Different Roads Challenge #2

Title:  You Are Who I Was Looking For
Author: Ladyholder
Challenge #:  2
Fandom/Original:  NCIS, The Sentinel
Genre (slash/het/gen/etc):  Pre-slash
Warnings:  Mugging
Concrit (yes/no): If you must, off list only, please

The glitter of light playing on the blued steel of the blade kept my attention focused on it. After all, that blade was pressed against the throat of the cop I had been sent out here to find. He had information that I needed about my case. I just hadn’t expected to find him in an alley being held up by some asshole who screamed tweaker to me.

I swallowed back the growl that rose to my throat. The tweaker was between me and the information source I needed to find a child who was missing. There was no way I was going to let him hurt that cop.

Stalking forward on careful feet, I made certain to make no noise. The cop was looking at me, green eyes calm as he continued to try to talk the tweaker down. Most people would have been dead at the hands of someone as high as this asshole was, so I was now very interesting in finding out what the cop’s  secret was. Apparently, he was doing an okay job at the talking thing because the muscles on the tweaker started to relax from where they had been when I had first seen him. I stood just outside the alley and kept a careful watch as the knife dropped away from the cop’s throat.

As soon as it was clear, I moved forward and had the tweaker on the ground, cuffs in place. Souped up adrenaline responses were deeply useful sometimes.  When an Armani covered arm reached into my line of sight and moved the assholes head to the side so he could breathe, I blinked. I hadn’t registered the cop’s movements. Apparently, I had classified him as not a threat to me. Why? Sitting back on my heels, I looked at the other man and let my senses unfurl.

Amber, sandalwood and vanilla. Oh, I wanted to curl up against the neck of that man and breathe deeply. His scent was enough to cover the stench of the alley we were in. Rotting lobster was not a scent I wanted to smell again.  Leaning forward slightly I filtered out the stench and took another sample of the scents coming from the other man. Still the same alluring combination of scents and it wasn’t coming from an aftershave as it contained no artificial notes at all.

“Hey, no concentrating so hard, buddy. Let’s get Sparky here taken care of and then we will talk,” I heard a voice say. It was low and smooth, filled with the power of a man who knew what his voice could do for him. When I looked up, it was into those green eyes and I tried not to drown in them. He was right, this was no place for me to lose my shit.

“Right. Well, then. Let’s get, Sparky here someplace secure. Then you can get me the information I need on the Barton case, tell me how you talked Sparky down and maybe more,” Fuck, I had not meant to include the more part. Damn it. There was something about this guy that was sliding through all my defenses with an ease that was frankly, horrifying.

Hands busy hauling our guest up, the cop looked over at me. He was a bit taller than I was, but he didn’t seem to be the type to use it to loom and I appreciated that, since most of the men I had met who were taller than me tried that tactic. It got very annoying to teach them that it was useless. Pushing the handcuffed man ahead of him, the cop looked over one shoulder and nodded towards the entrance. “I promise I will tell you everything, but let’s get out of this alley. It stinks in so many different ways, has to be worse for you.”

Now that he reminded me of it, the reek was brought forcibly to my attention and I was not in the mood to stay there. Following after my cop was much more entertaining at least. The berating of Sparky was wide, varied and most of it went right over the tweakers head. Anyway, the cop… “What is your name anyway? Your Captain only told me that you were the detective in charge of the Barton case, what you looked like and where to find you.”

“Detective Anthony DiNozzo, Tony. At your service,” he said. “Okay Sparky, we are at my car. You will be getting into it and being a good boy all the way to the station. If you aren’t, I will be cuffing your ankles together and then your hands to those cuffs. This is so you are restrained, but not  in danger of suffocation. I also get to read you your rights. Once I have done these you will be asked if you understand. If you don’t, we will figure out a way for you to understand. Okay?”

The words were just as quiet and firm as they had been when he had been talking the tweaker down and I found myself leaning forward slightly. When I realized what was going on, I stood up, but took the time to get a good look at the other man. Good, hell better suit than mine, sandy blond hair, deep green eyes and a sun-touched complexion were the first things I noticed. The easy grace of his movements, the strength hidden under the suit and the small gold Guide symbol on his lapel were the next.

DiNozzo was a Guide? I was going to roast his Captain for sending me out here on my own. I, like every other government employed Sentinel, wore the symbol of my rank on my jacket and it was as obvious as it always was. From the look DiNozzo had given me, he had clued in on that fact too. The voice tricks he was using on the perp were part of being a Guide too I realized. It would do no one any good if a Guide couldn’t calm down a dangerous, out of control Sentinel at any moment.

As soon as the Miranda was read to Sparky, he was gently loaded into the back of DiNozzo squad car and I moved forward, intent on getting another whiff of his scent. The only thing that stopped me was crowding him against the side of his car was the hand he threw up against my chest. Right on the embroidered symbol of my rank.

