Prompt: Yes (Slight Borderland spoilers)

In the end, it came down to a simple yes or no question.

There were no chocolates and flowers or declarations punctuated by colourful prose. There were no sudden life-changing revelations and no surge in hormones that pushed them to and over the edge. (That, she would later remember with a satisfied smirk, had come later.)

It wasn't something that they'd planned, or something that they really needed to think about. It was a simple shift, an evolutionary turn in a relationship they'd never really been able to define.

"Do you still love me, Gibbs?"

The look he gave her told her his answer - and that he was hurt, maybe frustrated, that she felt she had to ask.

Abby bit her lip in an subconscious gesture of nerves, fingers curling and twisting as she stood in front of him in his basement in a scene so reminiscent of one they both remembered all too well. "In a non-paternal way?"

She made no attempt at disguising the hope in her voice; didn't stand a chance at hiding the uncertainty.

Again, one look, one flash of those blue eyes, seemed to say it all.

He tasted like sawdust; she tasted like caffeine-free Caf-Pow.

Hands moved over skin, memorising new territory. Marking it. Branding it. Claiming it.

Later, hours later, when they'd stumbled upstairs and curled up beneath the comforter he wished he'd had a chance to wash but which Abby adored all the more because it still held his scent, she asked the all important question:

"Can you forgive me?"

"Nothing to forgive, Abs." His lips brushed against the back of her neck, arms tightened around her waist. "There never was."