Author's Note: This is another short story I wrote for the Comment Fic community on LiveJournal. The prompt this was episode titles, more specially: NCIS, Tim+/Abby, Nothing Important Happened Today (The X-Files). I hope you enjoy.

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Tim McGee used to measure his life by the important days, bouncing from one to the next as if they buoyed the rope in between from sinking too low.

He supposed it had to do with his childhood, which thanks to his father, wasn't the happiest. Even as a young boy, he would live for the A's from his teachers on exams and congratulatory remarks about projects and reports. Of course his father gave little notice, but his mother made sure he knew he was loved.

Later the important days grew bigger, if less frequent. The day he received his acceptance letter from MIT. The day he graduated. The day he was hired by NCIS. The day he met Abby Sciuto.

It was Abby who taught him to appreciate every day. It was the way she saw life, despite the hardships she had experienced as a child. She saw the beauty in the world even as she celebrated the darker elements. After they had been dating for a few months, he decided she reveled in the shadow so the light looked that much brighter to her.

And he too began to take more note of the days in which nothing important happened and to enjoy them simply as another day he had to enjoy. Even after they stopped dating, he held on to that, for once you allowed Abby into your life, it was forever changed.

And he was glad for it, for while life as an NCIS special agent provided opportunities for important days, many of them were not good ones. The day he first killed someone. The day Kate died. The day Director Sheppard died. The day Franks died. So many days revolved around death and destruction. There had been two separate days in which he was at the epicenter of a terrorist bombing.

But there were good important days as well: when they caught a criminal and gave a family some closure, or stopped a terrorist from giving other families the need for need closure.

And it was the days in between these important ones he found he could cherish and even look forward to, whether it was simply finding a new restaurant or enjoying an old favorite. Or hanging out with Abby as friends, or throwing caution to the wind during a night of drinks with Tony or Jimmy. Or staying at home and getting a few thousand words written on his latest novel.

Life was more than a series of important days.

But they still came around too. The day he met Delilah. The day she got her wheelchair. The day she left for her overseas station. The day they decided a long-distance relationship simply wasn't in the cards for them.

And most recently, the day he and Abby had started dating again. It had taken a considerable amount of time for him to feel he was ready to try dating anyone again, let alone Abby. The funny thing about important days was that you rarely knew they were going to be important until they became so.

On that particular day, he and Abby decided to have lunch a little cafe near the office. It wasn't an impulse decision to ask her out on a date, but he hadn't planned for it to happen that day. But something she said made him decide that he was tired of waiting for the perfect moment and he rather less than eloquently blurted it out.

They still hadn't told anyone else yet-too much history and friendship to potentially ruin if this went badly-and as far as they could tell, the others hadn't picked up on it. That wouldn't last, but they had enjoyed the three weeks of secrets.

So on this particular day, Tim was wrapping up his last report when he heard the elevator ding and a few seconds later, she was at his desk.

"Anything important happen today?" she asked.

"Nothing at all," he replied, smiling up at her.