Author's note: Just a bit of Abby/Ducky friendship fluff. Understanding this fic requires you to have seen episode 11, season six, "Silent Night," in which Ducky discusses his Christmas traditions.
If you like what you see here, you ought to look for my Abby/Gibbs fic, "Sweet Dreams and Flying Machines." That fic has all the angst, romance, inner monologuing and second-guessing you could ever ask for, not to mention some interference by Ducky.
Come check it out!
Love,
Vivian
Penny for Your Thoughts
By Vivian Bloodmark
Abby's lab was full of noise disguising itself as music on the Wednesday afternoon that she found the penny. It was lying on the floor just underneath her desk, a little bit too dull to be brand new, but shiny enough to catch her eye with it's singular coppery contrast. At first, she thought she must have dropped it, but the change pocket in Abby's wallet had been empty for days, and she was certain that the penny had not been on the floor yesterday or the day before. Someone must have dropped it just this morning.
The problem with that theory was that, to Abby's knowledge, no one had been in to her lab since she had come in that morning. There were, therefore, two possibilities. Either someone had been into the lab before she'd arrived, which was unlikely and which frankly made her feel violated, or someone had come in during her lunch break, which had consisted of no more than fifteen minutes around noon. If someone had come looking for her, they might have dropped the penny on the way out. That possibility was less alarming.
For an hour or so, the penny's presence beneath the desk was a positive thing. After all, finding a penny was supposed to be lucky, and Abby could always use a little bit of extra luck, especially when she was on a time crunch. After a while, however, she started to wonder if she wasn't actually mooching off of someone else's luck, having accidentally come across a lucky penny that had belonged, and technically still did belong to someone else. That person might be having the kind of day during which they really needed all of their available luck, and here Abby was stealing it from them. That would never do.
****
Ziva, McGee, and Tony were all at their desks, typing away with various degrees of diligence or lack thereof. Striding up to Tony, Abby peered over his shoulder at his monitor. Tony felt her eyes on him, and turned around, raising an inquisitive eyebrow at her. "Can I help you?"
Abby peered shrewdly at him. "Have you…lost anything today?"
"Lost anything?" Tony was puzzled. "What kind of anything?"
"Just a little thing." Abby was watching his face closely.
Tony glanced over at Ziva, who had turned to listen to the conversation. She shook her head, implying that she didn't have any idea what was going on either. "What's up, Abs?" asked McGee.
"How about you, McGee?" Abby focused her attention on him. "Did you lose something this morning? Or maybe earlier this afternoon?"
"I don't know," sad McGee, using the voice he tended to adopt when trying too hard to be tolerant, "but maybe if you tell me what it is, I'll be able to tell you if it belongs to me."
Abby shook her head and squinted her eyes at him. After a moment, she shrugged, and announced, "if you have to ask, then it's obviously not yours." Turning on her heel, she marched away towards Ducky's laboratory, leaving Ziva, McGee, and Tony staring at each other with expressions on each of their faces indicating their doubts about their forensic specialist's sanity.
***
"Ducky?" Abby entered Doctor Mallard's lab only to find it empty. At least she thought it was empty, until she noticed the doctor himself standing at the far end of the room, seated on a chair, almost entirely obscured from Abby's line of sight by one of the empty autopsy tables. He was hunched over, his shoulders and head sagging in a defeated sort of way, and Abby hurried over to him, throwing her arms around him from behind.
"Ducky!" She gave him a little squeeze. "Ducky, you look so tired…you should go home!" Glancing around and into his face, she added, "your eyelids are all droopylike."
The doctor managed a weary smile. "I'm fine, Abigail, but I appreciate your concern. Just an old man beginning to feel the creeping in of his mortality."
Abby wrinkled her nose at him. "That's no shocker," she said, 'working with dead people all day would make anyone think a lot about…well, death. By the way," she added, giving the room another quick once-over, "where's Jimmy?"
"Mr. Palmer," announced Ducky, straightening up slightly and shifting in the chair to face her, "has taken the advice you intended for me and has taken the afternoon off. I believe he has a social engagement. I cannot say that I'm altogether shattered by his loss for today. He's entirely too energetic and a bit too competent for my mentality at this moment. Every time he feels the need to share something he picked up in his studies, I'm only further reminded of the fact that my own memory is becoming like a broken sieve. Only sometimes does it retain the things that it is supposed to retain, and never do I seem to hold on to anything other than the absolutely pertinent details. It won't be long now before I'm asking the same question six or seven times in a row and feeling intelligent for having come up with it the fourth and fifth time." He sighed.
Abby shook her head confidently. She opened her mouth to make some assertion about how Ducky would always be Ducky, and how she couldn't imagine him being anything other than the brilliant and nearly flawless medical examiner that she knew him to be, but the distracted look on his face made her reconsider her words and close her mouth again. "Wow," she asked instead. "What happened?"
"I assume," replied Ducky, "that you don't mean what happened to make me an older man, but instead what happened to make me suddenly so aware of it. I couldn't tell you. Sometimes these things just hit one, in the middle of the day, because of something that someone said, or ,more likely, something that someone did not say. Do you know how old I am, Abigail? Next week, I'm going to be turning…" he stopped. "No, there's no reason for me to rub it in."
Abby had meant to ask him about the penny, but somehow it didn't seem as important now as it had been only moments before. In fact, in the few seconds it took to walk out of Ducky's lab, Abby made a decision. She wouldn't ask anyone else about the penny, because she didn't want anyone to claim it. She needed it for a while.
***
Having stepped out of his lab for a few minutes to go and speak with the Director, Ducky returned to find things not exactly the way they had been when he left. Sitting on his desk was a gigantic frosted cupcake, chocolate, with the frosting on the very top of the muffin having been displaced and crushed by the mark of a fingerprint. Next to the cupcake on the desk was a little piece of paper, which read;
We only have so many days, so let's make every day a holiday! Love, Abby
Ducky did not like too much frosting on his pastries, and the sugary concoction was not immediately altogether appealing to him. Taking it in the spirit in which it was given, however, he peeled off the wrapper, and took a bite. His tooth struck against something hard, and he involuntarily spit the bit of cake back out again, leaving a chunk of soggy, masticated chocolate on the edge of the desk.
. It was only when he noticed the shiny edge of the penny protruding from the side of the cupcake that he broke into a slow smile. He reached forward and gently pried the penny out with his fingers, brushed the crumbs off of it, and laid it on top of Abby's note. He would throw the cupcake away, but he'd keep the penny and the holiday spirit it brought along with it, for as long as he was able to remember the reason why.