Fic: Smoke and Mirrors [12/23]
Title: Smoke and Mirrors 12/23
Author: Jo. R (driftingatdusk)
Rating: FR-15
Category: Drama, Case-file, Romance, Angst, Action, Friendship
Pairing: Abby/Gibbs
Spoilers: Bloodbath, Hiatus 1&2, Murder 2.0, Broken Bird, Faith, Rule 51, Cracked
Summary: Someone from the past has a score to settle with the team.
My thanks, as always, to Lisa. :)
~*~
Part Twelve
~*~
He listened half-heartedly to the banter as his agents argued over which of them was responsible for closing the case they'd caught just before lunch. What had originally been thought of as a serious case of the theft of a laptop belonging to a senior Navy official had been solved pretty quickly when the official's daughter had been caught trying to sneak it back into the house after skipping her afternoon classes.
Gibbs hadn't understood half of what she'd sobbingly said but recognised enough to know she'd taken the laptop to try and impress her friends with the top-of-the-range model because her parents wouldn't buy her one of her own.
How his agents planned on taking credit for the girl's confession, he didn't really know, and when he heard the elevator bell ring and looked up to see Abby walking towards them, he found he no longer cared.
"Hey, Abby," Tony called out as the forensic specialist passed his desk. "Did you leave anything at the stores for everyone else to buy?"
"I left plenty!" Abby protested, clutching the bags protectively as his senior agent immediately got up to investigate. Gibbs had to admit his own curiosity was piqued when he recognised the logo on two of the bags as being from the same lingerie shop they'd had to visit a couple of years previously to identify the underwear one of their victims had been found in, in an attempt at learning her name. "Uh-uh, Tony, that's not for you to look at!"
"Aww, please?" Tony made a half-hearted attempt at grabbing a bag, shaking his head when she deftly moved it out of reach. "What's with all of the bags anyway?"
"Supplies for Carol's bachelorette party," Abby answered matter-of-factly. "And no, you can't come. It's ladies only." She glanced over her shoulder at Ziva and smiled. "You're more than welcome to join us, Ziva, if you think you can stand being in a room with a dozen women acting like teenagers without pulling out your gun."
Ziva paled but valiantly attempted a smile. "Thank you for the offer, Abby, but I think I am busy that night."
"She hasn't told you when it is," McGee pointed out, ducking his head at the glare the Israeli threw him. "Okay, okay, I get the hint."
Abby laughed, showing there were no hard feelings. "It's fine, Ziva. I think I'd try getting out of it, too, if I wasn't the maid of honour." Rearranging the bags again, Abby started walking towards the bank of elevators at the back of the squad room. "I've got to get back to work. There's still so much to catch up on. See you all later!"
"See you, Abs."
"We will see you later, Abby."
"Bye, Abby!"
Their voices followed her but Gibbs kept his own from joining them. He made a mental note to go down to her lab and visit her later on in the afternoon, and maybe see if he was allowed a sneak peek inside one of the bags. Hopefully they weren't all for the bachelorette party and the bride-to-be.
"Love must be in the air," Tony muttered, returning to his desk.
Gibbs looked up, wondering if the comment was directed at him but he found Tony seemingly focused on the file in front of him rather than staring at him with a knowing smirk on his face.
Ducking his own head to hide a grin, Gibbs couldn't help but agree that maybe it was.
~*~
She put all thoughts of the stranger out of her mind, focusing instead on getting her lab back into the condition she was accustomed to. She hated it when she had to leave her equipment for any length of time, knowing that the replacement Director Vance hired would inevitably mess up the systems she'd worked so hard to put in place.
The lab was her domain, her home away from home, and Abby hated the thought of anyone else being in control of it.
It was easy to get caught up in rearranging everything so it was how she liked and running diagnostics on all of her equipment - her 'babies' - to check they were in full working order so she wasn't surprised when she glanced up at the sound of the elevator bell and saw Gibbs walking towards her, the Special Agent pausing to hit the light switch.
"Hey," she greeted him, taking note of the time as the room she hadn't noticed was dark was suddenly bathed in light. "You get another case?"
"Nope. Just catching up on paperwork." He leaned against her desk as she continued her inspection of one of her machines, watching the way she deftly took it apart, checked each component, then put it back together. "You were only gone a couple of weeks, Abby."
