lyl_devil | FIC: Gibbs' Barista: The Other Woman

Title: Gibbs’ Barista 4: The Other Woman
Author: Lyl (

lyl_devil)
Rating: PG
Beta:

tygermama
Disclaimer: NCIS does not belong to me, I just like to play with their characters. Also, I claim no rights to Starbucks, I just like to make fun of them.
Spoilers: Mid-Season 5. (ish)

Summary: Problem employees, oblivious bosses and Gibbs. Just another day at Starbucks.

~!~

Ella’s week starts out surreal – with Mike deciding at seven Monday morning that after three years he’s had enough of his assistant manager coming in drunk, and the job is now Ella’s – and gone headlong into WTF when Kevin, the founding member of the ‘I hate the FBI club’ gives his two weeks notice to go be an FBI analyst.

Now she’s looking at an order form that suggests Mike has decided that for the weeks leading up to Valentine’s Day, the entire staff will be forced to wear bright pink aprons and headbands with little heart antennas.

The entire staff, with the exception of Stephanie, are going to mutiny. Stephanie will probably wear hers on the subway to and from work, and well beyond the February fourteenth deadline.

Ella can’t wait to graduate and hopefully start working someplace slightly more sane. Or at least someplace that pays better.

Leaving the order form in plain view on the desk for Mike, with a post-it note saying ‘Not a chance in HELL!’ and an arrow pointing to the appropriate line, Ella makes her way out from the back office and freezes in place.

A quick glare at Zoe shows her the girl is studiously paying attention to the coffee she’s making, because Zoe knows she should not be making coffee right now. Zoe should be on cash, and Helena should be behind the bar, no matter how slow of a Saturday it is. If they had stayed where Ella had assigned them, Ella wouldn’t have to intercede in the horror show in the making at the cash.

“Helena,” Ella calls out, stopping the girl in mid shirt-pull. “Can you go get the extra bags of French Roast for the floor display?”

The customer who was about to be an unwitting viewer to Helena’s latest tattoo – and by latest, she means two days – sends Ella a look of such desperate gratitude that Ella tries to smile. She really does, but this entire situation is reminding Ella that Helena had spent the half hour before opening showing off all her newly acquired body art.

Six months down the road, when Helena’s fallen out of the goth fad, she’s going to be spending her money on a not inconsiderable amount of laser surgery. Unless Helena’s state department mother actually starts to pay attention to her seventeen year old daughter again, in which case the body art will no doubt double before Helena realizes she’s just not that into the goth lifestyle.

Ella takes over the cash quickly, giving the relieved customer a significant discount for his near-miss.

The next in line is Gibbs and – surprisingly – an older blonde woman, which makes Ella feel relieved that she’s gotten to Helena before Gibbs did. Her entire week is bizarre enough as it is.

Ella smiles in greeting, honestly happy to see him. She rarely gets to exchange more than a few words with him on any given day, so the lack of a line gives her a chance to spend a few minutes to grill him for information. Maybe even get an introduction to whoever this blonde woman is. In the six and a half years Gibbs has been coming in for coffee, he’s always come in alone. It has her curious.

“Getting an early start on your Monday morning caffeine fix, Gibbs?” she asks him, not having to fake her smile for the first time today.

“More like a late start on the Saturday morning fix,” he tells her, causing her to raise both brows. It’s almost ten in the morning, and he doesn’t strike her as the kind of guy to sleep in on the weekends.

“Well, if you hadn’t broken the coffee maker,” teases his companion, smiling.

“I didn’t break the coffee maker!” Gibbs argues back, and the familiarity of the argument between them brings out a silent laugh.

“I’m pretty sure banging it against the counter until the insides are moving around on their own is breaking it, Jethro,” she says again, laughing.

“It already wasn’t working at that point. I was just making sure,” claims Gibbs, and Ella tries very hard to keep the peels of laughter from escaping, because she can picture the scene in her head. Poor decaffeinated Gibbs.

