Author's Note: Thank you for the lovely comments, everyone! I love writing first-meeting Gabby, there are so many ways it could have played out. We now have a connected phone line in our apartment, but we don't want to set up an internet connection until we've sorted out some stuff with the phone company, so the saga continues… *rolls eyes* Anyway. This chapter is possibly a little OOC, but I just don't see Gibbs and Abby getting along from the word 'go' – the relationship they have would take time to build up. IMO, anyway. Let me know if there's anything that jars you and I'll take a look at it. :)

***

April 14th, 2021

"You had me at 'point taken'," Abby teases him.

Gibbs remembers it differently. "You hated me back then."

She shakes her head. "I never hated you, Gibbs. It just took a little time for our personalities to stop clashing, that's all."

"Understatement."

She giggles. "Do you remember the time I quit?"

He'd almost forgotten, but her words bring the memory to the forefront of his mind. It was just under a year into her employment, and they haven't argued quite so spectacularly in the nineteen years since.

***

Tension

March 22nd, 2002

"I need those results, Abby."

"Yeah?" she mutters, stalking past him into her office. "Well, you know what I need, Gibbs? Some breathing room! I told you before, it's gonna take at least another two hours!"

Gibbs doesn't have time to sit around and wait for results. A warrant is riding on this DNA match, and his patience is wearing thin. "Work faster."

They don't get on at the best of times, mainly because she refuses to let him push her around. On this particular day, the edge to his voice shatters her self-control, and she steps into his personal space, fury radiating from her.

"Work faster? I have been here since five a.m., and I haven't eaten all day because I've been working my butt off trying to get you something you can use. Science takes time, Gibbs! How many times do I have to explain this to you?"

He holds her fiery gaze with his own icy glare, beginning to lose his cool in earnest. "Maybe if you quit yelling at me and put more into your work, you'd get a result quicker."

Her eyebrows shoot up, and she strides away from him, her huge boots strangely silent against the tiles. "And maybe if you learned to chill out and not expect miracles, you wouldn't come up against so much resistance!" Her fingers tap out an angry rhythm onto her keyboard as she brings up a search window. "See that?"

The bar at the bottom of the screen is only two-thirds filled, informing him that there's still thirty-one per cent of the database still to search. Before he can reply, Abby begins again. "This computer can only work at a certain speed. My budget is woefully small, and I can't afford to upgrade it. I can't make this happen any faster, Gibbs! Unless you wanna go off and invent me a time machine so I can skip a couple of hours ahead and then come back and tell you what the search throws up, there is nothing I can do!"

Intellectually, he knows she's right, but he's tired, he's under pressure from the Director and the victim's family alike, and right now he's pissed off. "If I were you, I'd check that attitude," he warns her in a low growl.

Abby stares at him as if she can't believe what she's hearing. "Check my attitude?! You know what? Screw this."

She picks up the phone and dials a number without looking at him. "Helen, hey. Is Director Morrow in his office?" As her intention begins to dawn on Gibbs, she listens to the reply. "No, it's okay. I'm coming up."

Slamming down the phone, she tells Gibbs, "Maybe you'll have more luck with whoever they get in to replace me." With that, she leaves the lab, her shoulders set angrily.

Gibbs returns to his desk, letting his temper cool and rational thought to encroach upon his exasperation. When his cell rings and the Director summons him up to his office, he isn't surprised.

He half expects Abby to be there, but when he arrives it's just he and Morrow. "Take a seat, Jethro."

Gibbs does, and the Director watches him impassively. "You want to explain to me why I've just had to talk Abby Sciuto out of resigning?"

In the back of his mind, Gibbs finds that he's glad she's let herself be persuaded to stay. "Difference of opinion, sir."

"Quite," Morrow says dryly, giving his subordinate a knowing look. "I'll level with you, Jethro. I don't want to lose this one – she's damn good at her job. Now, I've told her that she needs to tolerate you a little more, but that goes both ways. Don't antagonise her. She manages to get along just fine with everyone else in the agency – maybe you should think about that."

Gibbs only nods, and Morrow looks a little off-balance, as if he'd expected to come up against more resistance. "Dismissed," he says, and Gibbs heads for the elevator, hitting the button for the ground floor.

***

Abby looks up as her computer beeps, sighing when she realises the result's come in for Gibbs. She isn't looking forward to speaking to him again, but what choice does she have?

She prints out the result and crosses to her phone, laying a hand on the receiver. Before she can pick it up, footsteps sound behind her, and she glances around to watch Gibbs approach. She has no idea what she thinks about this guy – on the one hand, he sets every bone in her body tingling, and she has enormous respect for the way he gets things done. On the flipside, though, he's an arrogant, unreasonable ass.

He deposits a cup of Caf-Pow! and a store-bought sandwich on her workbench, and she tries not to let her confusion show, although her stomach grumbles at the sight of the food. In response, she holds out the printout of the DNA result, and he takes it from her with a slight smile, leaving the office without saying a word.

Abby stares at the sandwich, trying to reconcile the peace offering with the brash, abrupt manner she's so used to receiving from Gibbs. Guess there's more to him than I thought.

It isn't until she takes a bite of the first meal she's had all day that she realises she's grinning from ear to ear.