Too much caffeine

A./N. One-shot that came to my mind whilst having my fourth cuppa… this is Gabby-stuff although nothing will be too explicit, if you can't stand the thought, stay away from reading it.

Abby's hands were shaking. She had been working for three days straight. The case she was working on was not only absolutely fascinating (usually people did not die from a mixture of amphetamines, suffocation and bleeding from a nasty head-wound at once with none of these being fatal on its own but the mixture doing the job) but also incredibly difficult. Usually murderers left their DNA behind in some form or fingerprints or some kind of fabric ANYTHING, this guy had just been CLEAN. It was a nightmare. Not only Abby's nightmare but Gibbs' nightmare as well. The inspector had been in and out of the forensics lab during the last 72 hours and had looked worse and worse. Abby was used to not sleeping for a couple of days in a row. Jethro clearly wasn't.

She sighed when she accidentally pierced the agar in her petri dish with the pipette tip. Her eyes hovered over the huge cup of caf pow standing nearby. How many of those had she been drinking? She didn't know. She'd lost count. A look into the bin revealed 4 empty cups but the cleaners had been here last night so there must have been more. Damned, that should not have happened. She was a scientist. She knew that even for an addict there was a dose of caffeine that was unhealthy and the tremor in her hands spoke for itself.

She took a deep breath. Her pulse was quite fast too. Faster than usual. Well, she'd just have to get through it. But it was a bad feeling nonetheless. Her head was swimming. Okay. She would not be able to do any work feeling like this so she could as well go for a stroll and look what the others were doing. She knew Kate and McGee were running about hunting victims whilst Tony had been forced to stay in because someone needed to check the victim's data.

She had almost reached the bullpen when she heard a loud cry. The next moment Tony came running out of the door, shouting incoherently into his phone. She caught up with him in a second.

"What's up?"

"Gibbs!", was the single-worded answer. Then he went on shouting into his phone: "No, Ducky, she's dead, she can wait. I need you up here now otherwise you'll have Gibbs on the table next. Yes, I know what I am talking about. He might well have had a heart attack."

Abby's brain reached the right conclusion in a second. She pushed Tony aside and ran into the bullpen. Gibbs was lying on the floor, deathly pale. A cup of coffee was lying right next to his right hand and the brown liquid was soaking the carpet.

"Oh f###, Jethro!", she kneeled down next to him, checked his breathing. He was alive but unconscious and when she put two fingers against his main artery she could feel how fast his heart was beating. She knew Gibbs heartbeat, she had felt it under her fingers a hundred times and it had never been like this even after his morning run. She could feel panic in her throat. "C'mon, Jethro Gibbs, wake up! This is not funny."

She saw her trembling hands running over his face and his breast, his arms, felt his heartbeat go up and up and… stumble.
"No! No!"

The panic took over. She had not slept in days, her body was already at a breaking point. Everything around her went dark in an instant.

Suddenly everything was all right, cosy and warm. She could hear Gibbs voice, soothing. The way he always talked to her when he was not in inspector-mode. Nobody on the team knew. They had kept it a secret from everyone. Tony might have sensed something but he knew better than to speak it out loud. Even Tony could only stand a finite number of head slaps.

"I love you, Jethro", she mumbled and wondered why her tongue felt so strange in her mouth.

"Are you done now, Ducky? Believe me, I am fine. Check on her, for God's sake."

"She just tried to say something. Think she tried to say her name but ain't sure. What the heck have you guys been doing to yourselves?", that was Tony sounding slightly pissed off and also more than a bit worried.

"Abbs? Abby? Can you hear me?"

She wanted to say yes, wanted to grin, wanted to tell Tony everything was all right if only Jethro was all right. Something pierced the skin on her arm and suddenly she felt a bit like flying.

"Jethro…"

"She's gonna be all right. I have given her a low concentrated sedative so she can calm down. I was always wondering when something like this would happen. Caffeine is as much of a drug as opium in a way which reminds me of that time in India, when…"

"Oh Ducky, shut up. May I move now? Put that darned thing off my arm. I am all right."

"Actually you're not. You'll have to go to the hospital to get a proper check on your heart. I am pretty sure Tony was right. You might have had a heart attack or at least a cardiac arrhythmia. This could have serious consequences if you don't get it checked. Did I tell you the story when one of my friends at the university of Edinburgh…"

"Okay, okay, I will have it checked. Now, may I move for heaven's sake? Thanks. Abby? Abby?"

"Jethro…"

"Since when does she call you Jethro?"

"That's none of your business DiNozzo. Baby? Abby?"
"Oh… my… gosh… if this is what I think it is… ouch!"

"Leave it, Tony! Will you?"
"Umm… okay boss, but you have to say that this is not really professional…"

Abby felt Jethros hands in hers. The feeling of flying wore off and she noticed she was lying on the floor of the bullpen. When she opened her eyes, Gibbs was kneeling next to her. He still looked pale but he was alive. When he saw she was conscious, he smiled.

Tony sat on one of the chairs nearby smiling the typical I-know-everything smile his hands crossed behind his head.

Ducky had his hand on her wrist and was counting whilst watching the sweep hand of his watch.

"Okay, you're under 140 beats now. You should be all right. But If I see any caf pow around you in the next 48 hours I will shut you into one of my spare cells downstairs and have Palmer stand guard."

With this he packed his stuff together and was gone to "have a look at the lovely young lady downstairs" making both of them promise to go home and sleep and not get back until the next morning.

Abby and Gibbs exchanged a glance. Without saying anything he helped her to her feet. "Need a lift home?", he asked calmly. She nodded. "Thank you."

"Oh jeez!", exclaimed DiNozzo. "You really wanna keep this a secret?"

One glance from Gibbs made him shut up with a sigh.

"Okay, I'll not tell anyone. Get out of here. Both of you. You look terrible. And take a cab. I don't know what Ducky injected you but it's probably not safe to drive."

Half an hour later they had reached Gibbs place. Abby had washed her make-up off and brushed her teeth. For the first time in days she felt sleepy. The caffeine shock had worn off and left her drained and tired.

When she came into the bedroom, she found Jethro sleeping on the bed. He still wore all of his clothes, had only managed to get rid of his shoes. Careful not to wake him up, she pulled his jacket off and then lay down next to him, her left arm covering his chest.

He stirred. So he had not been sleeping fast yet.

He smiled at her, got up and swapped his clothes for comfortable boxer shorts and an old T-shirt, before he pulled the sheet over both of them and held her close.

"I really thought you were gonna die", whispered Abby.
"I thought the same for a second. But DiNozzo reacted very quickly. He might have been my savior in this. But when I woke up and saw you lying there… I might have gone too far this time. I shouldn't have pushed the limits that far. There's no way in solving the case if one is so overtired that one ends up with a caffeine-shock."

"We'll solve it tomorrow", said Abby confidently.

"We will", responded Jethro.

"I'm glad you're alive."

"I'm glad you're here."

He kissed her forehead and five minutes later both were sleeping for the first time in more than 80 hours, feeling each other's steady slow heartbeat and every breath they took.