands. “Sorry. Seriously, though. What’s so—” he broke off, eyebrows shooting up as his head cocked to one side. “Well, there’s something I never thought I’d see.”

“You and me both,” Gregorio said, shaking her head.

LaSalle joined their stack—his chin jutting over Gregorio’s shoulder, Gregorio’s over Percy’s.

The solemn silence was shattered by a loud shutter sound. The girls jumped and swiveled again. LaSalle was holding his phone aloft, grinning down at the photo he had just taken.

They glared.

He threw his hands out indignantly. “What? King would never believe me if I don’t get some photographic evidence of...this.” He waved vaguely towards the sight before him.

Gregorio considered for a minute before shrugging. “That’s fair.”

Percy pulled the door shut gently and stood on tiptoes to see past LaSalle’s shoulder. “Well, let’s see it, Country Mouse!”

Gregorio stationed herself at his other shoulder as he turned his screen so they could both see the photo of Loretta Wade, curled contentedly beneath a white sheet, sound asleep on the morgue’s only available autopsy table.

5. Pride

Gregorio’s nose twitched as it noticed a strange element joining the mouth-watering scent of Pride’s Louisiana-famous gumbo. She looked up from her paperwork. Something was burning.

She waited a moment, expecting to hear Pride scrambling around in an attempt to rescue his food, but all was silent in the kitchen. Frowning, she stood and followed her nose to find Pride standing at the stove, one hand at his side, the other loosely gripping a wooden spoon. The spoon was poised to stir the gumbo, but it wasn’t stirring. Gregorio watched for a moment as he just stood there, unmoving.

“Pride?”

Nothing.

“Hey, boss.”

Nada.

“Okay, you’re starting to freak me out, here.”

Nope.

She crossed the room, coming to a halt when she reached his side, hand going out to take his arm. “Pride, are you o—” she dropped her hand to her side as Pride released a loud snore. “Oh, you gotta be kidding me. You too?”

Another snore.

“Pride.”

Snore.

“Pride!”

No dice.

She took his arm urgently. “Your gumbo’s burning!”

Pride jerked and choked on a snore, his stirring starting up again before his eyes were fully open. He blinked. “Gregorio?”

“The one and only. I thought an experienced cook like yourself would know better than to fall asleep at the stove??”

Pride sighed and waved her off. “It wasn’t intentional. I’m good now. The team needs to eat.”

“The team can get take-out. You need to sleep. Seriously.” She took the spoon from him. “Sonja can’t eat this, anyway. I’ll call the mice twins and have them pick something up on their way back.”

Pride scoffed and shook his head. “You’ve all been working so hard on this one. I wanted to do somethin’ nice for y’all.”

“And we appreciate that, Pride. We do. But you’ve been going just as hard as the rest of us, and honestly…” she glanced at the scorching gumbo and flicked the burner off before putting a hand on Pride’s arm. “I think the nicest thing you could do for us right now is to get some sleep before you burn this place down, yeah?”

Pride chuckled. “You may be right.”

“Oh, I’m right.” She put a hand on his back and herded him to the door. “Go sleep. The case will be here when you wake up, and so will we. If I know LaSalle and Percy, there’ll probably even be some po’ boys.”

Pride turned to face her. “Are you sure? I can—”

“I’m sure. Positive. Go sleep.”

He raised his eyebrows at the commanding tone her voice had taken on. “You do remember that I’m your boss, right?”

“Yep. Always. Now get out of here.”

He held up his hands in surrender. “All right, you win. I’m goin’.” He took exactly five steps before turning back. “If you find anything—”

“We’ll call you. Go. Sleep. We got this.”

“Alright. Okay. Okay, I’m goin’.”

Gregorio stepped out into the courtyard and watched with arms crossed and eyebrow quirked until his door closed behind him. Then she fired off a jubilant fist-pump and pulled out her phone. “Hey, Percy. You’ll never guess what I just pulled off.”

+1. Gregorio

“Hey, you seen Gregorio recently?”

LaSalle looked up from the sea of paperwork his desk was drowning in to see Percy standing in the kitchen doorway, hands on her hips, face scrunched in the way that made her nose crinkle a little. He straightened out the smirk that tried to form on his face at the sight. “Not since I got back from Miss Loretta’s. Why? What’s up?”

“Nothin’s up, really, I just wanted to get her opinion on Arlan Kyle’s file. Let her work her profiling magic and jazz. But she’s not in the kitchen, she’s not in Patton’s office, the courtyard is a ghost yard.”

“You check upstairs?”

She sent him a Look and the smirk threatened to resurface. “Of course I did. I even checked the interrogation rooms. Zero. Zilch. Nada.”

“Huh. Maybe she’s out chasin’ down a lead, or something.”

Percy looked doubtful. “Without telling anyone? That’s not Gregorio.” Her eyes took on a mischievous glint. “You, on the other hand...”

“That was one time.”

“Yeah, and Brody and I almost shot you that one time.” She put air-quotes around the last two words.

“One could argue that I almost shot you and Brody.”

“Yeah, okay. Believe what you want to, Country Mouse, but the point is, taking off alone, without telling anybody, is a monumentally dumb idea and Gregorio isn’t monumentally dumb.”

LaSalle squinted at the implied insult. “Somebody’s playing hardball tonight.”

“Aw, sorry. You’re not always dumb.” Her tone changed abruptly from condescending sugar to bored chagrin. “But when you are, it’s monumental.”

LaSalle rolled his eyes, but couldn’t quite stifle his laugh. “Yeah, okay. I’ll give you that one. But you better watch yourself, City Mouse. Next time you do somethin’ stupid I’m gonna be on you like buzzards on week-old roadkill.”

Percy made a face as she sat down at her desk. “Well, that’s a lovely mental image. But you’re gonna be waitin’ a while, Country Mouse. You got nothin’ on me.”

“Yet.” Chris rooted around in the desk’s top drawer and came up with an empty box. “You got a paperclip?”

“Ran out this morning. Check Gregorio’s?”

LaSalle rose and stretched, ambling over to Gregorio’s desk and pulling open a drawer. His eyebrows shot up as he took in the haphazard tangle of office supplies. “She’s got a whole danged arsenal in here!” Boxes of staples, spare pencil leads, scotch tape, zebra pens, and there—paper clips. “Think fast.” He chucked a box at Percy, slinging it far enough that she shot back in her chair to catch it, barely  slamming her feet down in time to save herself from toppling backward.

She held the small package aloft, a triumphant smirk on her face. “Read ‘em and weep, LaSalle.”

“Can’t blame a guy for tryin’.” His grin abruptly turned to a frown when his shoe brushed against something hard under the desk. He moved his foot around a little. Whatever it was, it was large. He braced a hand on the desktop and crouched to take a look. The grin returned full tilt as his head popped back up. “Pssst. Percy!”

She looked up. “Why are you on the floor?”

He held a finger to his lips and beckoned her over.

She crossed to the desk, a frown gathering on her face. “Why are we whispering?”

“Look.”

She stepped behind him, bending a little to follow his gaze. “What are you—” She broke off when she caught sight of Tammy Gregorio curled beneath her desk, face resting on prayer hands. Percy clapped a hand over her mouth, but LaSalle still heard the giggle that bubbled free.

He grinned back at her, mouthing “busted.”

“She’s gonna be so embarrassed when she wakes up!”

“Yeah. There goes all her ammo for teasin’ us about our sleeping habits. Hey, toss me my jacket?”

She tiptoed away and was back a moment later, pressing the cool leather into his hand. He spread it over the newbie as warily as if she were a poisonous snake that might strike if he moved too quickly. But she didn’t stir. Gaining confidence, he rearranged it a little, trying in vain to find a way to fully cover her. Despite her all-but fetal position, his best efforts still left her socked feet exposed.  He ran a hand over his mouth and nodded. “I guess that’ll have to—”

“Think fast!” Percy’s voice hissed across the bullpen and he looked up just in time to catch a glimpse of her wicked grin before his head snapped back and his face was engulfed in denim. He peeled it away and did his best to keep his unimpressed glare from cracking as she threw her arms in the air and shout-whispered, “She scores! The crowd goes wild! Ahhhhh!”

His laughter got the best of him as he shook his head and tucked the jacket over Gregorio’s exposed feet. “You’re some kinda special, you know that, Percy?”

“Oh, come on. You know you love me.”

LaSalle was suddenly very grateful for the desk that concealed his face.

A/N: This one was so fun to write!!!! I’d never written a 5+1 fic before, but...I think I’ll have to write more. That was FUN. Didn’t feel like work at all. But that may be due to how entertaining the characters are? I love writing for them. Fun fact, Sebastian’s “pretzel position” may or may not be based on my favorite way to sleep. Kudos, props, and candy to anyone who caught the VeggieTales reference!

Feedback always, always appreciated. Thank you so much for taking the time to read this, lovely soul! It means more to me than you’ll ever know. Don’t forget to drink water today! And maybe eat a cake. Or an apple. Something to make your heart happy. I love you. Jesus loves you. Have a marvelous day, you!

Author out.

