Obnoxiously Long Author's Note Begins Here:

Dear NCIS:

I love you. I really do. Possibly more than I've loved any show since Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and that's saying a lot. I realize that the Abby/McGee 'shippers are probably one of the smaller portions of your demographic, but look - we really love those two. They're seriously adorable, and honestly, you wouldn't be reminding us that they'd been together and having them get all jealous of the flirting if you weren't going somewhere with this, right? Right?

Also, I haven't read any spoilers and I'm even avoiding new fic in case of possible spoilers (in other words, anyone who alludes to spoilers will get on my bad side!), but the previews for this week are making me really nervous. Please don't screw up my favorite show. Thanks.

~Devoted Fan

Other random details: contains vague spoilers for "Borderland." It's kind of choppy and a little rough, but I figure that's kind of how Abby's brain is working during this episode, and I wanted to get this up before tomorrow's episode.

She'd really wanted him to call her bluff on sharing a bed.

For some odd reason, a night spent curled up with McGee in that narrow bed sounded…nice. Perfect, actually. He was one of the very few people she'd ever really spent the night with in the literal sense, and sometimes she missed that feeling of having his arms around her, of drifting off to sleep with the sound of his breathing in her ear.

Those had been good nights. And now, five years later, they were picking at each other and huffing out annoyed sighs, and jumping all over one another if they so much as glanced sideways at anyone else. She didn't know why they were so prickly all of a sudden.

Or maybe, she thought as she settled herself on the lab table, the problem was that she knew exactly why they were so prickly.

It occurred to her, as she made her way back up to their room the next morning, that she didn't necessarily have any good reason to trust Alejandro. He was charming, and good-looking, and a representative of a recognized government…but then, in her line of work, she met a lot of guys who fit that description and turned out to be either jackasses, or just plain evil.

Abby shut the door behind her and let out a long sigh, relieved to be safe in their room with one person she knew she could trust, no matter how much he sometimes annoyed her. McGee was fast asleep on the bed, looking pale and exhausted. She felt a flicker of sympathy for him, and leaned down to brush a kiss across his cheek.

Then she gave his shoulder a rough shake. "McGee!" she said sharply. He jerked awake, looking bewildered. "Get your stuff packed. We're going home."

McGee knew she wasn't asleep; Abby never slept on planes. And he knew that she thought he was asleep, because she'd waited until they'd been in the air for a while, and he'd closed his eyes and leaned back against the headrest. And then, very slowly, she'd scooted as close to him as the armrest would allow and carefully rested her head on his shoulder.

Something was wrong, and she didn't want to tell him about it.

He wished he knew was it was.

Her lab was not giving her the sense of "all's right with the world" that it usually did.

She could have dealt with the DNA samples herself. But she wanted him close by, even if she couldn't tell him what was wrong.

He was McGee. He was comforting, even if he didn't know why she needed him to be comforting.

"Stay a minute," she told him after Gibbs left. "I need you." Then she turned back to her computer until she heard the ding of the arriving elevator and the doors sliding closed.

"Abby, what do you need me –" She cut him off with a hug, burying her face in his shoulder and squeezing him tight.

Because he was McGee, he hugged her back even though he didn't know why.

"You do what you have to do, Abby. What you know is right." Gibbs kissed her forehead. "I would never ask you to do any different."

She made it to her car before she started to cry. Sitting in the driver's seat, parked outside of Gibbs' house, she cried harder than she had when Kate had died, harder than when Vance had separated her team. Harder than when they'd all thought Ziva was dead.

She cried the way she hadn't cried since she was sixteen, and her mother had told her that her father was dead.

When she was out of tears, she just sat for a moment, completely drained and totally exhausted. She should go home, she knew. She should sleep. Tomorrow would be hard enough without sleep deprivation.

Instead, she drove to McGee's apartment and knocked on his door, ignored his confused greeting, and walked past him through to his bedroom, pausing for just a minute to scratch Jethro behind the ears.

In his room, she headed for his bureau and opened drawers until she found what she was looking for. Pulling out a t-shirt and a pair of sweatpants, she yanked her shirt over her head. "Abby!" she heard McGee say from behind her, sounding slightly shocked.

She threw a glance over her shoulder. "Nobody said you had to watch, McGee," she told him as she shrugged out of her bra. She finished changing and crawled into his bed, deliberately choosing the pillow that had the indentation of his head. She settled her own head into the hollow, and felt him staring at her back. "It's a bigger bed than in Mexico," she said. "No Quasimodo."

After a moment, Abby felt him slide into bed behind her. They lay there in silence for a while, until she found that she wasn't quite out of tears, after all.

McGee could hear her sniffles, and finally he couldn't stand it any longer. He rolled onto his side and reached out to lay a hand on her shoulder. "Abby." She didn't say anything, but her hand clutched his. "Abby…tell me what's wrong."

"I can't." Abby turned over and burrowed into his arms. He felt her tears on his neck. "I can't. You'll find out soon, I promise…but I can't tell you." Her breath hitched. "Don't ask me, please."

"Okay." McGee rubbed her back and pressed a kiss to her temple. "It's okay, Abs."

She shook her head. "No, it's not," she whispered, and sniffled again. "But thanks for saying it."

"Tim," she said eventually. "Do you think people do crazy things for people they love? Things that…things that are wrong? That they would never do otherwise?"

He knew that trying to trace the root of the question would be an exercise in frustration, but he also knew that she wouldn't have asked if it weren't important, so he considered it carefully. He thought about the only time he'd ever gotten into a fight as a kid, when he'd found some older kids teasing his little sister about her red hair. He thought about how much he'd wanted to kill Ari for what he'd done to Kate, and how if Abby's ex-boyfriend had been a little slower running out of his apartment that night, he wasn't sure what would have happened – only that Michael never would have hurt Abby again.

He thought about how he and Tony and Gibbs had taken off for Africa with more proof that Ziva was dead than that she was alive, with their only real hope that they could get the bastards who were responsible.

"Yes," he said softly. "I think they do." He stroked her hair. "Listen, Abby, I'm sorry I made that joke about your weight. You know I think you're beautiful."

She snuggled a little bit closer, and he tightened his arms around her. "I know. We were…picking at each other." But they were okay now. "Thanks for trying to save me from the drug cartel. Trying to save all of us. It was very brave."

"I wouldn't ever let anything happen to you, Abs. Not if I could stop it."

Neither of them ever fell asleep that night, but at least she could feel his arms around her, and hear the sound of his breathing in her ear.

It made facing the next day the tiniest bit easier.