"Might as well have been a couple of months," she muttered, moving on to the next item on her list. "Seriously, Gibbs, does the Director even check the people he gets in to replace me are qualified? I've had to reorganise my chemical cupboard, change a fuse in Major Mass Spec and run a spyware search on both computers to get rid of stupid tracking cookies and temporary internet files. It looks like whoever was here spent most of their time shopping on the internet rather than doing any forensics."
"Could be true," Gibbs admitted with a shrug. "No one seems to be able to get results as fast as you do, especially not from that thing."
Seeing his gaze fall on her mass spectrometer - Major Mass Spec - Abby threw him an indignant look. "Well, if he or she talked about him the way you do, I'm not surprised. It's all in the way you handle him, Gibbs. The way you talk to him."
He watched her cross back over to the machine in question and run her fingertips over its top as if in reassurance, her actions gentle and tender, making him think of other things she could do with those fingers. He cleared his throat and forced himself to look away, mentally counting backwards from 100 to get his mind off the woman standing in front of him.
The plan didn't work as well as he'd hoped, not when she moved up to him, a knowing smirk on her face, and his traitorous mind started counting 100 ways he could wipe the smirk off her very full, richly painted lips.
"Is there a reason you came to see me, very special Agent Gibbs?" Abby's voice was almost a purr and he wasn't naive enough to believe the way she brushed by him on her way through to her office was accidental. "And you can't use the Caf-Pow excuse anymore because even if you'd brought one, I wouldn't touch it."
Following her into the office, he sat down on the edge of the desk, easily spotting the shopping bags she'd been carrying earlier. He eyed them with obvious interest, arching an eyebrow when she tried to arrange her features into an innocent expression. "What's in the bags, Abby?"
"I told you, I had to pick up some things for Carol's bachelorette party." She bit her lip to keep back a smile but Gibbs knew her too well to be fooled. He stared at her, knowing eventually she'd continue. "Okay, so maybe I bought a little something for me, too. Emphasis on the little," she added with a wink.
"Can I see...?" He made no attempted at getting up to fetch the bags or try to sneak a peek, preferring instead to watch her. The light blush that coloured her cheeks and the way she bit down on her generous bottom lip told him everything he needed to know.
"You'll get your chance, I'm sure of that." She smiled up at him, her daze drifting momentarily towards the bag in question. "Speaking of which, the conversation we didn't get to have at lunch..."
"Think we both know what it was going to be about." Gibbs shrugged a shoulder. "We're both adults, Abby. If we both want the same thing..."
"I know what I want," she told him quietly, her green eyes locking on his blue ones. "What I want to know from you is if you do, too. This isn't something we can go into lightly. There are other factors to consider..."
"Like...?"
"Like the fact we work together, like the fact you're one of my best friends and I'm not willing to risk losing that if you don't feel as seriously about this as I do." Abby forced herself to hold his gaze. "This can't be a casual thing, Gibbs. Not between us."
"Has anything I've said or done led you to think I want this to be casual?" When she didn't immediately answer, Gibbs pushed himself up off the desk.
He didn't walk away like she'd feared he would, moving nearer to her instead. He tugged her up and out of her chair and turned them so she was the one feeling the edge of the desk dig into her back as he pressed her against it, his mouth capturing hers in a searing kiss. He held her face between his hands, keeping her still as he kissed her thoroughly, tasting her, claiming her as his own.
Breaking away, his eyes dark and his breathing as uneven as her own, Gibbs stared at her. "There's nothing casual about this, Abby."
"I... I'm glad." It took her two attempts at speaking, her mind pleasantly fuzzy. Her legs felt weak at the knees and she sat down on the edge of the desk, grateful for its support. "Just wanted to check we were on the same page. Which we are," she added unnecessarily. "Definitely, completely on the same page."
He grinned at the dazed look on her face, a surge of self-satisfaction going through him at the knowledge he was responsible for it. He'd seen Abby with a variety of looks on her face over the years they'd worked together but he had a sneaking suspicion that seeing her cheeks flushed, her eyes darkened and her lips slightly swollen from his kisses would quickly become his favourite.
"So do I get to see what's in the bag?" He asked, fixing the most charming grin he could muster on his face.
Abby laughed and pushed him away when he started to turn towards the bags, shaking her head at him. "Later, I promise. Right now, I need to get back to my babies. They've missed me, you know."
"They're not the only ones." He murmured, following her into the main area of her lab. He ducked his head when she looked at him, heading straight for the door. "Meet me upstairs at six. I'll walk you to your car."
He was gone before she could either agree or disagree but Abby didn't mind; she returned to the task of getting her lab back in the shape she wanted it, forgetting about everything else but the job at hand and the man who'd just left.