[i-am-a-stupid-robot]

Live to Die Another Day | Gregorio & LaSalle Oneshot

Warnings | None

Rating | K+

Genres | Angst, H/C, Friendship, Fluff

Characters | Tammy Gregorio, Christopher LaSalle

Pairings | Tammy Gregorio & Christopher LaSalle (Pals. Unless you do le squinty squint.)

Word Count | 1K+

Summary: Tammy struggles to process the events of Acceptable Loss (4x05). Good thing she’s not alone.

"Gregorio."

Gregorio groaned internally as she dropped a bag of tea into her mug.

"Gregorio." LaSalle's voice was louder, more insistent this time.

"What?" she snapped, watching the color from the teabag bleed into the hot water as she dunked it again. He came to a halt behind her and she reached for creamer she never used as an excuse to fully turn her back.

"You wanna tell me what's goin' on with you?"

Gregorio kept her voice casual. "Nothing's going on with me."

"Uh-huh. Come on, you've been avoiding me all day—yesterday, too."

"You're imagining things, LaSalle."

"Gregorio. Come on, this is ridiculous. Did I say something? If I've offended you somehow, I'd like to know about it so I can make it right."

A lump burned its way up her throat and she clenched her jaw. Not now. She swallowed hard before she replied, schooling her voice to remain steady and light. "What's the matter, you got a guilty conscience or something?"

Suddenly, his hand was on her arm, spinning her around to face him. The frustrated determination in his eyes was buried in a flood of concern when he saw the tears in hers. "Gregorio! What's wrong?"

Her chin trembled. Dang it. "Listen, I know what this looks like, but I'm okay."

"Gregorio…"

"Leave it alone, LaSalle," she growled, shoving him back a step.

He released her arm, but his eyes never left hers. "What's going on?"

She shook her head and looked away, furiously attempting to blink back the confounded wetness trying to escape her eyes.

"Gregorio—"

She held up a hand to silence him. "Shush. I'm gonna tell you, I just—mm." If I talk now I'm gonna be crying all over you in about half a second. She studied her feet, chewing the inside of her cheek.

He waited.

When she finally trusted herself enough to speak, her voice was low and shaky, still far to close to tears for her comfort. "I thought we'd lost you." There was a scuff on her boot. She hadn't noticed it before.

She knelt on the rough cement floor, the toes of her boots scraping against the pavement as she dropped to her knees and joined Pride at LaSalle's side.

"The other day...when we found you, and you didn't have a pulse? I thought you were gone." She wrestled her eyes up to look at his face.

His frown deepened in confusion, an incredulous smile starting to tug at his lips. "Gregorio, I'm fine—"

Anger flared in her gut and she cut him off. "Four minutes."

"What?"

"You were gone for four minutes, LaSalle. That we know of." There was no telling how long it had been between their finding him and Chloe leaving him for dead. She crossed her arms, her voice rising. "I gave you CPR! You wouldn't move, wouldn't wake up, wouldn't breathe."

She almost hadn't believed Percy before, but now Pride was doing chest compressions and pleading with LaSalle to wake up and Percy was speaking frantically into her phone and LaSalle just lay there, still, too still to be the animated man she knew and far too still to be yet among the living.

LaSalle was silent. She was glad.

"Pride...I know it messed him up, but I think somehow he knew. He knew you were gonna be okay, that we would get you back. But I—" her voice cracked, "—there was this lead in my gut, you know?" She scrubbed a hand under her eyes, the tears scalding her skin. "I didn't know four minutes could take so long."

Her hands on his chest, pumping—One. Two. Three. Four—trying to do the work his heart should be doing as bone and cartilage ground and popped beneath her palm—Seven. Eight. Nine—Percy pacing in the background—Eleven. Twelve. Thirteen. Fourteen—his head lolling in time with her efforts—Sixteen. Seventeen. Eighteen. Nineteen. Twenty...

She ran a hand over her mouth and looked LaSalle in the eye for the first time since he'd walked into the room. "So, yeah. To answer your questions, I'm a little messed up right now. I'm mad. I'm mad at Chloe for almost taking my friend away. I'm mad at myself for giving up on you so easily." She scoffed. "I'm even mad at you for scaring me like that." She wasn't sure when her voice had gotten this loud, or when she had stopped fighting the stream of tears that was now flowing freely down her face. A sob bubbled free. "You were dead, LaSalle."

She didn't fight his grip on her arm this time, as he pulled her into a hug and held her tight. Another sob escaped as she returned his embrace, drinking in the heartbeat that thumped firm and steady beneath her ear.

His eyes flew open and he shot upright and then everyone was talking at once, touching him, watching his face twist with fear and confusion and pain and life. Pride's arms were suddenly wound around his shoulders, keeping him upright as Percy grabbed for his flailing hands and Gregorio thrust her hand against his chest, over his heart. The beat was too fast, erratic and thready, but it was there.

"But I'm not dead. Thanks in large part to you, I'm right here and I'm just fine."

They stood that way for a while, Gregorio's sobs fading to hiccups and the tears beginning to dry. LaSalle squeezed her a little tighter. "I owe you one, Tammy."

She snuffled and pulled away, giving his chest a brisk pat as her crusty exoskeleton slipped back into place. "Yeah, you do. And you can repay me by making sure I never have to do that again."

His amused smirk faded to gravity as he looked at her. "You know I can't promise that any more than you can."

"Yeah, well...do your best, yeah?"

"You got it." He folded her back into his embrace and she returned it tightly.

“Oh—and LaSalle?" Her voice was muffled in his shirt.

"Yeah?"

"You tell anyone about this, I'm gonna take you out and finish what Chloe started, you got me?"

A laugh rumbled beneath her ear. "Copy that."

[quanticowrites]

Live, laugh, love (Laurel Pride fanfic)

•• SLIGHT SPOILERS FROM SEASON 6 PREMIERE, DON'T WANNA SEE THEM DON'T READ! No pairing, just father daughter loveliness! Primarily based off of this head canon post by @dwaynepride 💕 Enjoy! ••

Laurel had just been out shopping when she happened to stumble across the home goods section of the little mom and pop store. It wasn't the most prominent item on the shelf, but it was bold enough to catch her eye. She moved some glass sculptures carefully out of the way and slowly brought it out from the back. She had to bite her lip to keep from laughing out loud.

“This is perfect.” Her voice rose an octave as she set the wooden sign in her cart. She headed back to the Trutone and smiled seeing her dad's car out front, the trunk popped open. She headed inside and up the stairs.

“Dad?”

“Laurel!” He popped out from the bathroom, she heard the shower running behind him. “I wasn't expecting you for another hour!”

“Well,” She chuckled at how his hair was stuck straight up from his shampoo. “I saw something that made me think of you.”

“I'll be right out.”

“Take your time, I don't want to ruin your bubble party.”

“Very funny.” He laughed as he shut the door. Laurel set her bag on the table and took out the vegetables she'd bought to cook for dinner. Her dad and she always made Veggie risotto when she was a kid, and it was grandma's recipe. She sighed thinking about how her dad must be feeling. The doctor had called that morning...Grandma wasn't doing very well. She'd been screaming for Cassius all night. She shook her head of the unwelcome thoughts. Grandma was fine where she was, she was surrounded by medical professionals. Her dad on the other hand…

“A’right, let's get to cooking mama’s risotto!” Her dad came walking into the kitchen with a stride in his step. He must have really been looking forward to this. Laurel smiled. If she could make him feel even a little better than her plan was working.

“How about I show you my gift first?” She picked it up in the bag and he smiled.

“Come on, don't keep me in suspense.” She pulled it out and did a little dance.

“Ta-da! The perfect kitchen accessory!”

“Laurel, you didn't have too.” He took the wooden block and ran his hand over the engraving.

“Live, laugh, love.” He said, “Words to live by. I know just the place for this.” He set it on the windowsill above the sink. He turned around and opened his arms and waved her in. She wrapped her arms around him and grunted as he squeezed her tight.

“Dad…”

“Sorry, papa bear got a little emotional.” He pulled back and Laurel saw the tear falling down his face. “Let's get to cookin’, shall we?”

Tag list: @stanathanxoox , @nikkiwierden , @malindacath , @havlindzk , @countrygal17a , @memyselfandmaddox , @octobersmog , @mizzezm , @diaryofafan17 , @emmitheacefangirl , @a-sad-excuse-of-everything

[ladyreneeboulanger92]

City Mouse doesn’t like mice?

Ncis NOLA one-shot

Percy X Lasalle-Persalle

No warnings, just fluff <3

Word count: 392 

Just a little one-shot that was rattling around in my head. Hope you guys like it :D

Chris knocked twice shifting on his feet as he waited. Footsteps sounded on the other side of the door before Gregorio opened it while gripping her hair in on hand in an attempt to put it up. She gestured for him to come in and headed towards the kitchen raking her hands through it to smooth it back calling over her shoulder, “We’re running a little behind this morning. This case interrupted Saturday morning cartoons.” He grinned closing the door and followed, “Take your time. Pride hasn’t left the office yet.”

