Disclaimer: CBS owns these characters. FF has no genre for smut. Neither of these things are with in my control...

"When people are this good at something, they don't just give it up." She snapped her mouth shut after speaking, afraid that she had already gone too far and overplayed her hand.

Director of NCIS, Jenifer Shepard stood over the chair where Leroy Jethro Gibbs slouched in a corner of his basement. She wore what Gibbs famously referred to as her ass-kissing suit complete with matching five inch heels.

In comparison, he was dressed in clothes such a far cry from his usual spruce self, she could almost have passed him on the street. Almost. There was something in the way that he bathed himself in stillness, or the way he moved, when he moved, that automatically drew her eye. She was tuned to him in a way she chose it best to ignore for the better part of the time since her return to home ground and the Director's chair.

He hadn't replied, not that she had really expected him to. They hadn't had much of a conversation since the case drew to a close bar the paperwork. Fornell had been reunited with his daughter Emily, the Petty Officer Derrick Paulson had been exonerated and a man who had been a father figure to the young Petty Officer, Mickey Stokes, had been led away in handcuffs. Gibbs hadn't commented on Shepard diverting his retirement paperwork yet either, it was just another example of how far she was prepared to bend the line for him. Right now, she was going to do it all over again on a very personal level, if that was what it took to keep him.

She stared down into piercing blue eyes that tightened into an unbearable expression of loss. She allowed herself to barely ruffle his hair with her fingertips, seeing his expression segue into something softer. He lent into her touch imperceptibly.

"What are you really here for, Jen?" he asked quietly.

She tilted her head fractionally to the side and back again, in their universal language of 'you know why, and if you don't I'm not going to spell it out. Predict, not react.' She wasn't above using his rules against him. When it worked, it was a beautiful, personal thing, exclusive to the pair of them and their shared history. To outsiders, it looked like they conversed using nothing more that vibrations in the air, until the occasional miscommunication broke out into open warfare and everybody took cover without exception.

She had gotten ahead of him in seniority and had the sense that he alternately admired and despised her for it. The Director's desk was never something he coveted, until she sat behind it. She let her fingers slip to cup his cheek, feeling the unfamiliar texture of his beard. Time off had put colour back in his cheeks, but he had let go the iron control over his appearance that was so familiar and comforting to her. Gibbs had always looked the same, pristine and ready for anything, come hell or high water. He had always been her rock in times of trouble, and often enough, she, herself had been the trouble.

His eyelids drooped a little and he turned his head to place the softest kiss on the inside of her wrist. It made her gaze drop to his mouth. She remembered that, and his hands, his hands more than anything from an encounter in a rest room in Marseilles. Colour crept clear of her collar. In the instant she felt herself start to pull away, she felt him clasp her wrist gently, not enough to stop her if she wanted to go, but enough to make her pause. Her pulse hammered sharply in the base of her throat, forcing her to take a shaky breath. It was going to work. If she could hold her course.

She was well aware of the danger that would come with this course of action. She would put him in harm's way without fully apprising him of the risks. Risks which she had taken upon herself to bear in isolation since their first joint mission in France, because she felt responsible. She was responsible, for letting a mark escape with their life. Her life.

A moment of weakness had been all it took. Distance had been the only protection she could offer Gibbs at the time. It was different now. What she was doing tonight was also a weakness of a sort she reminded herself, however calculating she thought she might be being.

"Did you lock my front door?" he grated.

The briefest smile flickered across her face. It sounded so much more innocuous than 'are you staying?'

"What if I did?" she asked with a slight raise of her eyebrows.

He shrugged noncommittally, but his grip tightened just a little and his eyes slid past her to the uncapped bottle of spirits the other side of the room.

"Drink?" he offered amiably.

"Bourbon?" she queried darkly and got a half smile in reply.

