A/N: This story will have a companion piece from Abby's point of view, and now that I'm done with the play I was stage managing, it may actually get finished within the week! Anyway, a bit of Abby/McGee fluff, set...sometime vaguely in the present or near future. Don't own the characters, song lyrics are from "Come On Get Higher" by Matt Nathanson.
I miss the sound of your voice
The loudest thing in my head
And I ache to remember
All the violent sweet perfect words that you said
Sex with Abby was…an education.
He learned to love her spontaneity, and he learned to be more spontaneous himself. To stop thinking and analyzing and sometimes just…act. Which turned out surprisingly well more often than he'd expected.
He learned self-control, to let her spin out her exquisite torture as long as possible before she released him.
He learned that while handcuffs would never be the first thing he reached for in the bedroom, they did sometimes have their place. And that making love in a coffin was oddly intimate, and not as creepy as one might think.
He was happy to give her control, to let her set the pace – sometimes slow and sweet, sometimes so fast and passionate it made his head spin.
And when she was in a different mood, she'd kiss him hard and say, "Take me," and he learned to be rough without being afraid of hurting her, learned to love the faint marks of his fingers on her hips, ghostlike smudges on her white skin. Or she'd smile and say, "Seduce me," and he learned the most sensitive spots on her body, the best ways to drive her slowly crazy, until she was trembling and moaning beneath him and just the right touch would set her off.
Towards the end, he even learned to anticipate her. One night, he leaned in and kissed her just as she was about to speak.
"Let me guess?" he asked tentatively, and she raised her eyebrows at him, smiling, and let him.
After that, guessing became one of their favorite games.
When he was younger, he'd loved Sherlock Holmes. They were some of the first detective stories he'd ever read, and it was there that he first got the idea of becoming an investigator. He'd liked the idea of solving the puzzle, the emphasis on details and precision.
He always remembered "The Scandal in Bohemia," where Holmes finally met Irene Adler, the woman who outsmarted him. "To Sherlock Holmes, she is always the woman," it began. Irene Adler was beautiful, but she was also wonderfully clever, and she stuck with Holmes in a way no other woman ever did.
Some days, when he'd worked through the weekend again, or gone on yet another crappy date, or lay alone in his bed, listening to the dog snore on the floor beside him, he thought about thewoman. Abby, with her razor-sharp mind and quick sense of humor and constant smile, was the woman. Everything in bed had just been a very… educational bonus. When it came to women, there had been a couple before her and a few after, but she was the one who stuck.
"Hey, McGee. Hurry it up, Ziva and Tony left already."
Thewoman was standing across from him, leaning on his desk, looking impatient. He sighed inwardly. Because that was the problem with having met the woman. Because even though he'd learned not to think about her like that, to value the friendship they had instead of what might have been, there were still these moments, like now, when he looked at her and he saw her nowbut he also saw her then, and the two faces were so very, very close. He loved that face, whether it was over him, under him, or across from him, in his bed, her lab, or walking down the street.
He pushed all that away, stood and pulled on his coat. "I'm ready," he told her, and she grinned and slid her arm through his. "Want to ride with me? I'll drop you back at your car later."
Friday night at the bar. Tony and Ziva had been sniping at one another more than usual, but they called a truce for the evening, and they all sat, sometimes in companionable silence, sometimes laughing at Tony's jokes or one of Abby's crazy stories.
Eventually, Ziva left, claiming she needed to get up for her five a.m. run. Tony's eyes followed her to the door, and lingered there long after she was gone. He was distracted after that, and left a little later, saying he was tired.
Sometimes, McGee though as he watched him go, he really wondered how they could tell him that all the scenes between Tommy and Lisa in his books were ridiculous.
But then Abby sighed and leaned her head contentedly against his shoulder, and he forgot all about Tony and Ziva the minute the door closed behind him.
Abby ordered another beer, and he sipped at his wine, and she told him a long and complicated story about a set of tests she'd run for another team. He listened, mostly because it was interesting, but partly because he loved the rise and fall of her voice, the way she sped up when she was excited about a result and slowed as she tried to recall a particular sequence of events. He watched the light play over her face, the way her lips quirked upward in his favorite smile and her forehead crinkled as she concentrated.
Ninety-nine days out of a hundred, it didn't even matter. She was his friend, one of his best friends, really, but no more than that. But on that hundredth day, he was weak.
Today, he realized as he watched Abby take a swig of her beer and envied the bottle, was one of those hundredth days.
It had turned cold suddenly, and Abby shivered in her light coat as they walked out into the parking lot. McGee wrapped his arm around her, trying to add a little warmth. When they got to his car, he tried to reclaim his arm to fish the keys out of his pocket, but Abby clung to his hand. "Need that, Abs," he told her, as he awkwardly attempted to reach around himself for the keys.
He was tall enough that even in her platforms she had to look up a bit to see his eyes, and the light from the streetlamp fell full on her upturned face. There was something odd in her expression, almost wistful. McGee paused in the act of unlocking the door, trying to figure out what was going through her head. She had the little wrinkle between her eyes that meant she was thinking very hard, and she reached out slowly and touched his cheek with cold fingertips. "McGee…" She trailed off and sighed, frustrated. He felt her lips brush over his, lightly at first, and then suddenly, they were sunk in a sweet, gentle, familiar kiss.
She had to pick the hundredth day, he thought ruefully and slid his free arm around her waist to pull her closer, because he could no more break away from her than cut off his own hand.
Abby made a tiny protesting sound when the need for oxygen finally forced them to separate. "Tim, I –"
McGee cut her off, leaning his forehead against hers. "Shhh…" he said, and kissed her again, lightly. "Let me guess?"
The memory only took her a half-second, and then she smiled, and nodded.
He leaned in close and murmured softly in her ear. Abby's smile grew wider. "Yeah," she whispered, and blinked a sudden shine away from her eyes. "You've always been a pretty good guesser, Timmy."
She lay her head on his shoulder and snuggled closer, and he wrapped his arms tight around her against the cold breeze. For a moment they just stood there, content.
Sex with Abby was an education.
But he'd never needed any tutoring on how to love her.
Just pull me down hard
And drown me in love…