“There is no way, shape or form that I will let you get that close to me while we are here Sentinel. I am going to take my guest back to the station, get you the information that you need and only then will we see how far this goes,” DiNozzo’s voice was hard and unyielding, leaving me no room to move. It wasn’t like he was controlling me with his voice, it was more like he was bringing me out of my instincts, letting the modern man be in charge. Relieved that he had been able to pull me back, I moved away. “Thank you, Sentinel. May I have your name please?”

Oh. Damn I felt dumb. I had been off my stride since I had seen the other man and it was causing me to forget everything. Ears burning with embarrassment, I introduced myself, “Leroy Jethro Gibbs, Senior Agent, NCIS, Level Six Sentinel.”

I could hear DiNozzo hum as I named myself. There was no surprise when I confirmed that I was a Sentinel, but there was a sharp spike of lust in his scent. Hopefully that meant that the interest I had in him was going to be returned. Stepping back out of DiNozzo’s personal space was hard, but I needed to make sure that I didn’t push too  hard, too fast. I didn’t want a quick fuck or a sloppy bond, I wanted more. “I’ll see you at the station then, Guide.”

DiNozzo only nodded as he slipped into his car and took off. The walk to my own was a short but uncomfortable trip due to the hard on that I had developed as soon as I had clued into the other man’s status. Biology and involuntary reactions sucked some days. The ride to the station was just long enough to take care of that problem while I thought about what I wanted from the man who might just be my Guide.

From the way I was reacting to him, we were compatible and if I had reacted to him this strongly with only one touch and the scent of him…. Yeah, I wanted him. And I was going to do all I could to keep him.

When we got to the station, I stood aside and let my Guide process Sparky. Who, as it turned out was named Cornelius Neabert Allen IV. And I thought my name was bad? No wonder the little shit had turned out like that. How parents can be evil enough to keep a name like that going, I will never know. If I had been him, I think I would have stuck with Sparky.

Dragging my mind away from the mental digression it had wandered down, I took the clipboard preloaded with some paper from DiNozzo and wrote down what I had witnessed. Cornelius was going to be fairly miserable in jail for a good long time. Threatening a Guide was not the smartest thing he could have done. By far.

My initial report was taken as soon as I finished it and I picked a spot that would let me keep an eye on DiNozzo as he worked on getting Sparky booked and safely in a holding cell. Once that was taken care of I moved up on my Guide and tried not to crowd into a safe corner where we could talk. The urge, the need, to touch, taste and explore the man before me was getting stronger the longer I spent with him. But this was not the time or the place to relax my control. Yet. On the other hand I had been sharing space with a Guide who had started throwing out masses of bonding and lust pheromones. If we didn’t get a break, the mundanes around us would start to notice and that would not be a good thing. Because the first time one of them put his hand on DiNozzo, he would be drawing back a nub.

When I found myself growling softly at most of the mundanes in the bullpen, I moved myself to the corner nearest my Guide and dropped myself to the first level of awareness I had learned as a sniper. I was aware of everything around me, but the experience kept me calm. The whole thing was similar to what I learned when I had gotten training in being a Sentinel. Meditation, for all the New-Age hocus pocus connotations, had fit well with the skills I already knew.

And to be honest, I liked both states, so it was easy to drop.

It wasn’t until DiNozzo stopped before me and prodded my shields that I came up fully and stopped the low level scanning of my environment that I had been doing. The levels I had been working with were well within my abilities as an unbounded Sentinel since I wasn’t going to risk a zone here. My office was bad enough when I did that on occasion, but here? Where I knew no one and wasn’t bonded to my Guide? No.

Eyes showing his concern, DiNozzo looked me over. The bonding pheromones were still pouring off of him and now the scents of lust were ratcheting up to join the cloud around him. And his coworkers were noticing it. “Is Sparky all locked up?”

Amusement flashed across DiNozzo’s face before he nodded, “Yup. All taken care of. There isn’t a bonding suite in this place worth the name, so we need to get to the local Center. They are at least willing to let Sentinels and Guides be alone when it comes to something like this. And they are prepared for the inevitable side effects. So…  Let’s get out of here.”

Raising my hearing let me hear the rumors running rampant through the bullpen and there was no way that I was going to try to bond with my Guide in the environment they were fostering. “I can agree to that. So you had better drive fast Guide, because I am not going to be able to hold out for long.”

“Right. Well then.” I had apparently caught him off guard. From the wry look the other man flashed me, he could feel my amusement. Well, he would just have to get used to that. Snorting softly in what looked like an equal amount of humor, DiNozzo turned on his heel and started to walk away. “Let’s get out of here. And maybe somewhere in this, we can actually talk?”

Eyeing the package housing the reality of my Guide, I could only follow along. I expected that we would be talking sometime, but not too soon. Not with that to look forward too.

TBC in Lion Guide

I found this image here: http://www.fanpop.com/spots/dinozzo-and-gibbs/images/19103180/title/gibbs-tony-fanart

So if anyone knows the artist (or if it is lilith84) let me know so they can get the recognition that they deserve. Thank you!