Then her mind replays the past few seconds, and a grin escapes before she can catch it. Pushing it down, she puts on her ‘yes, you are the line that holds chaos at bay in our crazy, crazy world, and I am totally not making fun of you in my head for it’ face, and asks as innocently as possible, “Jethro?”

Gibbs glares at her in a way that’s totally different from his normal ‘my coffee is coming too slow’ glare, yet it still has the same effect on Ella. Which is none at all.

“I wasn’t expecting a first name for another two years, Gibbs,” Ella tells him seriously. “You’re ahead of schedule. Were you always this much of an overachiever?” She can see the smile on the blonde woman’s face, but keeps her eyes on Gibbs and his glare that has lessened somewhat, but still communicates that he’s humouring her at the moment.

Instead of replying, he makes his usual demand. “Coffee. Now.”

Ella tilts her head to the side and glances pointedly from Gibbs, to the woman and back again, raising an eyebrow in question. The request is clear, and Gibbs merely rolls his eyes before offering introductions.

“Ella, Hollis Mann. Hollis, Ella.”

Never let it be said the man couldn’t get to the heart of the matter.

“Nice to meet you,” greets Hollis, offering a hand and a rueful smile, obviously fully aware of Gibbs’ social graces. Or lack thereof. “Ella-of-the-no-last-name?”

Ella smiles back, wide and open. “Ella-of-the-he’s-never-bothered-to-ask,” she says, turning a smile on Gibbs while Hollis looks at him with reproach. Gibbs just rolls his eyes at the double teaming.

Before she can start the ordering process – the entire reason for their presence in Starbucks – a box is dropped purposely two inches from her foot with a loud thump. Ella’s good mood instantly vanishes, and without even bothering to turn around, calls out, “Thank you, Helena. Could you put them in the display now?” She’s using a tone most first grade teachers would use when asking why some kid just ate their jar of paste instead of their applesauce, but doesn’t care. Come Monday, Mike’s getting an earful about Helena who will hopefully be on her way out. Ella refuses to deal with this shit. If they didn’t have the Saturday rush starting in forty minutes and no one else available, she would have sent the girl home after the first tattoo stunt.

An insistent cough forces her to turn away from the cash, after sharing a commiserating look with Gibbs about problem staff.

“Yes, Helena?” Ella asks. She gets a glare and a pointed look at Helena’s defaced name tag, where the ‘en’ have been scratched out with a black sharpie.

Ella rolls her eyes in the exact way that always set that vein in her father’s forehead to pulsing dangerously, and corrects herself in the driest tone she can manage. “Sorry, Hela,” she says, deliberately pronouncing it ‘heel-a’, despite her insistence that it was ‘hell-a’, “Is there something about this that is confusing you?”

She gets a glare in return, and it looks like Helena is about to leave in a huff before she seems to remember herself and schools her face back into a weird mix of defiance and fake depression that she seems to think characterizes goths everywhere.

“The box is closed.”

“And?” asks Ella, because really, she’s not seeing the problem.

“I’ll need a knife to open it.”

“So get out the box cutters and go to town,” Ella advises, still not seeing whatever problem Helena is.

“But what if I’m suddenly overcome by my suicidal urges and slit my wrists?”

Ella just blinks as she takes that in, reminding herself that last month, before the black hair, black clothes, tattoos, collars, piercings and make-up, Helena was one of the more stable personalities in the place.

“I’ll take my chances.”

Apparently dissatisfied with Ella’s reaction, Helena grabs the box cutters from under the register and pulls the box of coffee beans around to the main floor area of the store, leaving Ella with Gibbs and Hollis.

“Half my staff is out with the flu,” Ella explains to Gibbs when he gives her a questioning look.