Tammy grabbed two coffee tumblers from the cabinet. Filling each, she dumped sugar in one and added soy milk to the other. Sipping from hers, she groaned, “God I love coffee.” Chris's smile widened as he declined her offer for a cup, “I’ve got mine in the truck.” She nodded before turning up her drink again.

The shower cut off down the hall and Gregorio disappeared into her room reappearing a moment later with her gear as she pulled her ponytail through an NCIS cap. Leaning on the counter casually, Chris asked, "She's takin' her time gettin' pretty ain't she?" Tammy was putting on her shoes and opened her mouth to quip back when a screech erupted from Sonja’s room followed by crashing and thumping. Chris and Tammy both started towards the door just as it was yanked open. Sonja bolted out and crashed right into Chris, took one look at him and jumped into his arms yelling, “There’s a rat!”

They all looked down as it scurried out and down the hall. Chris sidestepped and Gregorio dodged grimacing as she pulled out her phone, “I’m calling the land lord, now!” Chris looked at Sonja who was still clinging to him, with her legs around his waist, like a monkey, “City mouse doesn’t like mice?” She pinched his arm and squirmed griping, “You can put me down now.”

He chuckled striding into her room and dumped her onto the bed eliciting a shrill, “Hey!” His response was to tickle the bottom of her bare foot which made her thrash around and near fall off the bed. “Put some shoes on, we’re on the clock here,” Chris teased as he turned away. Gregorio was talking animatedly into her phone when he stepped back out into the hall. No doubt their landlord was getting an earful.

Sonja announced, “Ready!”, as she came out shouldering her bag and grabbed the coffee Tammy held out. Chris got a playful shove on one side and another pinch on the other as he herded them towards the door saying, “Come on ladies, can we get to work now?”

[wanna-see-my-lease]

Squeakers - Drabble

Masterlist

Show: NCIS NOLA

Summary:  When you lose your voice, you end up with a nickname.

Pairing:  No pairing

Warnings: None

Word Count:  232

Reading Time:  1 minute

Request: Open – Drabbles and Imagines

A/N:  ♥ Feedback is always  welcomed and requests are open (no prompts), and you can be added to the tag list XoX

Tags: @emilyymichelle @lucifersagents @ncisfanficsandmore @spaceemonkeyyxd @of-badges-and-guns  @criminal-navy-writings 

XoX

You knew from the moment you woke up that you were going to have a long day ahead of you. With the tightness in your chest and the hot flashes you were having, it was a chest cold settling in for sure. However, you were not about to let it slow you down as the team and you were after someone who was attacking Navy families in their homes while the husbands were deployed.

Walking into the bullpen, you were greeted by Percy and LaSalle. Smiling you gave them each a quick wave as you headed straight to the kitchen. Hoping there was fresh coffee, and that it would help with your sore throat.

“What’s with the whole not talkin’ bit?” LaSalle commented as he stuck his head into the kitchen.

You turned after pouring yourself a cup of coffee, “Nothin’,” You winced, noticing how squeaky your voice sounded.

LaSalle laughed, “Oh that don’t sound like nothin’, Squeakers.”

Holding the cup of coffee in both your hands, you shot him a glair, as Percy walked into the kitchen, “Squeakers?” She asked raising her eyebrow.

LaSalle nodded, “Oh that’s so stickin’.”

“I don’t th-think so.” You squeaked back, your voice being totally shot.

Percy burst out laughing, “It’s sticking there, Squeakers. What are you even doing here if your sick?”

“She’s on desk duty and helping Sebastian.” Dwayne commented walking into the kitchen.

[n3rdybird]

Could I request a Dwayne Pride x reader he gets jealous and possessive at the Tru Tone because a guy won’t leave reader alone..........please ❤️

whew, sorry this took awhile. Between playing video games and falling into various show rabbit holes, I finally completed it! Hope I did the request justice while also staying in character for Dwayne. Please enjoy!

Not a Mistake

NCIS New Orleans

Dwayne Pride x Reader

Rating: Teen

Warnings: Some heavy makeout, some language. Nothing serious here!

You could feel his gaze on you. More so than any previous night. You did your best to ignore it as you served drinks and took orders at the very busy Tru Tone bar. It was hot and humid, normal for a summer night in New Orleans, but that didn’t stop you from hating it. You fanned the back of your neck, trying to alleviate the heat.

You shrieked when a cold bottle pressed to your skin. You slapped Jimmy with the rag you kept tucked in your apron.

“You’re a dick,” you groused but took the proffered bottle of water. The cool water felt like heaven in your throat.

“So why has my dear brother been staring at you all night?” Jimmy asked, causing you to choke on your drink.

“Jesus,” you coughed.

“Nope, still Jimmy,” he quipped, as he patted your back.

“He’s not staring,” you protested as you opened a beer for a customer. You snuck a peek at Dwayne Pride out of the corner of your eye. He was talking with the band, but every once and awhile he would glance towards the bar.

“He is the owner, he’s watching the place,” you brushed off, handing a beer to a customer.

In truth, you knew why he was staring.

You had been working at the Tru Tone for a few months now. Bartending was a lucrative job in the French Quarter, but you also enjoyed it. The energy of New Orleans was addicting and you couldn’t imagine yourself anywhere else. Not to mention the Tru Tone was an amazing place to work. Great music, wonderful patrons, and of course the best coworkers. And boss. Jimmy was pretty much in charge of the bar, but Dwayne… He was the heart and soul of the place.

And handsome to boot. It didn’t take long for you to develop a crush on the older man. He was so damn charming, it felt inevitable. And for a moment, you thought maybe he felt the same way. The two of you were closing down the bar, which was rare for Dwayne since he had his job as an NCIS agent. It had been a busy night, but by 3 am, the bar was quiet and you began cleaning the bar. The tension had been building for a while between the two of you. All it took was one accidental brush of skin and Dwayne had you on top of the bar. You remembered the feel of his rough fingers as they skated across your shoulder. The pressure of his lips against yours. And then he pushed away. Said things like “I shouldn’t have done that,” and “It would be better if we didn’t go further.” That’s how things were left. He still talked to you of course, but it was all business.

And here you were now, tending bar for a man you wanted but couldn’t have. He didn’t want you. You hoped you could get past this awkward mess.

“Jimmy, mind if I take ten? Need a breather,” you asked.

“Yeah, I can grab Pride and we can cover for you.”

“Thanks, I’ll be back in ten.”

“Take twenty and the bottle of water. And actually sit,” Jimmy ordered in a faux stern tone. You nodded and saluted him flippantly.

“Right away boss,” you said, dodging the towel he snapped at you.

You exited from behind the bar and made your way through the crowd. The horde of patrons felt suffocating once you left the safety of the bar, but you were able to slip through. You cheered when you realized your normal break spot was open, a single-seat table next to the open window. You snagged the table and plopped into the chair . The water Jimmy gave you was appreciated as you took deep swallows.

You bobbed your head to the music and you pulled out your phone to check your messages and emails. Nothing terribly important, but there were a few funny memes from Sebastian that made you snort.

“Beautiful smile,” a voice cut into your bubble, causing you to lookup. A man about your age hovered over your table.

“Mind if I sit?” he asked. “It’s a bit crowded here.” You went to stand to give the patron your seat, but he held up his hands for you to stop.

“No, I meant can I join you.”

You paused in your movements.

“Well there is only one chair,” you pointed out.

“Maybe you can sit in my lap,” he said, sitting on the table, caging yo in by putting his arm on the back of your chair. You groaned. You got hit on a lot at work, but at least this guy was upfront with his red flags.

You slid out from under his arm, putting some distance between the two of you.

“Yeah, no thanks. I’m due back behind the bar.”

“Aw come on sweetheart. I’m sure your boss won’t mind if you spent a little time with me. Customer service and all that.”

You raised a brow. Did he really think his lines worked?

“Not gonna happen,” you said, moving back towards the bar when he grabbed your wrist. It was a tight grip, verging on painful.

“Come on darlin’, don’t be like that.”

When he called you darling, a wave of revulsion washed over you. You wanted only one man to call you that, and he wasn’t him. You tried to yank your wrist away but his grip tightened, causing you to wince at the pressure. You turned to see if anyone was watching when a familiar presence was at your back. It was at that moment you realized the music had stopped and the crowd was watching the scene.

“I believe the young lady asked ya to leave her alone,” Dwayne said, catching the other man’s attention. He was standing tall, not aggressive in his stance, but there was a definite aura around him. This wasn’t Tru Tone Dwayne or even NCIS agent Dwayne. His face was tight, and his hands flexed as if he wanted to wring the man’s neck.

When Dwayne spoke, the grip on your wrist lessened, allowing you to pull your hand away with effort. You cradled your wrist and Dwayne pushed you back with his hip, standing in front of you. While you could take care of yourself and preferred not to have Dwayne or Jimmy step in, you were glad. Knowing that Dwayne had your back still, even after that night.

“And who are you, her dad?” he scoffed, taking note of Dwayne's silver hair and dismissing his authority.

“I’m the owner of this bar, and I’ll hafta ask ya to leave. I’d hate for this to get ugly.”

