[Fic] Four Seasons and One Merry Christmas

[kittydesade]

Title: Four Seasons and One Merry Christmas
Fandom: Navy NCIS
Characters: Abby/Gibbs, Tony cameo
Word Count: 4,079
Rating: PG
Beta-Readers: adsartha, kikibug13
Summary: Four seasons and a merry Christmas in the lives of a lab rat and her crusty old Marine.


Winter
Christmas was always hard for the team. Most of them had no family they were close to, no friends to spend the time with, no one had any idea how to treat the holidays. McGee could go back to his family but he didn't, not always. Gibbs and Tony didn't have any family they wanted to go back to. Ziva celebrated Channukah, which Abby had even learned to spell the way she recognized it, but Ziva wasn't there right now. Abby's Christmases since moving away from home had most often been spent with friends, and now she tried to spend it with the team, but that turned out to be harder than she had expected the first year. By now, she was mostly resigned.

McGee had agreed to go out drinking with Tony. Actually, the way things had fallen out, he was taking Tony out drinking and planned to stay sober himself, except that Tony didn't know that was what he was doing because Abby and Tim had conspired to make Tony think it was his idea. Abby was proud of McGee for that, not that he would ever find out.

Ducky was visiting his mother in the hospice, which Abby thought was noble if very sad of him, but that left Gibbs. Doing paperwork in the office, by himself. This wasn't right. This wasn't Christmas.

She put her plan into action when everyone else in the building had gone home. Everyone who hadn't drawn emergency duty shifts, anyway. They had wrapped up the case the day before, which gave them a nice Christmas miracle. She was supposed to have Christmas at home with her folks, that's what she'd told the team. She never told her folks she was coming home for the holidays until she was in the car on the way down to the old town. Just to save them the disappointment if she had a case come up and had to cancel, which happened more often than not. You're stalling, Abby, she told herself. What, are you afraid he won't like it?

"Gibbs!" she called him over the phone before she could talk herself out of it. "Gibbs Gibbs Gibbs!"

There was a second, probably of him staring at the phone in disbelief, before he answered. "Go home, Abs. We wrapped up the case."

"I know, I know, but there's something I want you to see!" And she hung up. Her hyperactive tone and the fact that she hadn't told him what it was would get him down to the lab. Only after she had hung up she realized that he might take that to mean that the case wasn't as closed as he thought and quick-march it down there, which was proven by the fact that he charged out of the elevator like a man with a purpose. Oops.

He stopped in the doorway. Looking around at the decorations, black and green and red and silver, head tilted to listen to the music, Marine Corps eyes scanning the ceiling for any lurking mistletoe. She'd gotten him a couple of times; evidently he was on the lookout today. He stepped around its field of influence and through the doorway.

"Abs...?"

"It's Christmas, Gibbs." She bounced a little on her toes. "Merry Christmas."

There were presents on her lab table. There was also a tiny tree that she'd scrounged, black and green and red and silver, like her decorations. She had cobbled it together out of shredded pieces of old boards and bound together with wire, lit with tiny LEDs. He gave it a curious glance and lifted his eyebrows at her.

"Well... it's Christmas. And it was either this or let you sit at home in your basement and drink bourbon and work on your boat all night, or..." Her hands twisted circles in the air. "Whatever it is you do..."

"Abby..."

He didn't like it. He wasn't going to open his presents, which, admittedly, she'd had no idea what to get him, but she'd made some little homemade trinkets and gotten those squeaky shoes with a card that told him that if he wasn't going to stop sneaking up on people they'd just have to make it so he couldn't, and he wasn't going to like those either, and she'd gotten about that far in her torrent of mental babbling before he leaned in and kissed her cheek, one warm hand pressed at the center of her back.

She turned after a second and looked at him, wide-eyed, not quite sure he wasn't making fun of her. He wasn't. He smiled a little, eyes tired and bright.

"Merry Christmas, Abs."



Spring
Abby knew something was wrong. She could tell these things. Gibbs might have a sixth sense when it came to all things crime and military related, but Abby had a sixth sense when it came to all things Gibbs related. She watched the set of his shoulders, where his eyes looked and how distracted he was, the way his hands either crunched up or spread out on the desk. She knew all his signs. Today the signs told her that something was wrong, the kind of something that he wasn't going to talk about.

She asked Tony instead.

"Well..." he looked up with wide eyes and high eyebrows at the woman who was now standing almost bent double over him, staring at him with beady little eyes. Okay, maybe her eyes weren't that beady. But. "My guess...?"

Her hands fluttered at him to move faster.

"... Abby, you need to calm down. My guess is that it's personal. Something more to do with one living Marine than any dead Marines." Which was their case at the moment, which meant they were working with Hollis Mann. Which...