She held herself steady as he pulled himself upright, using her as a lever in name only. He never dropped her gaze, or her wrist, rising to crowd her personal space when she refused to step back. He tilted his head back to look down his nose at her. In the heels she wore to the Hill, he was only inches taller than she was.

She could feel her chin go up in a misguided defensive gesture. There was no real danger here past what she already knew might happen, and that would be by her own hand. They had been at this long enough for him to know she wasn't going to be cowed by his proximity and she well knew he wouldn't give ground until it suited him.

"Nice suit," he ground out, finally dropping her wrist and using both hands on her shoulders to guide her to one side. She went easily enough, watching him step around the skeletal bones of a keel resting on a pair of trestles. If she had a mind to put a hand to the timber, she knew she would find the planks sanded as smooth as satin. She scanned the space as an indicator of his state of mind.

There wasn't a power tool in the place. The only sign of electricity was from the jerry rigged spotlights that hung haphazardly above the ribs of the boat. Counter tops were scattered with hand tools in orderly disarray and she watched with interest when Gibbs upended a small jar of oddments and huffed briskly into the empty glass.

He cast a glance back at her, raising her eyebrows as if to say, 'best I can do.' She gave him an infinitesimal nod. He turned back to address the bottle, but not before she saw his teeth sink into his lower lip to keep hold of a smile in that could have been shared.

"Not all of us can do our day jobs in a polo shirt and jeans," she goaded lightly, referring to the clothes he wore when he stormed into her office at the start of the case. She had been expecting him - it hadn't taken much to convince Fornell Gibbs was his best option.

"Still carry a knife," he paused, scooping up her makeshift glass and his own refilled. "Jen?"

"Old habits are hard to break," she replied evenly.

"Not that hard," he shot back.

"Don't you believe it," she snapped, taking his accusation as referring to him leaving Europe without her, years previously. She had had a guilty conscience, a lead on a notorious arms dealer with links to her Father's death and an opportunity to step up a rung on the political ladder. She had taken it, without consulting him first and to all outward appearances, without looking back.

He shrugged. "Didn't feel like it at the time."

She stared at him in surprise, wondering if it was his pride still smarting after all this time, or something else that didn't bear close examination. It was so unlike him to approach this kind of topic head on, it left her momentarily speechless. He filled in the silence for her, stepping back to just in front of her and offering her a healthy measure of the bottle's contents. "I'm sure you had your reasons," he tilted his head to one side surveying her expression. "Why now?"

He pressed the makeshift tumbler into her hand, drawing her attention to his physical closeness. His fingers were warm, briefly touching hers to make sure her grip on the glass was certain, and extracted with military precision. His piercing blue eyes flayed her face, roaming over her pupils spreading until there was almost no green to see, before sliding safely away. She bristled, nostrils flaring. A smile tugged at his lips, inappropriate and unavoidable.

"Does there have to be a why?" she asked quietly, side-stepping the question and slipping her eyes away from his penetrating stare. She trod heavily on the instinct to bolt, recognising the question as an indirect tipping point. What he was saying registered with her as the last opportunity to exit before things got messy. In raking over the coals of the past, he had put their shared history firmly in the frame as a starting point for here on in.

"Nope," he replied, lightly to the point of flippancy. He took a sip, his eyes steadily on her over the rim of his container.

She saluted him ironically, letting the sting of alcohol flood her taste buds and sucking in a breath through clenched teeth, "tastes like battery acid. Where's the good stuff?"

"I wasn't expecting company."

"You're letting your standards slip," she accused.

He took a guarded sip with a glint in his eye before taking her drink off her, as her mouth twisted at the taste, placing both containers together to one side on the counter top.

"Don't be so hard on yourself."

"I didn't mean me!" She growled, feeling her hackles rise. He always did know just how to bait her. The only saving grace was that she could stir him just as readily as he could her.

"I know what you meant," he said mildly, moving to stand in front of her and reaching to link her fingers with his. "Are you done talking at me? Because 'the good stuff' is upstairs."