~*~
Author: Jo. R (driftingatdusk)
Rating: FR-15
Category: Drama, Case-file, Romance, Angst, Action, Friendship
Pairing: Abby/Gibbs
Spoilers: Bloodbath, Hiatus 1&2, Murder 2.0, Broken Bird, Faith, Rule 51, Cracked
Summary: Someone from the past has a score to settle with the team.
My thanks, as always, to Lisa. :)
~*~
Part Twelve
~*~
He listened half-heartedly to the banter as his agents argued over which of them was responsible for closing the case they'd caught just before lunch. What had originally been thought of as a serious case of the theft of a laptop belonging to a senior Navy official had been solved pretty quickly when the official's daughter had been caught trying to sneak it back into the house after skipping her afternoon classes.
Gibbs hadn't understood half of what she'd sobbingly said but recognised enough to know she'd taken the laptop to try and impress her friends with the top-of-the-range model because her parents wouldn't buy her one of her own.
How his agents planned on taking credit for the girl's confession, he didn't really know, and when he heard the elevator bell ring and looked up to see Abby walking towards them, he found he no longer cared.
"Hey, Abby," Tony called out as the forensic specialist passed his desk. "Did you leave anything at the stores for everyone else to buy?"
"I left plenty!" Abby protested, clutching the bags protectively as his senior agent immediately got up to investigate. Gibbs had to admit his own curiosity was piqued when he recognised the logo on two of the bags as being from the same lingerie shop they'd had to visit a couple of years previously to identify the underwear one of their victims had been found in, in an attempt at learning her name. "Uh-uh, Tony, that's not for you to look at!"
"Aww, please?" Tony made a half-hearted attempt at grabbing a bag, shaking his head when she deftly moved it out of reach. "What's with all of the bags anyway?"
"Supplies for Carol's bachelorette party," Abby answered matter-of-factly. "And no, you can't come. It's ladies only." She glanced over her shoulder at Ziva and smiled. "You're more than welcome to join us, Ziva, if you think you can stand being in a room with a dozen women acting like teenagers without pulling out your gun."
Ziva paled but valiantly attempted a smile. "Thank you for the offer, Abby, but I think I am busy that night."
"She hasn't told you when it is," McGee pointed out, ducking his head at the glare the Israeli threw him. "Okay, okay, I get the hint."
Abby laughed, showing there were no hard feelings. "It's fine, Ziva. I think I'd try getting out of it, too, if I wasn't the maid of honour." Rearranging the bags again, Abby started walking towards the bank of elevators at the back of the squad room. "I've got to get back to work. There's still so much to catch up on. See you all later!"
"See you, Abs."
"We will see you later, Abby."
"Bye, Abby!"
Their voices followed her but Gibbs kept his own from joining them. He made a mental note to go down to her lab and visit her later on in the afternoon, and maybe see if he was allowed a sneak peek inside one of the bags. Hopefully they weren't all for the bachelorette party and the bride-to-be.
"Love must be in the air," Tony muttered, returning to his desk.
Gibbs looked up, wondering if the comment was directed at him but he found Tony seemingly focused on the file in front of him rather than staring at him with a knowing smirk on his face.
Ducking his own head to hide a grin, Gibbs couldn't help but agree that maybe it was.
~*~
She put all thoughts of the stranger out of her mind, focusing instead on getting her lab back into the condition she was accustomed to. She hated it when she had to leave her equipment for any length of time, knowing that the replacement Director Vance hired would inevitably mess up the systems she'd worked so hard to put in place.
The lab was her domain, her home away from home, and Abby hated the thought of anyone else being in control of it.
It was easy to get caught up in rearranging everything so it was how she liked and running diagnostics on all of her equipment - her 'babies' - to check they were in full working order so she wasn't surprised when she glanced up at the sound of the elevator bell and saw Gibbs walking towards her, the Special Agent pausing to hit the light switch.
"Hey," she greeted him, taking note of the time as the room she hadn't noticed was dark was suddenly bathed in light. "You get another case?"
"Nope. Just catching up on paperwork." He leaned against her desk as she continued her inspection of one of her machines, watching the way she deftly took it apart, checked each component, then put it back together. "You were only gone a couple of weeks, Abby."
"Might as well have been a couple of months," she muttered, moving on to the next item on her list. "Seriously, Gibbs, does the Director even check the people he gets in to replace me are qualified? I've had to reorganise my chemical cupboard, change a fuse in Major Mass Spec and run a spyware search on both computers to get rid of stupid tracking cookies and temporary internet files. It looks like whoever was here spent most of their time shopping on the internet rather than doing any forensics."