... Oh.

Oh.

Her mind stuttered to a halt and started moving again. This wasn't good. Well, it wasn't bad, and it wasn't unexpected, but it wasn't good either. "He..."

"Yeah. Or she did. My money's on her, it's not like he's the easiest guy in the world to get along with, especially if you're a woman..." You had to give Tony that, he did at least know when he'd just said something that he shouldn't have. Abby squinted at him again.

"I'm a woman," she pointed out. "And I get along with him."

"Yeah, but you're..."

"Yes?"

"... different."

No matter which way she turned that around she couldn't find fault with it. But she squint-glared at him for a moment or two more, just to make sure he knew he wasn't entirely off the hook. Then she turned and flounced back to her lab, because she wasn't going to be able to help Gibbs with this one. The non-case part. Unless Colonel Mann turned into a suspect. That she could help with.

No, Abby, be nice. Tony was right, she reminded herself, with a little sigh and a hug for Bert the Hippo as she made it back into her domain. Gibbs wasn't exactly the easiest person for most people to get along with, men or women. You had to know how to handle him. You had to be honest with him, too, which for some reason was hard for people. Abby had never had much of a problem with honesty. That was one of her rules, too, the most important one. Never, ever lie to Abby. Oh, if you knew something you didn't want her to know, she'd accept an I can't tell you with more or less good grace. And then promptly try to find out what you weren't saying if she was curious enough. But you should never ever lie to Abby.

Gibbs had understood that. It was one of the first things they'd agreed upon, one of the first ways they'd gotten along. Since then, they'd discovered other ways to interact, a system of checks and balances and inside-jokes and secret Abby-Gibbs code. Even if they did make an odd pair, the boat-building, pressed and tidy if kind of shabby older Marine and the bouncy, caffeinated, hyperactive goth chick. They worked well together. They just worked.

Gibbs and Mann hadn't worked. Abby wondered just which of Gibbs's rules she'd broken, and why, and if it had been as bad as his marriages or if the relationships just fell apart and faded away. He didn't seem that upset. Or broken up, just... off. Different.

Well, that was Hollis's loss.



Summer
This was definitely the worst time of year to be kidnapped.

Abby should have known better than to let her guard down. It was about time for her annual peril, whether it was a psychotic lab assistant or a psycho ex-stalker or a hired assassin and, okay, that one had been a two-fer but just about every year and usually around the same time, there was something going on in her life that threatened it. Or her safety, or her sanity, or her peace of mind, or just about anything else some maniac could threaten. You could set your watch by it, and Tony did. Cracking wise, once, about how he'd almost made it a whole year without being framed for murder.

McGee was lucky, his recurring peril was poison ivy.

She would have traded him a lot for the poison ivy. Right now she was tied up in the back of a van, a hot and black and filthy van, catching who knew what from the nasty surfaces in here and being jolted around while they drove all over the DC area taunting Gibbs.

Abby could have told them that was a bad idea, if she hadn't been gagged. Gibbs got cranky when he was taunted. He got cranky even when Tony or McGee did it to each other, let alone when one of the bad guys did it to him. He was going to make them hurt for this.

She hoped he did, anyway. It had been about a day and a half, or it felt that long, and she was ready to be rescued already.

"Not that I couldn't rescue myself," she muttered, pulling the gag out and making faces at the taste of slobbery cotton. "If they would give me half a chance."

They were probably professional kidnappers. Give her a cyber stalking, an attacker in her lab on her own ground where she knew the terrain, she could kick ass. Tie her up with no prior warning and throw her in the back of the van and she was reduced to sawing through her ropes and part of her wrist on a jagged piece of the wheel well bolt or whatever that was. The bleeding made the ropes slick enough to slip out, but she was still stuck in the back of a van. With two plastic garbage bags, a handful of bloody, cut rope, and empty plastic water jug, and a metal panel wall between her and the drivers.

"You probably built this thing to kidnap people, didn't you?" she made faces in their direction. "Couple o' dirtbags."

"Abby!" That was diNozzo. That wasn't just his voice in her head saying that about dirtbags, his favorite epithet, that was actually really him. Which meant that the rest of the team couldn't be far behind him. Which meant that the van hadn't stopped at a red light, they'd stopped because of ...

"NCIS!" Tim's voice. Oh, Tim. "Drop it!"

"Abs?"

She stepped back from the door so that when it swung open she wouldn't be blinded by the light, also so that she could get a running start because they had come to get her, of course they had, no member of Team Gibbs was left behind and when the doors finally opened she launched herself at the man in question, laughing only a little bit hysterically.



Fall
No one was happy when kids were involved. But it could have been worse. It could have been a lot worse.

