1"Explain."
Abby squirmed in her chair, causing it to slowly swivel around. Gibbs reached out a hand and twisted it back into place with one quick motion. His eyes were burning with a fury she'd never seen directed towards her before. Tony? Sure. He screwed around all the time. But, Abby? No, Abigail Sciuto had never been in this much trouble with her boss before.
To make matters much worse, Abby had a feeling that there was a minuscule possibility that she actually deserved to be in her current situation. She could handle it if she was falsely accused. It certainly wouldn't be fun, but she wouldn't have all this guilt wiggling around inside her.
Now, Abby would be the first to admit that the incident today hadn't been her shining moment. However, could you look at it from her perspective?
~Earlier that day~
"Dinozzo, I need you to head to the base to interview Petty Officer Jemmed's family. Something's off about her husband."
Tony looked up from his paperwork.
"You think he did it?"
Gibbs stared at him lifting a hand and flicking his wrist sharply. Tony flinched involuntarily, ready for the inevitable slap to the back of the head. However, the fact that the two men were on different sides of the bullpen, kept the slap purely a threat.
"Right," Tony nodded, "That's what I'll go figure out."
Gibbs smirked. "You go do that."
"McGee, you're with me."
McGee jumped up, eyes still on his computer screen as he finished typing.
"Where are we going, Boss?" Finally, he looked up and his boss's expression registered in his mind. "I guess I'll find out when we get there," he sighed.
The older man gestured for him to leave the room and McGee walked out in a hurry, slightly uncomfortable with the idea that he was completely unsure where he was venturing off to.
Lastly, he turned to the black clad figure who was relaxing in his chair with her socked feet up on the desk, on top of the stacks of paperwork he'd finished that morning.
"Hold down the fort for me, Abs."
Abby grinned and slipped on the NCIS hat from Gibbs' desk that he rarely bothered to wear.
"Now Gibbs, do you really think anything would happen to NCIS on my watch? And, by the way, where are you taking McGee?"
Gibbs grinned and tugged on one of her carefully made pigtails.
"I'll bring McGee back in one piece. Two tops."
With that, he walked out of the bullpen, leaving Abby to laugh quietly to herself. She really hated when she finished with her evidence before a case was solved. There was no forensics to be done. She couldn't even work on cold cases because she had to stay on stand by in case a new lead turned up and she got more evidence to process.
That only left one thing to do. Snoop through the team's desks. Abby bit her lip and contemplated where to start. She'd been through Gibbs' desk so many times that it had started to become boring. Ziva's desk was empty since she'd moved back to Tel Aviv, and Tony had recently cleaned so there wouldn't be anything fun there. Timmy it was.
Five minutes later, after Abby had faked a forensics emergency to get the maintenance worker to unlock one of the drawers, she was sorting through Tim's assorted junk and pondering what an actual forensics emergency might entail.
When she had decided that evidence locked in another coworker's drawer constituted as a disaster at the highest level, the phone on Gibbs' desk began to ring loudly. Abby jumped up and raced towards her boss's desk. Smiled widely and reclining in her...er rather Gibbs' chair, she picked up the phone.
"NCIS, Abby Sciuto speaking. You probably wanted to talk to Gibbs though, considering you called his phone. Well, maybe not, I sometimes call Tony if I want to talk to McGee because he could be in the middle of tracing a call or something like that. Oh! McGee and Tony are agents here in case you didn't know that. You would if you worked here. Do you work her or-"
"Hey! Would you shut up for a minute? I have information about the Jemmed case."
Abby blinked at the phone, trying to decide if calling this man out on his rudeness was more important than getting the facts about the case. Deciding the case was slightly more important, she sighed and asked, "What do you know?"
"The alley behind the new bakery on third street. Come alone and unarmed. You have thirty minutes."
"That sounds sort of suspici-"
But the caller on the other line had already disconnected. Abby frantically tried to call the members of Gibbs' team, but there was no answer. Grumbling under her breath about Rule Three, she hurried down to her lab for her car keys. She had a lead to follow.
-~-
"That was the most irresponsible thing you've ever done, Abigail," Ducky scolded her as he finished patching up the cut on her forehead, before taking her chin between his fingers and tilting her head to look up at him, "and the most dangerous."
Abby bit her lip and swung her legs back and forth where they hung off the autopsy table. Voice trembling she looked into his disappointed eyes.
"I'm sorry, Ducky."
His gaze softened and he caught her in a tight embrace. "Don't scare me like that again, Abby."
She nodded gratefully and scrambled off the autopsy table. She looked at Ducky timidly, absently scuffing her boot against the tiled floor.
"Gibbs wants me to meet him in my lab when we're done here. I think he's mad."
Ducky nodded.
"Yes Abigail, I think he is."
~Present time~
So now here she sat.
Gibbs tapped his fingers against the cold metal of her desk, one eyebrow raised, obviously waiting. Abby tapped right back, her black painted fingernails a sharp contrast to Gibbs' calloused hands. If she was already in trouble being a little bit cheeky wouldn't hurt, right?
He caught her fingers and dropped her hand back in her lap.
"Do you want to make this a whole lot worse for yourself by not being cooperative and acting like a smart-aleck?"
Abby looked up at him and shook her head.
"I'm really sorry," she said, voice breaking twice.
Gibbs sighed and reached out to rub her arm soothingly. "I know Abs. But you have to understand how completely dangerous this was. If Tony hadn't noticed the husband was missing, and McGee hadn't tracked your cell phone, you'd be dead right now Abby. He had a knife, as you can probably tell by the massive cut on your forehead," He stopped to take a breath, before continuing on resignedly. "You know I have to punish you now, right?"
Abby winced, ready for him to tell her she was being written up or cut off from Caf-Pow! for a week. Finally, she nodded quietly and he patted her knee gently, smiling sadly. Gibbs dragged his chair to the center of her tiny office and sat down.
"Come here and lie over my lap."
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So there's the first chapter of my first story! The next one should be out tomorrow or the next day if I don't get delayed. I should be updating a lot since I took off work with the stomach flu. Nasty bug. I'm not so sure about this story, I haven't quite grown into my writing style yet, but I'd really like to hear what you guys want me to write next. I'll probably stick with Abby for now, but I'd really like to hear about some situations. Also, in the final chapter, would you guys like a flashback of the confrontation, or Tony and McGee having a talk with Abby once Gibbs is done with her?
Thanks and please review!
