“Abs?” Jethro says, leaning back from her a little so he can look her directly in the eyes. She meets his gaze steadily.
“What is it, my hero?”
“Are you sure you’re all right with this? That is, with me? I’m not Tim, or any of the other pretty boys I’ve seen you with.” He drops his eyes for a minute, looks back at her, and she sees again the shadow of hesitation in their deep blue depths. And something more.
“Jethro…” she takes both his hands tightly in hers, raises them to her lips and kisses them. “We’ve known each other and worked together for nearly five years. We’ve danced around this for about four and three quarters of those years. And finally, finally, That Kiss in the lab the other morning, when you used your Gibbs-braveness for a heart matter instead of a crime matter…” she smiles at him, leans forward and touches his face, plants another luscious kiss on his mouth, “…you’re lucky I didn’t jump you right then. Right up against the mass spectrometer, which probably would have needed recalibration after we were done screwing each other’s brains out.”
Then she’s more serious for a moment. “I don’t want pretty boy toys, Gibbs. I want you. Always have, and that won’t change no matter what sort of excuses you bring up. I’m not an agent. I’m not too young. I’m fifteen years your junior, and I’m a scientist, not a gunswinging action figure. And I want you—I want to be wanted by you, to wake up every morning beside you and discuss cases in the lab, to drink coffee together at breakfast and whiskey at night while you work on the boat—and I try not to break the boat—and just love one another. That’s what I want. So duh…yeah…I’m all right with this.!”
He pulls Abby to him, holding him against his chest and against his heart, now slowed to its normal steady rate from the jubilant racing it had been doing. His last medical, Ducky had pronounced him healthier and more fit than most men twenty years his junior. But the scars on Gibbs’ heart aren’t of the physical kind, but of the emotional type that run even deeper. He takes a deep breath.
“Abby. Before we go any further, there are things you need to know.” She’s alert instantly, sitting up and staring at him with eyes that are wide with concern. She’s still holding his hands in her own, and now it’s his turn to lift them to his lips.
“You know I’ve been married three times. Actually, it’s four. Shannon was my first wife. We had a daughter, Kelly, in 1982. We were very happy, the three of us in our own little world, at least when my service in the Marines allowed me to be home. Then I went away to Desert Storm, and…” he swallows the lump that has suddenly appeared in his throat. “Shannon witnessed the murder of an agent by a drug dealer from Columbia. His boss ordered a hit on her, and this thug shot and killed the agent who was driving Shannon and Kelly to Quantico so my wife could give her deposition. The vehicle went out of control, and was struck by a dump truck coming the other way, and…my wife and daughter were killed instantly.” Abby is silent, but she’s holding his hands like she’s afraid he’ll disappear if she lets go.
“I went a little mad when my commanding officer told me. I couldn’t go home—we were in the middle of a big push—so I vented my despair by burying myself in my job as a sniper. I volunteered for one mission too many, hoping I’d get killed too…but instead, I just got hit by shrapnel and was in a coma for nearly three weeks.”
“They rotated me home shortly after that, with commendations and medals and words of praise…and I came home to an empty house with the ghosts of my former life echoing through it, that and two graves, already with grass growing over the scars in the earth. I wanted to die. I sat at that cemetery one afternoon with a bottle of scotch in one hand and my service revolver in the other, trying to decide whether to live or die.”
“That’s when Mike Francks found me, basically saved my life and offered me a lifeline of work. He was investigating the case, and he accidentally left the file on the Columbian on his desk while he went to the head. I read the file, learned what I needed to know, and took a couple of weeks of my leave to go and settle the score.” His handsome face is bleak at the memory, and his sight is very far away.
“I thought I could find another woman as wonderful as Shannon, start another family…but my new life as an NCIS agent was a stronger pull than putting my whole heart into another relationship. I tried, Abby, I really did, with all of them—but I never talked to them about my past. I buried myself in work whenever there was any sort of conflict, and each woman grew tired of competing with a job where they didn’t know if I’d come home at night—and when I did come home, I didn’t want to go out to be in social cliques with other wives and husbands. And each of them, the love turned to bitterness—if it had even been love—and I swore there’d be no more of these relationships.
“After my last divorce, I asked for a transfer to Europe for a while. They sent me to Paris, and gave me a new recruit as my junior partner. A woman. And a redhead to boot.” He looks at Abby, and sees that she makes the connection. “We got involved—deeply involved—for more than a year. Then Jen’s need to go higher up the NCIS ladder overruled her need for me, or for a future with me in it, and it ended. Badly. I never set eyes on her again until the day Kate was killed, and Morrow introduced me to his successor.