Abby divided her time between the lab and the hospital, with Jethro's permission and tacit approval. Her hard-won and cobbled together Tank-Girl costume was put aside for something a little more friendly to a fifth grader, Sally from Nightmare Before Christmas. She couldn't betray all her goth leanings, after all.

"How's the kid?"

It shouldn't have suprised her that he'd come to the hospital. It didn't, actually. Well, it didn't startle her, it did surprise her a little but she figured he was on everyone's speed dial, had barked all the usual orders and sent people scrambling for information which he could then put to good use, so he could spare some time to reassure the poor girl. Poor pair of girls. Abby didn't like being the one on the bedside vigil in hospitals. She preferred being the one pranking the morgue drawers.

"She's fine," Abby looked over at where the girl had finally fallen asleep in the bed, after the third chorus of Kidnap The Sandy Claws. "She's a fighter. And she's a really smart girl," Abby continued, skidding away from the rote words that sounded a little too much like someone was about to die. "The doctor went over her chart with her and she asked all kinds of questions, a couple of them even I wouldn't have thought of asking. I think she's been watching the Investigations channel or something. Forensic files. She could be a really good scientist, though, she's real curious, asks a lot of questions..."

Gibbs smiled, sitting on the other side of the child's bed.

The machines beeped, reassuring white noise. Some people didn't like the sounds of a hospital but it wasn't the quiet and rhythmic sounds that Abby minded, it was the running and the frantic beeping once the alarms went off. Steady and quiet meant that everything was going as it should, and everyone needed a hospital at some point in their lives, didn't they? No shame in that. But when you had alarms, you had danger, and you had people standing by wringing their hands which was about all she was good for when dealing with actual live people with actual living bodies.

Abby didn't think she was all that good at dealing with people, not if it wasn't in a scientific setting. She wasn't comfortable with it. She needed her space.

"Where's her father?"

"At the dinner party. He needs to be seen, so that they don't think anything's wrong."

Abby shook her head. "It's cruel, Gibbs. It's cruel and its... stupid. Going after a little girl to get her father to sell secrets? Who does that?" She knew the answer to that question, of course. They dealt with people who did that, and worse, every week of every year. That didn't mean she couldn't object.

"Bad people, Abs," he leaned back in his chair, looking tired. Poor Gibbs. He always had that tired look when kids were involved.

"Bad people."


Winter Again
It was different, being at his house when it wasn't a dire emergency. Though she supposed she would call it a dire emergency; Gibbs was in some serious pain and he wasn't reaching out to anyone, not even Ducky, and that was bad. And if he wasn't going to take some quick action, she would. Or at least, that's what she'd told herself to get here. Actually confronted with the man himself looking stone-faced and mild as usual it was hard to justify anything like the phrases "in pain" and "needs help."

Though to be honest, he did look a little tired around the eyes.

Focus, Abs!

"Abby..."

"... and I know you don't like the holidays, Gibbs, and I know it doesn't have anything to do with the cases but I really wish you'd come out with us or at least, I don't know, call Ducky, because it's the holidays and you're supposed to at least..."

"Abs..."

"... the people you care about, and, I know, you don't want to encourage them and Ziva doesn't even celebrate Christmas anyway, and she hasn't been on the team for a while but Chanukkah was pretty recently wasn't it, and with the time zone difference you should be able to call her and get her before breakfast if, we could just go call her right now, together..."

"Abby..."

"... don't want you to become one of those people who only ever goes from work to home and back again because..."

His hands on her shoulders was old hat, usually he gripped her tight like that when he wanted to make a point or just wanted to shut her up.

The kissing thing, that was old hat, too, he'd kissed her on the cheek before (although kind of more often more recently) and on the top of the head and once he'd even kissed her where she'd cut her finger on a motherboard.

But this whole kissing her lips thing. That was new.

He tasted like bourbon.

It wasn't much of a kiss, she told herself, after he'd stopped and pulled back to look at her and she realized she was still blinking. It wasn't much of a kiss at all. It was just the sort of kiss he usually gave her except it was a kiss on the mouth and did that mean something more than usual? Or was it just that he couldn't manage their usual sorts of kisses right now, with him holding her in place like that?

"Sorry," he said, breaking her train of thought.

"Why?"

He smiled. A real smile, a wry, amused smile that was prelude to a chuckle usually and meant that she hadn't done anything wrong. Except he was the one who'd kissed her. She couldn't exactly avoid being kissed when he was holding her there like that, which was when she realized he hadn't let her go.

"I'll be all right, Abby. Okay?"

"Okay." She nodded. He'd said that before. They'd had this conversations a couple times before in the past year. More often than usual. Was it more often than usual? She couldn't tell.

He was rubbing her arm a little. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine."