Maybe the man was drunk or maybe he was a fool. Probably both, especially when he reared back to hit Dwayne. Your boss dodged the swing and caught the man’s arm easily. He brought his arm up behind him, making him yelp at the pressure. The determination on Dwayne’s face made your knees buckle a bit. Like a knight defending a maiden. It was almost too much.

“Now see, this is ugly. Why don’t ya just go on and get out of here? Before you get arrested for assaulting a federal officer.” He shoved the man who stumbled toward the door. He recovered his footing, red in the face, and stood menacingly.

Dwayne flipped open his wallet flashing his credentials. The man faltered at the sight and stopped his movement. He spat at the ground and pushed through the crowd toward the exit.

You breathed a sigh of relief. You knew Dwayne could handle himself, but you couldn’t help but worry. Drunk men were unpredictable.

“Alright folks, let’s get the music started again,” he called out, and a cheer rang out in the crowd. Once the focus was off the two of you, Dwayne took your uninjured hand and led you towards the stairs.

“Dwayne, I gotta get back to work,” you said.

“Jimmy can handle it,” he said, nodding towards his brother. Jimmy nodded back, waving the two off. “I wanna take a look at your wrist.”

“I’m sure it’s fine,” you said, waving off his concern. You stopped at the base of the stairs when Dwayne leveled his gaze on you. This was not an argument you were going to win.

“Just let me take a look darlin’,” he said with finality. You nodded and allowed him to lead you up the stairs. He kept a hand on your back as you took each step. You relished it, even if it was just Dwayne’s overprotectiveness.

Once upstairs, he herded you into a chair and knelt before you. With gentle hands, he manipulated your wrist. He turned it all ways, rolling it with practiced care. You hissed when he touched a particular sore spot. He turned his gaze to you, worry in his eyes.

“Does it hurt?”

“It's not so bad. I’ll be okay,” you brushed off his concern. He cradled your hand in his, his thumb gently rubbing at your wrist.

The two of you sat in silence as Dwayne stared at your wrist. With each pass of his thumb, your skin tingled, causing the hairs on your arm to stand.

“I didn’t like him touching you,” he finally said.

“Dwayne it’s not your fault-”

He stood abruptly, taking a few steps away from where you were sitting. His back was facing you, and you could see the tension in his shoulders in the way he stood.

“I didn’t like him touching you. Talking to you. Smiling at you,” Dwayne bit out. He turned to face you, his hands clenched into fists. His normally carefree expression was stony, his eyes seemingly darker. You stood up and took a few steps toward your boss. You tentatively reached out and took his hand in yours, thumbing over his knuckles.

“I was wrong that night. Kissing you wasn’t a mistake. Pushing you away, that was a mistake,” he confessed. He brought his other hand up to the crook of your neck. While his long fingers brushed the hair at the nape of your neck, his thumb brushed over your fluttering pulse point.

“Seeing that man flirt with you, as unwanted as it was… made me angry. Jealous. I wanted to hit him for touching you. For hurting you.”

Dwayne was grappling with what he was saying. He had never felt the flame of jealousy as hot as he did that night. It wasn’t him. He had been helping Jimmy behind the bar when he saw the man approach you. He was instantly on alert when he saw him drape his arm over the back of your chair. Your expression when you were clearly uninterested. As soon as he grabbed your wrist, he was out from behind the bar and pushing through the crowd to you.

He felt guilty for not getting to you before your wrist was grabbed. The redness around your wrist was like a brand, shouting at him that he had failed you. He didn’t protect you in time. Dwayne clenched his jaw thinking about it. Your hand, soft and cool, brushed against his temple. You continued your ministrations until the furrow in his brow lessened. His head drooped, his forehead touching yours.

“Dwayne, I don’t want anyone but you,” you breathed. “That hasn’t changed.”

With your confession, his resolve broke, and he tilted your head up, capturing your lips with his. You surged against him, mindful of your wrist as you pulled him closer. Dwayne backed you up until your back was against the wall.

You gasped at the contact and Dwayne used that to his advantage to delve deeper into your mouth. One hand tangled in your hair, the other gripping the swell of your hip. Your mind fogged as he kissed you like a man starved and only your lips would satiate his hunger.

You responded in kind, clinging to his neck, pressing your body flush against him. He grunted when your hips met his and he pulled back with a groan.

“As much as I’d like to stay here, Jimmy is gonna be wondering where we are,” he said, catching his breath against your neck. You hmmed against his hair, trying to regain control of your mental faculties.

“To be continued later?” you offered.

“Oh darlin’, you have no idea,” he said with a smirk.

[cornishkat]

Masterlist

NCIS

Leroy Jethro Gibbs

Can’t Go On Like This - Chapter One

Can’t Go On Like This - Chapter Two

Can’t Go On Like This - Chapter Three

Can’t Go On Like This - Chapter Four

Can’t Go On Like This - Chapter 5

Respect and Understanding - Chapter 1

Respect & Understanding - Chapter 2

Respect & Understanding- Chapter 3

Respect & Understanding - Chapter 4

Respect & Understanding - Chapter 5

Respect & Understanding - Chapter 6

Blood & Tears - Oneshot

Help Me Make It Through The Night - Oneshot

Could Get Used to This - Oneshot

Mistletoe - Gibbs Oneshot

Christmas - Gibbs Oneshot

NCIS NOLA

Dwayne Pride

How Could you Think I Wouldn’t

Mistletoe - Pride Oneshot

Criminal Minds

Aaron Hotchner

Just a Dance - Chapter 1

Just a Dance - Chapter 2

Heaven & Earth - Chapter 1

Heaven & Earth - Chapter 2

Heaven & Earth - Chapter 3

Heaven & Earth - Chapter 4

Mistletoe - Hotchner Oneshot

Bond

Gareth Mallory

Just a Scratch - Chapter 1

Just a Scratch - Chapter 2

Just a Scratch - Chapter 3

Protecting M - Chapter 1

Protecting M - Chapter 2

Protecting M - Chapter 3

Protecting M - Chapter 4

Protecting M - Chapter 5

Are you Jealous? - Oneshot

Cormoran Strike

Right Here - One Shot

Sierra Six (Court Gentry)

Safe Haven - One Shot

Top Gun:Maverick

Jake”Hangman”Seresin

Just Friends - Chapter 1

Just Friends - Chapter 2

Just Friends - Chapter 3

Just Friends - Chapter 4

Just Friends - Chapter 5

Just Friends - Chapter 6

All I want for Christmas is You - One Shot

Midnight Kiss - One Shot

Robert “Bob” Floyd 

Everlong - Part 1

Everlong - Part 2

[moonlight-breeze-44]

Shelter From the Storm

Shelter from the Storm

Gregorio comes out to her mother. It doesn't go well. Pride is there to remind her in the aftermath, after Tammy falls into old, bad habits, that she has a team-family here in New Orleans that will always love her for exactly who she is.

Pairings: None main; background PerSalle

Rating: Teen

Warnings: Homophobia, disowning, mental health issues/self-esteem issues, self-harm, graphic descriptions of violence/self-harm, blood & injury

Read on AO3

Gregorio knew it was only a matter of time before she had to make the phone call, but it didn’t mean getting the courage to dial her mother’s number and press call was any easier.

Now, alone in her apartment, she wished her heart would stop pounding into the beginnings of a panic attack and let her fucking breathe. Her hands were so clammy with sweat that she half-expected the phone to slip and fall to the ground. She wondered if maybe it would be better if it did. It would mean she didn’t have to face this.

Gregorio loved her mom, but that was half of the problem. Her mother could be old-fashioned, and Gregorio had been raised in the countryside of New York with two dogs, an old cat, and no father to speak of. In some ways, Gregorio was a lot more like LaSalle than she wanted to admit.

As she waited for Emily Gregorio to pick up her phone, Tammy paced; she was her mother’s only child, and if what she said today devastated her like she feared it would, she doubted there would be another chance for them. This stupid fucking phone call was going to define their entire relationship, and the fear was enough to make Tammy grab the chair in front of her for support, nails scrabbling for purchase along the worn fiber.

No turning back now.

“Tammy?” Her mother’s voice, pragmatic as always, filled Gregorio’s ears and she flinched. Maybe she wasn’t as ready for this as she thought. “What’s wrong?”

It was a response that most other people would consider harsh or brusque, but in reality, Emily was just being realistic; Tammy almost never called unless she was backed into a corner and needed something. Her mother never called unless someone had died. It was a routine that Tammy couldn’t bring herself to feel bad for, considering her mother’s part in it and the lack of warmth between them. But their lack of contact made what Tammy had to say even harder to reveal.

“Mom, I have something to tell you,” Tammy breathed, trying to keep her voice as steady and strong as she could while the panic rattled in her ribcage. She could do this. She had to.

“Oh my god, are you pregnant?” Emily exclaimed, and Tammy heard the blatant delight in her voice at the thought. She shook her head, even though she knew her mother couldn’t see her. This was going to make it even harder to burst her bubble. When the silence stretched on a beat too long, she rolled her shoulders, shaking them out, trying to calm her nerves.