"Could be true," Gibbs admitted with a shrug. "No one seems to be able to get results as fast as you do, especially not from that thing."
Seeing his gaze fall on her mass spectrometer - Major Mass Spec - Abby threw him an indignant look. "Well, if he or she talked about him the way you do, I'm not surprised. It's all in the way you handle him, Gibbs. The way you talk to him."
He watched her cross back over to the machine in question and run her fingertips over its top as if in reassurance, her actions gentle and tender, making him think of other things she could do with those fingers. He cleared his throat and forced himself to look away, mentally counting backwards from 100 to get his mind off the woman standing in front of him.
The plan didn't work as well as he'd hoped, not when she moved up to him, a knowing smirk on her face, and his traitorous mind started counting 100 ways he could wipe the smirk off her very full, richly painted lips.
"Is there a reason you came to see me, very special Agent Gibbs?" Abby's voice was almost a purr and he wasn't naive enough to believe the way she brushed by him on her way through to her office was accidental. "And you can't use the Caf-Pow excuse anymore because even if you'd brought one, I wouldn't touch it."
Following her into the office, he sat down on the edge of the desk, easily spotting the shopping bags she'd been carrying earlier. He eyed them with obvious interest, arching an eyebrow when she tried to arrange her features into an innocent expression. "What's in the bags, Abby?"
"I told you, I had to pick up some things for Carol's bachelorette party." She bit her lip to keep back a smile but Gibbs knew her too well to be fooled. He stared at her, knowing eventually she'd continue. "Okay, so maybe I bought a little something for me, too. Emphasis on the little," she added with a wink.
"Can I see...?" He made no attempted at getting up to fetch the bags or try to sneak a peek, preferring instead to watch her. The light blush that coloured her cheeks and the way she bit down on her generous bottom lip told him everything he needed to know.
"You'll get your chance, I'm sure of that." She smiled up at him, her daze drifting momentarily towards the bag in question. "Speaking of which, the conversation we didn't get to have at lunch..."
"Think we both know what it was going to be about." Gibbs shrugged a shoulder. "We're both adults, Abby. If we both want the same thing..."
"I know what I want," she told him quietly, her green eyes locking on his blue ones. "What I want to know from you is if you do, too. This isn't something we can go into lightly. There are other factors to consider..."
"Like...?"
"Like the fact we work together, like the fact you're one of my best friends and I'm not willing to risk losing that if you don't feel as seriously about this as I do." Abby forced herself to hold his gaze. "This can't be a casual thing, Gibbs. Not between us."
"Has anything I've said or done led you to think I want this to be casual?" When she didn't immediately answer, Gibbs pushed himself up off the desk.
He didn't walk away like she'd feared he would, moving nearer to her instead. He tugged her up and out of her chair and turned them so she was the one feeling the edge of the desk dig into her back as he pressed her against it, his mouth capturing hers in a searing kiss. He held her face between his hands, keeping her still as he kissed her thoroughly, tasting her, claiming her as his own.
Breaking away, his eyes dark and his breathing as uneven as her own, Gibbs stared at her. "There's nothing casual about this, Abby."
"I... I'm glad." It took her two attempts at speaking, her mind pleasantly fuzzy. Her legs felt weak at the knees and she sat down on the edge of the desk, grateful for its support. "Just wanted to check we were on the same page. Which we are," she added unnecessarily. "Definitely, completely on the same page."
He grinned at the dazed look on her face, a surge of self-satisfaction going through him at the knowledge he was responsible for it. He'd seen Abby with a variety of looks on her face over the years they'd worked together but he had a sneaking suspicion that seeing her cheeks flushed, her eyes darkened and her lips slightly swollen from his kisses would quickly become his favourite.
"So do I get to see what's in the bag?" He asked, fixing the most charming grin he could muster on his face.
Abby laughed and pushed him away when he started to turn towards the bags, shaking her head at him. "Later, I promise. Right now, I need to get back to my babies. They've missed me, you know."
"They're not the only ones." He murmured, following her into the main area of her lab. He ducked his head when she looked at him, heading straight for the door. "Meet me upstairs at six. I'll walk you to your car."
He was gone before she could either agree or disagree but Abby didn't mind; she returned to the task of getting her lab back in the shape she wanted it, forgetting about everything else but the job at hand and the man who'd just left.
~*~