“New dress code?” he wonders with a gesture towards the corner where Helena’s working. Ella can see where he’s coming from, because even though Mike has always been relatively slack on what was considered appropriate Starbucks work wear, a leather studded collar, black leather pants and a see-through black mesh shirt that is only descent due to the green apron, is decidedly not appropriate wear for anyplace outside of a sex club. Or a street corner.

“She decided a few weeks ago that she was living a lie and has since embraced the ‘darker’ side of life,” Ella explains with appropriate finger quotes. “Which she seems to think means wearing black lipstick, talking about suicide all the time and tattooing a pentagram on her ass.”

Gibbs looks alternately horrified and freaked out but covers it quickly, before muttering, “Trendy goth,” under his breath.

Ella looks at him in surprise for an instant before beaming her approval at him. “Excellent knowledge of a youth subculture, Gibbs,” she praises, laughing at his dirty look. Hollis laughs with her, though Ella gets the feeling it’s for a slightly different reason.

“So, your usual order?” Ella asks, redirecting the topic to the reason they’re in the shop and she has a job. Gibbs nods, and orders two of his regular coffees.

“Now, wait a minute, Jethro. I know what kind of coffee you drink,” Hollis forestalls, turning to Ella to alter her coffee order. “I’ll take mine with sugar. Lots of sugar.”

Ella smiles at Hollis then calls out the order to Zoe, “I need one Army and one Marine special.”

Turning back to the couple in front of her, Ella smiles at the looks on their faces that are half surprised and half suspicious.

“My brother was on leave this past week. And if you’d been in the last few days,” Ella explains pointedly to Gibbs, “you would know that he named your very special cup of caffeinated gold.”

“Oh?” he asks with a perfectly raised eyebrow that makes her remember the look her father would give her and her brothers when they tried to blame the broken punch bowl on their arthritic cat.

“He said that Marines may be in to S&M as a valid lifestyle choice, but he was Army and to put some damn sugar in the coffee.”

Ella grins at the loud laugh that comes from Hollis and the rueful twist to Gibbs’ lips, as if he can’t decide if he should be amused or insulted.

A cell phone interrupts the cash exchange, as both Gibbs and Hollis pull out their electronic leashes to determine who the culprit is.

“It’s mine,” announces Hollis as she flips the phone open. A grimace is followed by an apologetic look in Gibbs’ direction before she heads outside, likely for privacy and a better signal.

“So,” Ella says with a grin. “New girlfriend?”

Gibbs sends her a dark look, “Don’t.” It just makes her smile wider.

“Come on, Gibbs. It’s good to have a social life that doesn’t involve paper cups, plastic lids and me as your caffeine dealer.”

“Just give me the coffee,” he demands. Ella can see his lips move as he tries to hold off a smile.

“And no one gets hurt?” she finishes for him, barely retraining the giggle as he rolls his eyes. Again. “Though you might end up hurting yourself if you keep rolling your eyes every time either one of us says something.”

The look she gets in response says ‘then stop saying stupid things’ more clearly than anything else.

Zoe comes over then, saving him from further teasing, and Ella makes a note to reprimand Zoe for her efficiency. She could have easily gotten another few minutes of torture in.

Gibbs grabs the cups with a mild glare at the two of them, which sends Zoe running back behind the bar, but causes Ella to tone down her grin from ‘supernova’ to simply amused. Just as he turns his back to her, Ella calls his attention back to her.

“I like her,” she tells him when he looks at her over his shoulder, adding a nod of approval.

She can almost feel him rolling his eyes again, but just nods his own farewell and is out the door before she can start laughing.

The sound of coffee beans raining down on the floor pull her attention back to her problem child and the sight of three bags of premium French roast spilling out across the floor.

“Did you see that?!” accuses Helena, holding up a finger in Ella’s direction. “I almost sliced my finger off!”

Ella turned her attention back to the departing figures of Gibbs and Hollis through the windows, silently wishing them a quiet day.

Someone should have one.

END

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From:

zephiey.livejournal.com

That was fabulous. I missed these little coffee breaks.

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