“Uh, no, Mom, I’m not pregnant,” Tammy replied, heaving a deep breath. “I, uh…I-I’m…”

“You’re what, Tammy? Spit it out.”

“I’m gay,” Tammy burst out, chest heaving with having the pressure of her secret released. She felt herself begin to tremble and leaned more of her weight onto the old chair in front of her. “I’m, uh, I’m a lesbian, Mom. I like women.”

The silence that followed her revelation felt like claws around Gregorio’s neck, choking and scratching into her windpipe. She waited with bated breath. Everything hinged on her mother’s reaction. Tammy’s hands were shaking with fear. Even if they weren’t close, she still loved her mother. She still wanted her to be a part of her life.

“Tammy, I…I’m not sure what to say.”

“Anything,” Gregorio begged, hating how desperate she sounded, but she couldn’t wait any longer. “Just say something, please.”

“Well, you know this isn’t what I wanted for you,” Emily stated, and Tammy knew it was true. Memories of her bisexual phase in high school rushed to the forefront of her mind, and suddenly she couldn’t breathe past the mental images of her mother’s disdain when she was fifteen and dating Zara Matthews. The coldness in her mother’s voice, then and now, felt like Tammy had swallowed a burning hot coal that was beginning to scorch her insides.

“How will you have children, Tammy?” Emily continued, obviously distraught. Tammy’s fingers tightened on the phone, and she tried to take a deep breath; get herself under control.

“I can adopt,” she replied calmly, “Or find a surrogate. Or…” She paused, hesitating. She was already six feet deep and buried with her mother, it seemed; why not put the nail in her own coffin? “...or maybe I won’t have kids.”

“Tammy,” her mother said reproachfully, “You have to have kids!”

“Says who?” Tammy retorted, her hands trembling where they still held the back of the living room chair for dear life. “I mean, look at me. I’m okay, aren’t I? I’m happy. I, I don’t have to have kids. Besides, I’m an NCIS agent. Who would want a mom who does what I do?”

“A child that understands the meaning of sacrifice,” Emily snapped. “Which you clearly don’t.”

“Mom, I…”

“No, Tammy, just don’t.” Gregorio fell silent, biting her lip hard to avoid letting out the tears that had gathered in her eyes sometime during the phone call. Her mother loved her, she was sure. But Tammy could never be who she wanted, either. And if she had learned one thing from her time in New Orleans with Ethan, before NCIS, it was that sometimes love wasn’t enough.

“Look, dear, I’m not going to say that this is the end of things.” Gregorio’s breath hitched, and she had to fight to keep her emotions in check. She knew that tone well enough to know what her mother was really saying, and it was the end of things. God, she knew her mother wouldn’t approve, but to know it and to have it confirmed were two very different feelings.

“But you should know how I feel about this,” Emily continued, ignorant to her daughter’s pain. “I don’t think it’s right. I don’t think it’s natural. I always thought you grew out of that phase you had in high school, especially after you married Ethan. Which, I know that didn’t work out, but one bad apple doesn’t mean the whole barrel is bad. I-I don’t know what you want from me here, Tammy. You are my daughter, and I love you. But I will not support this lifestyle. When you’re ready, you can come back home. We can work this out. But until then, don’t - don’t call. Don’t visit. Please. Spare us both. I’m sure you won’t feel this way forever, Tammy. When you change your mind, I’ll be here. I’ll be waiting for you.”

“Mom - ”

“Tammy, please. Don’t make this any harder than it already is. Just-Just sort yourself out, okay? I’ll be here when you need me. I love you.” With that, the call dropped, and Gregorio sank to her knees behind the worn out chair, breathing hard and fast, on the verge of a fucking panic attack from the call. Emily was gone. She recognized the situation for what it was; her mother had given her an ultimatum. Become straight, or say goodbye to her and their home back in New York forever.

It wasn’t a choice at all.

With the sound of the dial tone in her ear, her mother’s final words before she hung up way too loud in her head, Tammy allowed herself to cry, the weight of the emotions she had struggled to hold back before escaping in full. She sobbed into her knees, her shoulders shaking. She couldn’t be something she wasn’t. She couldn’t change, even though there had been more than enough times that she wanted to. She couldn’t give her mother what she had asked for.

In all the ways that mattered, it was over.

She and her mother had never been close. The truth was that Tammy expected the call to end like this, but it was still more of a blow than she had ever expected to know that the woman who raised her would never accept her for who she was. Tammy felt lost, and cut open, like someone had twisted a knife in her and then left her to die on a street corner. She didn’t know what her next steps were, if there even were any, and more than anything, she felt vulnerable.

It was a feeling she wasn’t used to, between her secrecy about her private life and the walls she built around her heart, but it made her want to hide and protect her six from whatever was going to hurt her. But there was nothing to shield herself from, no imminent threat or dangerous gunman; just her own damage and that goddamn dial tone still humming in her ear, a reminder that she would never be able to call home again.

The thought of home sent a fresh wave of tears cascading down her cheeks, and Tammy finally ripped the cellphone from her ear, throwing it across hardwood until it crashed into the side of her refrigerator. She would regret that later, she was sure, but for now she didn’t care. She couldn’t. The only piece of herself that seemed to matter was in New York, probably opening a bottle of whiskey and no doubt planning to pray for her in church the next day.

Home was gone forever now, even if she hadn’t called it that in years. It was still the place where she was raised, and where she’d learned how to fight for herself in more ways than one. She loved the sprawling hills on their property, and the well where she had nearly drowned once as a child. She loved the fucking tire swing and the garden beds and the old barn where she used to go with the dogs when she needed to be alone. Their house and grounds were so beautiful that sometimes Gregorio hardly believed that she lived in New York growing up. All of it would become a memory now, and she would never be able to touch the wildflowers that grew along the fence line ever again. It shouldn’t have affected her so much, considering it had been years since she even wanted to go home, but the thought of losing it all forever was more than she could handle.

The tears, which hadn’t stopped or slowed in the slightest, were becoming overwhelming and almost nausea-inducing, so Gregorio took a deep breath, moving her hands roughly down her legs, then her calves, then her ankles, trying to ground herself and move away from the precipice of her breakdown. But instead of finding stability in her old brown Doc Martens, like she had hoped, her hand brushed a cold piece of metal, and it sent her heartbeat racing again.

She knew what it was, the feeling unmistakeable against her fingers. It was a sterling silver razor blade, years old at least, tucked into a fraying patch on her boots since November of 2018. She had played a dangerous game with it, allowing it so close; on one hand, it could become dislodged at work and she ran the risk of someone investigating her for psychological issues if they saw where it had been hiding. On the other hand, she could lose it in the field, and she would never have to worry about it, or remember the temptation, ever again.

Neither of those things had happened, apparently, and she knew from the feel of it against her fingers that, somehow, it hadn’t even been scuffed. It was the perfect deadly instrument, even after all these years. Gregorio’s hand trembled.

She hesitated for a second, but pulled the razor blade from the patch on her boot, turning it over and over in her palms like precious gold. A coil of longing hit her like a punch to the gut, and Gregorio tried to suck in a deep breath, wanted to put it back, wanted to throw it away and pretend it never existed, but she couldn’t bring herself to.

If this razor blade had somehow managed to survive three years working as a field agent for the FBI, and one as an NCIS agent, not to mention the countless parties and clubs she’d been to, it had to be a sign. Gregorio didn’t believe in fate, but maybe the gods that weren’t were trying to tell her something now.

It had been five years. It had been half of a lifetime. Part of Gregorio didn’t want to risk it, after fighting so hard to get clean in the first place, but the other, larger part of her that wanted for the quick pain of metal against her skin argued that because it had been so long, it wouldn’t matter now. A relapse wasn’t really a relapse if it only lasted a day, and if she got her act together right after. She could do this, and hide it, then throw it away the next day and no one would ever have to know.

“It’s not like last time,” Gregorio muttered to herself, trying to believe it. “I won’t let it get out of hand.”

She didn’t know if she could keep the promise to herself or not, but it didn’t matter. Her mother’s words were still burning like acid in her lungs, and she just wanted the pain to be replaced with something new, something better, until she was able to get ahold of herself. It was the best, most efficient option, and then she would stop. One cut, she told herself, and after that she would curl up in bed and watch Desperate Housewives or something. One cut, and she would be okay.

Tammy rolled up her sleeve, took a deep breath, and pressed the razor blade to her wrist.

The relief was immediate, almost as overwhelming and euphoric as a drug, and fresh tears rolled down her cheeks at the feeling. It didn’t take away her mother’s homophobia, or the way her abandonment made Tammy feel, but it replaced the worst of it with white-hot pain and the familiar sting of a fresh cut instead. Blood welled like storm clouds in the wound, and slid down her wrist until it began to drip onto her pants. Lazily, Tammy remembered she needed to do laundry and didn’t have another pair of work pants. Another, bigger part of her, however, couldn’t be bothered to care.

Instantly forgetting the one-cut promise, Tammy sliced her way through six pristine cuts before stopping to take a breath, her chest heaving with the relief of giving into the old addiction again. She didn’t remember much from three years ago, the last time she cut, but she could swear it had never felt this good before.

