Work Text:
Purblind - Bishop Entanglement Version
The next day dawned bright and early as the team was called out to a crime scene at the lovely time of 1am. Needless to say, Gibbs was rather grumpy as he got very little sleep due to his percolations about Tony and Bishop last night. Even two coffees hadn't been enough to improve his mood and everyone was giving him a rather wide berth.
Tony wasn't sure what to expect today. Now that Gibbs knew that he could date Bishop, would he ask her out? Since the secret of their living in the same place was known amongst the team now, Bishop and Tony had ridden in together.
They'd all struggled with the early morning fog that had left them all practically purblind. It had cleared up a bit by 6am, but they'd had to do a lot of the initial investigative work with flashlights and unable to see more than a foot in front of them. The only upside so far was that there hadn't been any sign of the lawyers, yet.
Tony had hopes that they'd be able to get through a day without them for once. It would be nice to have a day to figure out what was going to happen with Gibbs without having to worry about making sure the lawyers didn't see anything suspicious. Tony was starting to wonder if the money was really worth the hassle, but he really wanted to buy a house and it was hard to save up for one on a government salary.
Maybe he should talk with Bishop about just calling it off instead of putting them both through this. He didn't want to be the reason that Bishop and Gibbs didn't get together. Though, truthfully he would hate to see Gibbs get together with Bishop for personal reasons, but well he just wanted Gibbs to be happy even if it wasn't with him.
He felt kind of bad for the dead Lieutenant though. It was going to take them longer to find his murderer simply due to the state of the crime scene. They'd tried to gather evidence, but the fog had made it difficult.
He knew that despite his best efforts, he'd messed up at least one piece of evidence because he hadn't been able to see it. He knew he wasn't the only either, though he'd been careful not to call anyone out on it. They were doing the best they could.
He only hoped that any critical evidence they needed would still be there once the fog cleared up. Ducky had taken the body away relatively quickly since he hadn't been able to see to do anything with it at the scene. Tony thought this was the longest they'd ever stayed at a crime scene, but everything was just plain slower with the fog today.
Bishop shook her head at Gibbs and Tony. They could blame the fog all they wanted, but it was obvious to her that they were running blind in more ways than one. Whatever Tony had said to Gibbs last night had definitely not put them on the same page.
She'd caught Gibbs glancing speculatively between them a couple of times, but hadn't said anything. She knew Gibbs was too grumpy to listen to anything she had to say, right now. Plus, the case came first even if she did want to bang their two heads together until they realized that they both had feelings for the other.
She was pretty sure Tony was thinking about calling off the marriage of convenience, which would be fine if it was really what he wanted, but she was pretty sure he was only thinking about doing it to allow her and Gibbs to be together. Really, the pair of them were so blind it was laughable. Somehow it fell to her to try and fix this.
She was pretty sure this was above and beyond her wifely duties under the marriage of convenience, but no one else was going to do it, so what else could she do? She couldn't do anything too obvious at work given Abby and McGee didn't know that the marriage wasn't a real one. The less people that knew that the better in her opinion since it was pretty clear the lawyers were not playing by the rules.
Gibbs was unlikely to blab, but the others would be likely to talk amongst themselves if they knew and Bishop wasn't sure how, yet, but she knew that if that happened the lawyers would manage to get a recording of it and Tony's chance at his inheritance would be sunk. She really hoped that they could figure out a way for Gibbs and Tony to explore the relationship they both wanted, but wouldn't admit to wanting without screwing up Tony's inheritance. She didn't want Tony to lose out on money that should be rightfully his or to lose out on the love of his life.
Not that Tony would blame her, he was a little too forgiving at times, but she knew how much it hurt to lose someone you loved. She may not have loved Jake like Tony loved Gibbs, but it still hurt when he left her. She knew it would be worse if Tony lost Gibbs.
Of course, they were both stubborn. It was entirely possible that neither one of them would even admit their feelings to the other before the inheritance stuff was finalized. She hoped to engineer a scenario where it would be safe for them to admit how they felt about each other, but she knew it wasn't going to be easy to do that with the lawyers.
She wished Tony would let her give the lawyers a piece of her mind or bring them up on charges. She knew what they were doing was clearly illegal, but she had to respect Tony's wishes with this even if she thought it was stupid to play by the rules when the other team clearly wasn't. Though, she knew that as law enforcement they did need to set a good example, which is why if Tony let her she would make sure everything was by the book when she had Fornell or someone else bring them up on charges of harassing a federal agent and anything else she could come up with.
Alas, that was only in her dreams for now. In the meantime, back to the case while she let her mind percolate on how to get Gibbs and Tony together in the background. Crawling on her hands and legs, Bishop felt along the ground for each and every piece of evidence she could find putting everything into separate bags marked as well as she could with the fog.
She heaved a sigh of relief and heard Tony and McGee echo her when Gibbs finally grumpily demanded that they head back to NCIS to figure out what they had. The crime scene was far enough away from populated territory that they didn't really have any witnesses to question, so they'd have to see what witnesses the evidence brought forth. This case was going to be hard to figure out without three of them distracted by Tony and Bishop’s marriage of convenience.