“Jen hurt me more than all three of my ex-wives combined, because I thought in her I had found the perfect mate, a replacement for Shannon. I was wrong…and since that time, I’ve only had casual relationships with women who want to be independent and don’t want anything but some physical fun and occasional companionship. And I was frozen inside, until I met you…and you thawed me so much and so fast it scared me. So I resisted, and yet I was drawn to you like a moth to a candle, and I’ve been so afraid to let go my resolve…so I pushed and pulled, and flirted but never followed through, until I finally got brave and kissed you on Tuesday.”
Jethro takes another deep breath, looks down at their entwined hands, and back up into Abby’s luminous eyes. “Abby…if what you’ve been hinting at and what we’ve shared tonight is as real to you as it is to me, then you have me. I don’t care about rule 12, or what people might think. Hell, it’s my rule and I can break it if I want to, and when have I ever given a damn about what most people think? I can’t bear to be without you…but I don’t want to lose you or drive you away, either. I love you so much, and I’m so scared of hurting you, and that’s why I’ve pushed you away for so long.”
He looks away for a moment, and swallows hard, and when he looks back at her, the pure blue eyes that she’s seen hold every emotion from humour to desire to compassion to grief to cold fury are glistening with tears. The pain in his face is poignant, raw, and she marvels that he’s kept it so well hidden for so long. She has seen flashes of it, different times, but he’s never opened up to her, until now. But neither had she truly dared to see the love that now is written all over his face, never daring to think he could possibly want her as much as she wants him.
Abby pulls Gibbs to her, cradling his head against her breasts, as a wracking, sob tears heaves out of his soul and scalds through him. He wraps his arms around her like a man drowning and clinging to a life-raft, and cries for the first time since the day he killed the Columbian so many years before. He cries for Shannon and Kelly and lost loves and shattered lives, cries for Kate Todd and Chris Pacci, great gasping, shuddering wails from his gut, while Abby holds him and strokes his hair, soothing him as she would a child.
Her heart aches for Jethro, but at the same time she knows this grief is healing, this begins a healing that he’s never allowed to fully happen til now. She whispers endearments into his hair, holding him and waiting for the tides of anguish to subside.
And when it does, and he lifts his eyes to hers, she smiles at him and kisses the tears from his face.
“Jethro.” Her voice is quiet but tenderly firm. “I’m sorry, so sorry, for all of the pain you’ve had. I can’t make it go away, but I will make the road ahead better; WE will make the road ahead better. Together. Starting now.” She frees one hand, pulls one of her rings from her thumb, and takes his hand. She places the ring in his hand, closes his fingers around it, and then kisses his fist.
It’s so tender and erotic a movement that he feels the dregs of grief wash away and desire--and something more--return to take their rightful places in his heart.
“Jethro—I have loved you for as long as I’ve wanted you. And I’ll never reject you for a promotion, or because you can’t talk about a case, or get myself killed when you’re away. I give you my whole heart, because I can’t do otherwise. I will love you until time ends.” She pushes her lips against his, and Jethro responds, pulling her to him and catching her sweet mouth with his own.
As they slowly start their lovemaking anew, his one thought is to make her happy, to make her truly understand the depth of his commitment to and his desire for her. He strokes her face and hair gently, and begins to stitch a possessive line of kisses over her, down her face and neck to the warm pulse in her throat, across her shoulder then down to first one, and then the other, rosy and lovely breast. She trembles as he lovingly suckles her nipples, feeling them tighten again under his ministrations, and he looks up at her with eyes no longer filled with despair, but with desire and love. His hands move to cover her breasts and he moves further down her body, pausing to claim the charming dimple of her navel, then onwards to that irresistible pussy waiting so eagerly for him.
Abby feels turned inside out by Jethro’s skilled mouth and tongue working her over. She’s always been open and eager about sex, able to match her partner’s ardour with her own enthusiasms and imagination. But those men have all been her around her own age, sometimes clumsy and awkward in their fumblings and explorations. Jethro is all man, skilled and experienced and knowing just what to do to send her spinning. She’s amazed and humbled and overwhelmingly happy by this turn of events, but right now she’s also aching to turn him inside out with delight too.
He feels her hands move, and one of them firmly encircle his cock, which is proudly proclaiming that it’s most definitely ready aye ready, and he whispers, “No, love, not yet…”
She releases him for a moment, but then he finds himself being turned over onto his back, and Abby is sitting on his abdomen looking down at him. Her hair is cascading forward over her shoulders, and Jethro’s breath catches in his throat as he sees her desire and love for him shining. She’s smiling slightly, as she leans forward and offers her breasts to his eager mouth again, and she runs her hands over his chest, down his hips and across his buttocks, and whispers to him, “It’s my turn, lover. My turn now, to do for you.”