Looking down at her arm, a pageant of crimson lines sluggishly bleeding, Tammy felt the calm settle into her bones, numbness chasing away the pain. She exhaled hard, letting her head thump against the forgotten chair in front of her. She got what she needed. She should stop.

She didn’t.

It was close to midnight before she threw the razor blade down and stopped to admire her work. She wasn’t sure how much blood she would have to clean up, or how much she had lost, and she hadn’t eaten today either. She knew it wasn’t a good idea to just sit there after what she’d done, but her head was swimming, and she was so exhausted that even attempting to get up would have been too much for her. So, instead, Tammy rested her arms on the bloodstained slacks, and let her head loll against the back of the living chair. She had slept in worse places.

~ ~ ~

In the morning, Tammy’s alarm came blaring to life at 6am, startling her awake from where she was slumped over next to the chair. Her arms felt like they were glued to her pants, dried blood sticking to the fabric, and she could feel a telltale crustiness on the seat of her pants that meant, somehow, she had managed to sit in a puddle of blood. “God, make it stop,” she muttered, and struggled to get to her feet to turn off the fucking alarm. She couldn’t remember the last time she felt this bad.

By the time she made it to the kitchen, where her phone was at, miraculously not dead but down to the last 5% of its battery, it was almost 6:30 and she was going to be late for work if she didn’t hustle.

Tammy made it to her bedroom with less difficulty, though she still felt lightheaded, and got to work peeling the blood-soaked slacks off and painfully removing her shirt, which had a few spots of blood on it from her careless cutting the night before. She searched through her closet as fast as she could for the most lightweight long-sleeved shirt she had, that was a dark enough color to mask the blood if her cuts opened up while she was at work. After that, she selected a pair of dark jeans, even though they were against the agency dress code, and headed to the bathroom to do what she could for her appearance.

To her dismay, her eyes were still a little bloodshot from last night, and her hair was a mess. She would need makeup to cover up the circles underneath her eyes, evidence of multiple nights of restless sleep in preparation for the phone call with her mother.

The thought of her mother made Tammy’s heart seize up, and she pressed on one of the new cuts, hissing at the sharp pain it brought. It was enough to snap her out of her head, at least, and she got to work applying makeup to cover up what she could of her turmoil. Finally, she was able to run a brush through her hair, grab her gun, badge, and car keys, and head out the door.

Just before walking into the Navy Yard, Tammy hesitated, and considered calling in sick. But as tempting as it was to go back to her apartment and stay in bed all day, that wasn’t a good idea; the NCIS team was like a big fucking family, and they were sure to stop by if they got word she wasn’t feeling well. Not only was her apartment a mess, but the pool of blood by the chair in the living room, as well as the razor blade that had caused all of this damage, was still out in the open for any prying eyes to see.

Still, Tammy knew it would be hard to keep what she had done from her teammates. She would have to be on her guard. They were perceptive, even if they weren’t trained profilers like her, and much worse, they knew her. It would take all of her skills at hiding and lying and pretending to fool them into believing she was fine.

The cuts pulled tight as the fabric of her shirt shifted, making each step and movement she made towards the office painful. She had learned how to hide the pain a long time ago, but a part of her wished she had bandaged the wounds before coming in today, instead of hiding the first-aid supplies in her bag in case of an emergency and hoping for the best. But Pride was already going to kill her for being late, and it would take another fifteen minutes at least to deal with the fallout of her habit. She didn’t want to come off any more suspicious than she already was.

Taking a deep breath, Gregorio etched a smile onto her face, and walked into the NCIS office like everything was fine, as always. Nothing is different today, she warned herself, trying to drill it into her brain. Nothing has changed.

“There ya are, Gregorio! Was startin’ to wonder if we was gonna have to send out a search party,” Chris greeted her with a smile, and Gregorio gave him one of her patented bitchfaces in return.

“I got caught in traffic,” she lied, and watched his face for any signs of disbelief as she made her way to her desk. She clocked the slight raise of his eyebrows, his posture lengthening, and reminded herself to adjust her tone when she was lying.

“Didn’t think there was hardly any traffic on Bourbon Street,” Chris commented, and Tammy turned to place her bag next to her desk and start up her computer. It was easier to lie to someone when she didn’t have to face them.

“There isn’t usually,” she replied, keeping her tone light and casual. “Guess today was my lucky day.”

“Guess so,” Chris responded, and Tammy turned around just in time to see him giving her one of his famous, milliwatt smiles. She grinned back, bumping his shoulder playfully on her way into the kitchen. One down, two to go.

By the time she caught up with Pride and Sonja, it was almost midday, and the hot, humid weather prompted a picnic invite from Pride to eat lunch at the bridge in town. Chris, Sonja, and the others all agreed, leaving Gregorio as the odd one out. She knew she couldn’t decline without offering an explanation, lest they become suspicious of her motives, but she couldn’t accept the invitation when she knew either Chris or Sonja would try to roll up her sleeves the second they arrived, either to tease her or out of care for her wellbeing. Refusing their help against potential heatstroke when it was summer in the middle of New Orleans was a one-way ticket to having her secret revealed.

“Tammy, you’re not going to lunch with us?” Percy pouted, her eyebrows drawn up in that Percy way, that said she was more concerned than disappointed, but was too proud to put voice to her feelings. “Come on, don’t you want to hang with the gang?”

“As much as I would love to ‘hang with the gang’,” Gregorio used air quotes and gave Sonja a playful smirk, “I have a prior obligation.”

“Oooh, someone’s got a hot date,” Chris said, walking into the kitchen with an ice chest for their drinks. “So who is it, Gregorio? Black-haired beauty? Feisty redhead? That’s my type.”

“Excuse you,” Percy retorted, raising her eyebrow in his direction.

“Pardon me,” Chris corrected, giving Sonja a fond smile, “That’s usually my type.”

“Better,” Sonja affirmed, before turning her attention to Gregorio once more. “But seriously, T, where you goin’ that you can’t come hang with us?”

“Well, Chris wasn’t exactly wrong,” Gregorio replied, lifting her coffee mug to her lips to take a sip so she could avoid having to look either of them in the eyes. “A certain mayor’s secretary asked me out the other day, and I can’t leave her hanging a second time.” Though it was a lie that they had a lunch date, it wasn’t a lie that she’d been asked out, so Gregorio didn’t feel as bad as she maybe should for using Amber as her scapegoat.

“With that one, you better not,” Chris replied, chuckling. “I’ve heard she’s got some high standards.”

“Of course she does,” Gregorio retorted without missing a beat. “She’s going on a date with me, isn’t she?”

Sonja and Chris both laughed at that, the latter ribbing her good-naturedly for a minute or two before they calmed down. She allowed her smirk to play on her lips, knowing she could pass it off as satisfaction at her joke instead of her lie. They weren’t suspicious of her anymore, not after she’d thrown them a bone. For now, she was safe.

~ ~ ~

Later that night, when the team was getting ready to wrap up and head home, Pride caught her eye, gesturing her into the kitchen. Tammy dropped her bag and took a deep breath, heading in to meet him. She could feel her heart skip a beat.

Of all of them, Pride was the most likely to figure out that something was wrong, even if he was the least likely to react with anything other than kind, calm patience. Still, the idea of her boss finding out her most guarded secret was more terrifying than she could fathom.

Without speaking or otherwise acknowledging Pride, Gregorio took a seat on the barstool across from him, crossed her arms, and waited. She could feel her heart pounding in her throat, but forced herself to be motionless and keep her expression blank, lest she give away the anxiety she was feeling.

“So, Gregorio,” Pride said, taking in her position and folding his arms across the top of the bar, “Want to tell me what’s going on with you?”

“Nothing,” Gregorio replied defensively, before she could stop herself and try to temper her tone. “What makes you think something’s going on?”

Pride raised an eyebrow at her, unimpressed. “Well, for starters, you came in late today, said it was traffic when traffic is nonexistent on your street, you’re actin’ awful odd, and then you lied to Christopher and Sonja about who you were with for lunch today.”

Gregorio opened her mouth to protest, but before she could, Pride held up his hand and continued, “I have it on good authority that the mayor’s secretary didn’t leave her office all day.” He softened, giving her a worried look, and said, “Just want to know you’re okay, and if anything’s goin’ on that we can help with.”

“It’s nothing,” Gregorio sighed, letting her shoulders slump in defeat. There was no use pretending she was fine if Pride already knew something was up. She didn’t have to tell him everything, but maybe if she told him about her mom, at least, he’d leave her alone.

“Just a little upset from a phone call with my mother yesterday,” Gregorio admitted, picking at her nails to avoid meeting Pride’s eyes. “I came out to her.”

Pride nodded, his eyes filling with support and kindness for her, and moved to wipe down the kitchen counter, in an effort to give her space to talk as much as she wanted to. Gregorio knew the tactic, was familiar with it from teasing the truth out of LaSalle when he was being particularly stubborn. Though she was loathe to admit it, she appreciated it. “How did she take it?”

