Author's Note: This chapter, in which Ducky justifies Gibbs' lack of manliness, is for STLfan.

Best,

Vivian

Chapter Four: Take Off

"After a good deal of consideration," Ducky was saying, having delicately both chewed and swallowed a bite of steak, "I've decided that I both forgive and sympathize with you."

"Yeah?" Gibbs looked up from his own dinner, of which he had managed to finish very little.

"Originally, I was under the impression that you were – and it seems a strange phrase to utter in reference to your heroic self – rather frightened by the idea of a romance with a much younger woman."

Gibbs muttered indistinctly to indicate his opinion of that idea.

Ducky beamed over at his disgruntled friend. "But I seem to have been mistaken. Mr. Palmer, who is an irritatingly astute judge of both character and interpersonal dynamic, appears to have chosen your side over mine."

Gibbs closed his eyes, swallowed a bite, and attempted to keep his voice perfectly calm as he asked "You told Palmer?"

"Certainly not." Ducky was indignant. "I posed for him a hypothetically scenario in which two individuals were suffering from the feelings and were placed in the predicament that you and Abigail find yourselves in, and I asked him to, in the spirit of a psychological exercise, explain to me their various motivations. He is not a perfect scientist, because emotions and personal interests do tend to taint his impression of things. Then again, it is a natural human flaw, showing emotion. You are, in my experience so far, the only man capable of truly giving the impression that you have no soul."

Gibbs knew that he was probably supposed to feel chastised, or even somewhat ashamed. Instead, he was beginning to get very annoyed. This entire scenario was becoming more and more ridiculous by the moment. "You want to hear some feelings?" Gibbs asked, not quite slamming his fork down on the table. "Okay. I feel like a kid who's friends are passing notes to his crush and talking behind his back next to the lockers. It's absurd. It's degrading. It's also-!"

"-not every day that we get to feel young. You should enjoy it." Ducky was unperturbed. "Love has a magical way of making us feel remarkably like children."

They ate in silence for a few minutes. Ducky's silence was a pleasant, companionable one. Gibbs' silence was the silence of a man trying hard to control his rising temper.

"What I originally began to say," continued Ducky eventually, "is that Mr. Palmer believes that he understands your motivations for keeping silence. You're a man in control, and the man in charge of a situation should never be permitted to take advantage of it. Identifying Abby as an object of desire, and pursuing that desire would, I think, be something that you would consider 'taking advantage' of your position."

"Something like that." Gibbs forked more steak.

"If you're interested," continued Ducky, "I have something else for you to take advantage of, while you're busy preparing to stomach the idea of pursuing one of your underlings."

Gibbs did not like the idea of his team being his "underlings." At the same time, they weren't exactly his equals in the workplace, and they weren't exactly his equals in experience. He still couldn't, or wouldn't, think of them as his inferiors. It was a complicated psychological classification. Gibbs continued to pour over all this in order to keep himself from envisioning the more pleasing and significantly less appropriate connotations of Abby Sciuto being "under" him.

Ducky said, "she's a romantic."

"Yeah. I know." Gibbs pushed some mashed potatoes around.

"The pedestal on which she has placed you is by no means totally unreachable. You must appeal to her sense of the way things ought to be, the fairytale unreality that Abby feels should really exist in the world. The kind of woman who takes as great a pleasure as she does in re-uniting lost family members and repairing broken interpersonal bonds would melt helplessly in the face of the devotion of a prince charming such as yourself." After a moment's hesitation, Ducky frowned, nodded, and then said "actually, you're less of a prince charming and more of a byronic hero."

Gibbs chuckled darkly. "Alluring and ultimately destructive," he said. Ducky seemed surprised, which was again slightly frustrating. For some reason no one ever seemed to believe that he had actually read a book or had picked up a spot of culture. For all the supposed respect he got, he seemed to be expected far too often to be an ill-educated Neanderthal.

"Actually," Ducky was saying, "I was thinking more the mysterious, strong silent type. Not all byronic heroes destroy things. Think of Jane Eyre's Mr. Rochester. A man damaged by a broken love affair, who ultimately displays his passionate desire to be healed. He, too, was enamoured of one of his employees."

"You thinking of writing a book, Duck? I think McGee's beat you to it."

Ducky laughed. "Ah, yes. The chronicles of the excellent LJ Tibbs." Smiling, he began to clear the plates. "I wouldn't care to infringe upon his creative territory. My story, Jethro, is going to be a love story."

***

It was already almost midnight when Gibbs appeared on Abby's doorstep. Unlike Ducky, Abby looked very surprised when she found her boss standing in front of the house. After looking surprised for a second or two, she almost immediately decided to be worried instead.

"Gibbs!" Running out to meet him, she grabbed him by both arms and looked searchingly into his face. "Are you okay? Is everybody okay?"

Very gently, he removed her hands, taking a moment to squeeze each of them in his before letting them drop back to her sides. "As far as I know, everything's fine. You can breathe, now."

Abby did breathe. After letting out a long relieved sigh, she cocked her head at him and asked, puzzled, "then…if everything's okay, what are you doing at my house?"

"It's…" he fumbled for a phrase, and then, taking, as he often had recently, a cue from Ducky, announced, "it's just a social call, Abs. Can I come in?"