And because he knows already that it’s pointless to argue with her when she’s intent on something, he lies back against the pillows, and watches as Abby embarks on a very thorough and tantalizing exploration of his body with her hands and mouth, caressing and licking and kissing his every sensitive spot. When she nibbles at the soft skin of his scrotum, Jethro groans in delight, and whispers hoarsely, “Darling girl; you keep that up, and I won’t let you out of bed for at least a week.”
She pauses and looks up at him, smiles enigmatically, then returns to her ministrations. “Guess I’ll take that risk,” she says softly. Her touch is very gentle, but also sure, and she runs her body across his in a slow caress, til her face is over his again, and he catches her in his arms and kisses her desperately. She lifts her body slightly, and he feels her warmth encircling his reenergized cock, and he groans again. “Abby…”
She lifts her head from his, gazes down into his eyes, and shifts her hips slowly forward. He reaches for her, but she pushes her body back up, and braces her hands on his chest, and continues to stroke her body back and forth on him, her eyes never leaving his face. Jethro meets her eyes, entranced by the erotic side he he always knew she had and which she is so lovingly sharing with him, entranced by the utter rush of emotions he feels for her. He reaches up and caresses her breasts, pulls her forward to kiss her warm and passionate mouth, and as he does, he thrusts deeply into her.
A shudder runs through her, and she tries to pull back, to resume control; but he holds her tightly to him, and repeats his caress. Now they begin to move faster, more urgently, his hands at once supporting her and driving her to deeper delights, his mouth holding hers as if she is his lifeline. Then suddenly she pulls violently back from him, her nails raking across his chest, and he stares up at her as she gasps and shudders. He feels the contractions begin, feels the spasms as they shake Abby’s lithe body, and then she lets out a cry, almost a moan, that tears at his heart.
“Jethro! Oh, God, Jethro!” His eyes are fixed on her face, and with a little thrill of relief he recognizes the passion, as naked as her body, that is transfiguring her. Tears are beginning to cascade down her face, but she seems oblivious to them. As she tumbles forward into his arms, her mouth frantic for his, she cries out again, claiming his love as she repeats his name over and over again.
“Jethro!” With every stroke the words are wrung from her, in between the deep and searing kisses they are sharing. “Jethro, I love you, I have always loved you, I will ever and always love you.” He crushes her to him, holding her as if he is afraid someone will try to take her from him, and feels the approaching waves of orgasm reaching for him again.
“uhhhhhh…. Abby…my love…” and her mouth covers his, and they strain frantically towards each other, as if there is some way they could get even closer than this. Abby is crying freely now, her body shaking with the force of her release, and her mind giving in to the relief and the admission of her feelings for the man she has adored in secret for so long. He holds her against him, feeling her heart beating madly, her body sheened with perspiration, and her arms locked around him, wanting to keep him close to her.
For a little while they lie in stillness, the only movement Jethro’s hand touching Abby’s face, as he slowly and lovingly kisses her lips, her cheeks, her eyelids, and returns to the sweetness of her mouth. He turns slowly onto his side, taking Abby with him, and she teasingly squeezes the muscles that surround him, and he groans a little. “Darling, you aren’t getting out of this bed for at least a week now. I have decided.”
“Hmmmmm…” Abby stretches, languorous and sleek as a cat, and says slyly, “do you suppose the Director will let us move my lab into your bedroom? Can’t you see that happening?”
He smiles at her, and kisses her again. “Don’t worry about her,” he says.
“I don’t,” Abby replies, “But I do feel sorry for her, a little. Though I’m also damn glad that she was so stupid as to let you go. I’ll never let you go, Leroy Jethro Gibbs. You’re stuck with me.”
“I’m happy to be stuck with you,” Jethro said tenderly. “In case you aren’t aware of this…I love you, Abby Scuito.”
“Yeah, I got that, Gibbs. But you can show me again if you’d like.” He laughs, a sound of pure joy, and gathers her to his chest.
“Just one thing,” Abby whispers. “Will you still bring me Caf-Pows and grump at me to get your lab results done faster?”
Las palabras de amor
Let me hear the words of love
Despacito mi amor
Touch me now
Las palabras de amor
Let us share the words of love
For evermore
Author's Chapter Notes:
Gibbs opens his heart to Abby