“Not well,” Tammy sighed, pressing her nail into the pad of her thumb to resist the urge to burst into tears again. She had already done enough crying in the past 24 hours. “She basically gave me an ultimatum; stop being gay, or stop coming home. Permanently.”

“Oh, Tammy,” Pride breathed, sympathy pouring out of him and into her. “I’m so sorry.” He reached across the bar to lay a hand on her shoulder, and against her will, Tammy leaned into the touch.

“It’s okay,” she murmured, closing her eyes to avoid letting Pride see how glossy they had become. “W-We were never really close.”

“Still, that’s gotta hurt,” Pride said, withdrawing just enough to allow her time to fight back the tears and open her eyes once more. “Parents’ rejection is…one of the worst things that can happen to a child. No matter how old they are.”

“Yeah,” Tammy breathed, the weight of her own exhaustion hitting her as she slumped on the barstool. She couldn’t remember the last time she had let something damage her like this. Who knew her mother’s decision would have such an impact on her? She sighed and tugged lightly on one of her sleeves, until it was down far enough on her arm to cover her fingers. Pride caught the movement, but said nothing. “To make matters worse, she tried to frame it like she loved me, and she was going to be there for me.” Tammy laughed bitterly, emotion swelling up in her throat. “She’s so convinced I’m going to change, Pride.”

“Not the way it works,” Pride said fondly, giving her a warm smile. His hand, still on her shoulder, was like a grounding wire, keeping her settled, and she felt like she was being comforted by the father she never had.

“Yeah,” Tammy said, again, and her voice wobbled on the last syllable. Under Pride’s kind, supportive words and gentle ministrations, she could feel the dam in her chest threatening to explode, and she slid sideways off of the barstool, grabbing for her coat and heading towards the door. She had to get out of here, before she lost it completely. “Anyway, I should go - ”

“Wait,” Pride called, and moved to follow her, grabbing her wrist to stop her from leaving. Without thinking, still trying to calm the tidal wave of emotion in her chest, Gregorio hissed in pain.

“Tammy,” Pride said slowly, releasing her wrist with some reluctance, “There something wrong with your arm?”

“Ah, it’s nothing,” Tammy replied, giving him a quick, panicked smile. “Just bruised it on the countertop when I was getting ready for work this morning.”

“That so?” Pride asked, and he sounded suspicious enough to make Tammy’s heart skip a beat in fear. She curled her fingers around her sleeves protectively. “Mind if I take a look at it?”

“Don’t bother,” Gregorio replied, trying to keep the panic out of her voice. “I told you, Pride, it’s nothing.”

“Didn’t sound like nothing,” Pride replied, and he reached for her wrist again. Determined not to give anything away, Tammy kept her face purposefully blank, allowing him to hold her arm in his hand even as his fingers pressing against the cuts felt like a sharp knife against her skin. “Thing is, Tammy…” Pride moved to grasp her sleeve, and Gregorio’s entire body tensed, waiting for his next move. This was not happening.

“You haven’t worn long sleeves this dark, especially during summer, all year,” he continued, “and that first time we talked, up on the balcony in your hotel when you first came here – you wore a tank top, and I don’t think you thought about it then, but I noticed something the others didn’t get the chance to see.” He lifted his gaze to meet Gregorio’s eyes, and she knew, without having to ask what he meant, that she was done for.

Pride knows.

“I’ve seen the scars on your wrists, Tammy,” Pride said softly, “And I’ve never mentioned it, because it’s not my business and I don’t want you to think I’m judging you for it. But if your arm is hurt…after all you’ve been through in the past few days, you understand why I need to check, right?”

Tammy nodded tightly, trying not to cry, as Pride moved to roll up her sleeve. At the last second, just before he could grab the cuff of her shirt, she blurted out: “And what do you think you’ll find, if you check?”

“I think you and I both know the answer to that,” Pride responded, his voice as kind and understanding as ever. Tammy choked on a sob, losing the battle against her emotions, and pulled away from him, running her hands through her hair so hard that she was sure she’d left red, inflamed scratches on her scalp. She heaved a deep breath and choked on it, trying to hold in the breakdown that wanted to happen, fighting to remain in control. Pride couldn’t see her like this. No one could.

“Just - Just please don’t demote me,” Tammy begged, straightening up and gasping for breath, wiping her sweaty palms on her jeans. “D-Don’t put me on desk duty. I can still handle myself in the field, I promise I’m not a liability, Pride.”

“We’ll talk about that later,” Pride said, and her heart sank. “For now, we need to get you taken care of.” He glanced at his watch, and muttered, “Loretta might still be here, I’d have to check the morgue.”

“No – please,” Gregorio pleaded, embarrassment creeping up to settle like fire on her cheeks. “No one else needs to know about this.”

“They do, Tammy,” Pride argued, raising his eyebrows at her. “They’re your teammates. Your family. They care about you. Of course they should know about this.”

“Please,” Tammy said, raising her arms to hug herself, trying to get some semblance of comfort in the least embarrassing or incriminating way possible.

“Look,” Pride said, gesturing for her to sit down across from him in the kitchen once more, taking a seat opposite her on the island, “I know you’re scared. You’re worried about what the others might think. But they love you, Tammy, and they want to help you. I do too.”

“What if they hate me?” Tammy breathed, fresh tears welling up in her eyes. She knew she looked like a wreck, pathetic even, but this was her worst nightmare come true and she couldn’t pretend anymore. “Pride, I’m weak.” She gestured haphazardly at her arms, at herself, and shook her head, avoiding his gaze by staring down the marble kitchen tile. “They’ll see me differently.”

“Maybe so,” Pride conceded, “but not in the way you think. They won’t consider you weak, Tammy. I don’t.” He reached out to lay his hand on her arm, comforting and grounding her with the touch. “You’re one of the strongest people I know, Gregorio.”

“Even now that you know I - ” Tammy gestured to her arms once more, at a loss for words. “ - Again?”

“Even now,” Pride confirmed, giving her a firm nod and a steady look that swore honesty. “Tammy, no one on this team will think any less of you for struggling with this.”

“Promise?” Tammy whispered, letting some of the vulnerability she was feeling slip into her voice as she asked the question.

“Promise,” Pride affirmed, and gave her arm a soft, gentle pat.

Gregorio nodded, her shoulders slumping in relief as some of the tension was alleviated. “Do you have to tell them tonight?”

“No, not tonight,” Pride responded. “But soon.”

“I understand.” Gregorio looked away, the fear thundering back to life in her chest. For an instant, under Pride’s reassuring words, it had disappeared.

“It’s gonna be okay, Gregorio,” Pride promised her, moving from the opposite side of the bar to wrap her in a tight hug. “The team’ll take care of you.”

“Shouldn’t have to,” Gregorio protested weakly, but Pride shushed her with a hand in her hair, stroking gently.

“We want to,” he said, and Gregorio was struck with how much she wished he could have been her real dad. Maybe her future would’ve turned out better if he was. “This is somethin’ that everyone is more ‘n willin’ to help you with. We’re gonna get it taken care of. Got your back, Tammy, not just for work.”

“Thanks, Pride,” Gregorio whispered, too emotional to express her gratitude any further. She was sure Pride understood. In his arms, trembling, Gregorio could admit that maybe what she had really needed was the support and acceptance of her loved ones. Maybe her mother would never love her the way she was, but she had an entire family here in New Orleans that did.

Maybe that was what mattered.

And if, the next day, when Loretta called her down to the morgue and told Gregorio about her mother’s issues with self-harm while she bandaged the fresh cuts on Tammy’s arms, she felt a small piece of her heart begin to heal, she didn’t mention it. And if, when Sebastian gave her a hug and a kiss on the cheek and offered to call her and ramble about whatever came to mind when she was having urges, she started to tear up, well, no one could prove it (she had threatened Sebastian with removing his Power Rangers collection from the lab if he told anyone). And if, when Chris said nothing but drew her into the tightest hug she could ever remember receiving, and Percy showed up at her house without warning to sit on the couch with her and watch basketball, she began to realise this was all the family she needed, she knew she could blame Pride for most of it.

Getting clean again, and resisting the urge to take a blade to her arms whenever she felt like her world was falling apart, was a fight that took months, and she did end up on desk duty for some of it, but despite the silence that stretched between her and her mother, she found that the most important thing was the family that she had right here.

Maybe she didn’t need what used to be her home when she had a better one here in New Orleans.

[improvidus]

Live to Die Another Day | Gregorio & LaSalle Oneshot

Warnings | None

Rating | K+

Genres | H/C, Light Angst, Friendship, Fluff

Characters | Tammy Gregorio, Christopher LaSalle

Pairings | Tammy Gregorio & Christopher LaSalle (Pals. Unless you wanna do le squinty-squint.)

Word Count | 1K+

Summary: Tag to 4x06, Acceptable Loss. Tammy struggles to process LaSalle’s brush with death. Thankfully, she doesn’t have to deal with it alone. Gregorio/LaSalle bonding and broship. 

"Gregorio."

Gregorio groaned internally as she dropped a bag of tea into her mug.

"Gregorio." LaSalle's voice was louder, more insistent this time.

