Author's Note: If you've left a review on chapter 2 or 3, thank you very much - your feedback is greatly appreciated. Unfortunately at the moment ffnet won't let me reply to individual reviewers, so apologies for the bad manners. As soon as its fixed, I'll start answering properly again.

A month had passed. Thirty-one days. Thirty-one nights, including this one. Eight spent working. Four with Sondra – all night. Four with Ziva, but only for cooking and home alone after. Three partying with Abby. One getting McGee very drunk. Seven dates – four lasted the night, one was trying to make her boyfriend jealous, one turned him down and one was just… odd. Three at home watching movies. Plus this one.

Thirty-one days. Eight days off duty, three where Gibbs was in New York, one that Tony spent sitting around in court waiting to be called.

Nineteen normal working days. Where normal was no longer defined as waking up, going to work, teasing the gullible, getting grunted at and headslapped, and catching bad guys.

Well, yes, normal was still all that; but it was also looking at Gibbs before he could remind himself he shouldn't be looking at Gibbs. It was knowing down to the nearest inch exactly where in the room the man was, whether he was looking or not, because he seemed to have developed some sort of internal Gibbs magnet, and he could constantly feel the pull. Never mind magnetic north. His blood had two directions – Gibbs and south, generally in quick succession.

Normal was getting glared at, and thinking he could really get used to that shade of blue. Getting growled at and wondering if Gibbs used a similar tone in bed. Normal was also taking detours on the way to Abby, or autopsy, to stop off in the men's room, or the stairwell, or even a handy supply closet. Normal was spending those snatched moments giving himself a severe talking to, because he was straight, and didn't think things like this; and Gibbs was straight, and would probably skin him alive if he ever suspected he did.

It was strange. And tiring . And despite said talkings to, he wasn't freaking out over the whole obsessing over his boss thing anywhere near as much as he should have been. Because the thing was, he'd never done this over a girl either. And truth be told, as there wasn't any precedent of any size, shape or gender, it was just kind of nice. It made the boring days a little bit brighter.

Nothing had actually changed at work, except for his new tendency to daydream about someone in the room, rather than drifting off into any one of a hundred and one other distracting thoughts.

And to be fair, Gibbs could be a very distracting thought, when you actually thought about him. About strong, rough hands, and almost-but-not-quite smiles, and about sheer force of personality. Deep hidden nuances. Animal magnetism on an epic scale.

He was so screwed.

He had to stop doing this. Had to. Because Abby already knew something was off and was doing her damnedest to find out what. He couldn't keep wishing murders on people just to keep her busy enough that she wasn't trying to pry into his private life. God help him if she ever managed to get far enough on top of her workload to turn the full force of her attention onto him.

And as if that wasn't enough, Gibbs had upped the ante with the head slaps and the glares and the dry as dust sarcastic comments lately, which was a sure fire sign that he was thinking something was up with Tony too.

He had a choice. He could firmly stick a lid on this thing and ignore it until it went away – no more looking, or thinking, or imagining, or any of those other new and interesting little habits that seemed to be cropping up in his daily routine lately.

Or he could carry on as he was doing, and make sure his funeral arrangements were up to date. He figured 'death by embarrassment' would be a first for Ducky.

No choice at all there. Denial it was. As of right now, there was nothing to see here. He was straight, and Gibbs was straight, and he'd tell Abby he'd been mooning over some model type who could wrap her legs around her ears and tie a cherry stalk up in her mouth.

It was a thought that came with its own surround sound visual, minus one model type and plus one alpha male, and it blew a small - but perfectly formed - bullet hole straight through the middle of his plan.

He knew he should have called Sondra. Never mind that she was still pissed with him over their last date; or more to the point the aftermath of their last date, when it was ever so slightly possible that his mind had gotten a little distracted at the wrong moment, and she had somehow, in that weird way women had of honing in on that one thing you thought you'd hidden away so well they'd never find it, known

He paused, reatracing his mental meanderings a couple of times. What did it say about his mind right now that not only was he getting distracted from his distractions, but that he wasn't entirely sure he was making sense to himself when he did so?

The point was, he should have called Sondra, because sitting at home on his own wasn't helping. It led to thinking, which led to imagining, which led to him getting hot under the collar and uncomfortable further down. And no way was he going to take care of that, because it was a step too far. He was, after all, straight.

Anyway, this would blow over in a few days, as would Sondra's mood, and when it did, he didn't want to be left with the knowledge that he'd... ah... relieved the tension imagining some of the alternative forms of entertainment Gibbs could provide. He had willpower – whatever Ziva might think - and women. That was all it would take.