"You sure? You seem a little..." More nervous. More high strung. She knew what he meant, and grinned, nodding her head and making her ponytails bob.

"I may have had a couple Caf-Pows before I came over."

Now he did laugh. She thanked God for that sound.

The silence stretched out and turned awkward and she realized all of a sudden how much of their interactions in the lab were smoothed along by the lab-work she was doing, the need for results, for precision, the discussions that went along with those needs. The only needs here were her increasingly silly-sounding need to know he was all right, and...

"It's the case..." she blurted out.

His eyebrows lifted, asking the question, as he took her by the hand and led her over and sat her down on the couch. "Oh?"

"It... that guy. Sat there, for days, Ducky doesn't even know how long yet, and no one looked for him. No one investigated. The people he worked with assumed he was on vacation, and he didn't have anyone else to ask where he was, anything. He didn't know anyone online, he didn't call anyone, he..."

"Abby." His hand was rubbing her shoulder again. No, that was his other hand. Something. She really was getting way too worked up over this. "First of all, you know I don't take vacations. Second of all..." Before she could voice any objection, not that she had one. "If I did, I'd tell you. Or I'd tell Ducky, or someone, and you'd know how to get ahold of me if something was wrong. I'm not going anywhere, Abs, and I'm not going to disappear or drop off the face of the planet."

"Unless you're going undercover." Because undercover-super-spy-Gibbs was just a cool idea.

He recognized that, smiling again. "Unless I'm going undercover."

"Okay."

They were still holding hands. He still had one hand on her shoulder but now he seemed satisfied that she was all right. And she was satisfied that he was all right. So she should really go. Except that maybe he was right, maybe he had made a mistake. Because she couldn't quite get that whole kissing thing out of her mind. And it was probably because she couldn't get that kissing thing out of her mind and he definitely wasn't going to make the first move, unless he already had, that she kissed him. This time it was most definitely not a chaste kiss.

He froze. Of course he did, but was it because he didn't think of her that way or because he was her boss (after a manner of speaking) and he didn't want to overstep the bounds of decorum, because above all else Leroy Jethro Gibbs was a gentleman. But she didn't want Gibbs to be a gentleman, or an agent, or her boss. She wanted Gibbs to be her friend, maybe a friend she might have some small bit of interest in. Just a little bit. Or maybe he really wasn't interested after all. She could live with that, couldn't she? And now the kiss was going on longer than she really wanted to and she was just embarrassing herself and she was about to pull back which was when he started to kiss her back.

Oh. Wow.

Yeah, Abby could work with this. Her arms loose around his neck and his hand sliding towards the small of her back, his other hand sliding into her hair from her shoulder. It was turning into the kind of romantic embrace she hadn't had in a while. No wild macking on each other, no awkwardness or anything like that, or uncertainty, going slow. Very slow. Okay, so it was a little awkward, because when they were going this slow she had time to figure out that this was Gibbs and she was kissing Gibbs and damn, he was a good kisser.

He was also leaning back. Or she was leaning forward. Somewhere in between there, but it was all right, because they were still sitting on his couch. And he could definitely support most of her weight if she wanted to stretch out next to him, or on top of him. Even if he did chuckle a little, between kisses.

He was laughing. That was a good sign.

So was the fact that the kissing was continuing through pauses that lasted for a minute at a time, two minutes. While they shifted position to get more comfortable, the two of them stretched out and pressed up against the back of the couch, trying not to fall off. His hands were still warm. His body was warm, and the touch of his calloused fingertips along her spine made her relax, along with the layered in smell of sawdust, bourbon, and Old Spice. Jethro at home. Warm smells, the smells of a working man, and she'd always loved that about a guy. Gentle touches, slow hands. She found herself humming the song, which really did make him laugh.

"You got something on your mind, Abs?"

He even sounded different. More relaxed. She liked it when he sounded relaxed like that. Liked it enough to make her realize that maybe that wasn't the right word to use, and those were definitely not thoughts she wanted to be having right now. So she just smiled, knowing he saw her think of something she wasn't sharing, not caring that he knew unless he decided to press. Which he wouldn't. He was sweet like that.

Abby hummed a couple of bars, watching his expression change from oh-really-incredulous and amused to oh-really-playful. It wasn't even much of a change. Eyebrows back down a little further, smile a little wider. Eyes a little brighter. "Oh, really?"

"Yeah, really."

It was a moment that could have gone any of half a dozen ways, from a gentle rejection which would have stung at this late stage no matter how much he tried to ease it to dumping her on the floor and doing some very un-Jethro like things to her. Instead, somehow, Abby found herself scooped up into his arms, a state she couldn't quite remember herself being in before. Despite how many times she had been in and out of danger around him.

She did manage, later in the evening, to show him all of her tattoos.