"What?" she snapped, watching the color from the teabag bleed into the hot water as she dunked it again. He came to a halt behind her and she reached for creamer she never used as an excuse to fully turn her back.

"You wanna tell me what's goin' on with you?"

Gregorio kept her voice casual. "Nothing's going on with me."

"Uh-huh. Come on, you've been avoiding me all day—yesterday, too."

"You're imagining things, LaSalle."

"Gregorio. Come on, this is ridiculous. Did I say something? If I've offended you somehow, I'd like to know about it so I can make it right."

A lump burned its way up her throat and she clenched her jaw. Not now. She swallowed hard before she replied, schooling her voice to remain steady and light. "What's the matter, you got a guilty conscience or something?"

Suddenly, his hand was on her arm, spinning her around to face him. The frustrated determination in his eyes was buried in a flood of concern when he saw the tears in hers. "Gregorio! What's wrong?"

Her chin trembled. Dang it. "Listen, I know what this looks like, but I'm okay."

"Gregorio…"

"Leave it alone, LaSalle," she growled, shoving him back a step.

He released her arm, but his eyes never left hers. "What's going on?"

She shook her head and looked away, furiously attempting to blink back the confounded wetness trying to escape her eyes.

"Gregorio—"

She held up a hand to silence him. "Shush. I'm gonna tell you, I just—mm." If I talk now I'm gonna be crying all over you in about half a second. She studied her feet, chewing the inside of her cheek.

He waited.

When she finally trusted herself enough to speak, her voice was low and shaky, still far to close to tears for her comfort. "I thought we'd lost you." There was a scuff on her boot. She hadn't noticed it before.

She knelt on the rough cement floor, the toes of her boots scraping against the pavement as she dropped to her knees and joined Pride at LaSalle's side.

"The other day...when we found you, and you didn't have a pulse? I thought you were gone." She wrestled her eyes up to look at his face.

His frown deepened in confusion, an incredulous smile starting to tug at his lips. "Gregorio, I'm fine—"

Anger flared in her gut and she cut him off. "Four minutes."

"What?"

"You were gone for four minutes, LaSalle. That we know of." There was no telling how long it had been between their finding him and Chloe leaving him for dead. She crossed her arms, her voice rising. "I gave you CPR! You wouldn't move, wouldn't wake up, wouldn't breathe."

She almost hadn't believed Percy before, but now Pride was doing chest compressions and pleading with LaSalle to wake up and Percy was speaking frantically into her phone and LaSalle just lay there, still, too still to be the animated man she knew and far too still to be yet among the living.

LaSalle was silent. She was glad.

"Pride...I know it messed him up, but I think somehow he knew. He knew you were gonna be okay, that we would get you back. But I—" her voice cracked, "—there was this lead in my gut, you know?" She scrubbed a hand under her eyes, the tears scalding her skin. "I didn't know four minutes could take so long."

Her hands on his chest, pumping—One. Two. Three. Four—trying to do the work his heart should be doing as bone and cartilage ground and popped beneath her palm—Seven. Eight. Nine—Percy pacing in the background—Eleven. Twelve. Thirteen. Fourteen—his head lolling in time with her efforts—Sixteen. Seventeen. Eighteen. Nineteen. Twenty...

She ran a hand over her mouth and looked LaSalle in the eye for the first time since he'd walked into the room. "So, yeah. To answer your questions, I'm a little messed up right now. I'm mad. I'm mad at Chloe for almost taking my friend away. I'm mad at myself for giving up on you so easily." She scoffed. "I'm even mad at you for scaring me like that." She wasn't sure when her voice had gotten this loud, or when she had stopped fighting the stream of tears that was now flowing freely down her face. A sob bubbled free. "You were dead, LaSalle."

She didn't fight his grip on her arm this time, as he pulled her into a hug and held her tight. Another sob escaped as she returned his embrace, drinking in the heartbeat that thumped firm and steady beneath her ear.

His eyes flew open and he shot upright and then everyone was talking at once, touching him, watching his face twist with fear and confusion and pain and life. Pride's arms were suddenly wound around his shoulders, keeping him upright as Percy grabbed for his flailing hands and Gregorio thrust her hand against his chest, over his heart. The beat was too fast, erratic and thready, but it was there.

"But I'm not dead. Thanks in large part to you, I'm right here and I'm just fine."

They stood that way for a while, Gregorio's sobs fading to hiccups and the tears beginning to dry. LaSalle squeezed her a little tighter. "I owe you one, Tammy."

She snuffled and pulled away, giving his chest a brisk pat as her crusty exoskeleton slipped back into place. "Yeah, you do. And you can repay me by making sure I never have to do that again."

His amused smirk faded to gravity as he looked at her. "You know I can't promise that any more than you can."

"Yeah, well...do your best, yeah?"

"You got it." He folded her back into his embrace and she returned it tightly.

"Oh—and LaSalle?" Her voice was muffled in his shirt.

"Yeah?"

"You tell anyone about this, I'm gonna take you out and finish what Chloe started, you got me?"

A laugh rumbled beneath her ear. "Copy that."

[themadhalewrites]

Mistletoe

Fandom: NCIS: New Orleans

Character/s Included: Dwayne Pride, Christopher LaSalle and Reader

Word Count: 149

Walking into the office was nothing seemed abnormal, it was partly decorated for Christmas with a few coloured fairy lights hung across the ceiling.

Doing what you usually did which was walk into the kitchen to make a new pot of coffee but walking in you collided with Pride on accident.

“Sorry Pride” You mumbled and started moving away from him but was stopped by two hands on your shoulders which pushed you into Pride again.

“No skipping on tradition Y/N” you heard LaSalle say so you looked up.

“Who put the mistletoe above the kitchen door?” Pride asked before he glared at LaSalle.

LaSalle acted like he did nothing, “I wonder who put that up there, now hurry up with tradition we would all like to get in for coffee.”

You just quickly pecked Pride’s lips before pushing past him to the outdoor area out from the kitchen.

[probiefanatic12-blog]

Request

I'm taking request for NCIS and NCIS NOLA. Just a reminder that I'm still catching up on NOLA so it might not be that good.

[quanticowrites]

Of course I missed you (Dwayne Pride x Reader)

•• For anon 💕 enjoy! ••

The past few months had been a whirlwind. You thanked god that Laurel was off of school so she could stay down in New Orleans to watch Dwayne when you weren’t there. Such as the past three weeks when you’d had to leave to deal with a family problem. Stepping into Dwayne’s apartment above the bar made you sigh contently. You’d missed this place and New Orleans as a whole. Your hometown had nothing on this. The atmosphere was always so...free. Music around every corner made it seem magical.

“Dwayne? Laurel? Anyone home?” You called out, setting your suitcase by the door for now.

“(Y/n)?” Dwayne came walking in from the kitchen. You smiled, crossing the room in a few quick steps, and wrapping him up in a light hug. He chuckled. “Why didn’t ya tell me you were coming home today?”

“I don’t know, didn’t Laurel say you weren’t allowed in the kitchen?”

“I did, but I made an exception tonight.” Laurel’s voice came from behind Dwayne. “I guess we’ll be serving three instead of two.”

“Sorry If I ruined any special father-daughter plans.” You expressed, finally letting go of Dwayne and taking a step back. “I can get out of your hair for a few more hours if you want.”

“No!” Both Laurel and Dwayne said in unison.

“So, you did miss me?” You mused, smirking up at Dwayne. “All this time on your hands I thought you might go get yourself a new partner.” He scoffed.

“Of course I missed you.” Laurel poked her head out of the kitchen and rolled her eyes.

“Come on, lovebirds. I have dinner on the table.” Dwayne sighed at his daughter's eagerness. He let you into the kitchen first, following close behind, laughing.

“Alright, alright, we’re coming.”

Tag list: @stanathanxoox , @nikkiwierden , @malindacath , @havlindzk , @countrygal17a , @memyselfandmaddox , @octobersmog , @mizzezm , @diaryofafan17 , @emmitheacefangirl , @a-sad-excuse-of-everything , @dressed-up-just-like-z1ggy

[navalcriminalimagines]

Masterlist

Requests are open for those characters and others from NCIS, NCIS New Orleans, SVU and The Last of Us. 

Requests can come from those writing prompts, or just be something you have in mind.

I reserve the right not to do a request if it makes me uncomfortable, or if the inspo isn’t there. Hope you understand. ❤️

If you want to be tag for a specific character, multiple characters or all of them, just let me know! 

Leroy Jethro Gibbs

Alden Parker

Rafael Barba

Sonny Carisi

Mike Dodds

Dwayne Pride

Douglas Hamilton (NCIS: New Orleans) : Home Sweet Home ; Distracted ; I can be that someone ; Saving water ; Wishes

Joel Miller

Aaron Hotchner

[lavenderandsnow]

a fanfiction survey

Stressed out grad student here trying to complete a class project on fanfiction writing here.....if you are a fanfiction writer, can I trouble you for a five minute survey, super simple? No personal info is collected. Inbox me for any questions, thank you and have a great day!

https://forms.gle/wCGkzumMEKzX6nvz6