A/N: I am continuing set of stories linking my favourite shows to my profession, Theatre. I figure that with all the moving around the people in my favourite shows do, they are bound to encounter Theatre one or twice. PLEASE R&R so I can know if this is working or not. Look for other stories in this series including the already published Criminal Intent "Has the Character" and to include House MD, Torchwood and CSI.
Disclaimer: I don't own these characters, or any of the bits of Plays or Stories... just the situations in which they collide.

"I was gonna run last night." His voice registered the question in his eyes. He looked up at Abby like he hadn't the first idea why she wanted him to read this. He probably really didn't have the first idea. She bit her lip and raised her eyebrows, very clearly stating "please?" with her expression.

He sighed. "I was gonna run and keep right on running. Clear to the Iowa border." McGee stopped talking to Ziva and looked over at Gibbs from across the room. He mouthed the words "I know this" to her and walked over to stand behind Abby. Ziva trailed slightly after.

"I drove all night with the windows open. The old man's two bucks flapping right on the seat beside me. It never stopped raining the whole time. Never stopped once." By this time, everyone else had stopped what they were doing and were all listening to Gibbs. He didn't look up now, as his voice started to reflect that he knew exactly what Abby was asking of him. He started to act.

"I could see myself in the windshield. My face. My eyes. I studied my face. Studied everything about it as though I was looking at another man. As though I could see his whole race behind him. Like a mummy's face. I saw him dead and alive at the same time. In the same breath. In the windshield I watched him breathe as though he was frozen in time and every breath marked him. Marked him forever without him knowing."

Gibbs took a deeply inhaled breath, tightened his grip on the paper and kept reading, not noticing his audience had grown to its maximum size.

"And then his face changed. His face became his father's face. Same bones. Same eyes. Same nose. Same breath. And his father's face changed to his grandfather's face. And it went on like that. Changing. Clear on back to faces I'd never seen before but still recognized. Still recognized the bones underneath. Same eyes. Same mouth. Same breath. I followed my family clear into Iowa. Every last one. Straight into the corn belt and further. Straight back as far as they'd take me. Then it all dissolved. Everything dissolved."

Gibbs studied the last lines on the paper and read them aloud while looking up into the faces of his team, without actually seeing them. "Just like that. And that two bucks kept right on flapping on the seat beside me."

No one moved, everyone felt a little self-conscious it seemed. The air in the small room had become very still, almost as if they'd all stopped breathing. Tony, Ziva and McGee were all trying not to make eye contact with Gibbs, or each other. Director Shepard and Ducky exchanged a meaningful look as Ducky took her empty glass from her hand and set it on a nearby table. Agent Lee and Palmer, who had been strangely absent for a few minutes of time, walked back in the room and stifled their laughter that had been threatening to erupt.

They looked around the small room and noticed three things. One was not as unusual as the others. One was that Abby looked as though she were going to cry. That happened fairly regularly. Two, everyone in the room was stone silent, a feat not usually achieved with such an array of characters. Third, and most strange of all, Gibbs stood in the middle of them all, looking distinctly vulnerable and embarrassed.

He finally looked up. He spoke.

"Like that, Abby?" Everyone else moved to resume some form of normal activity before the spell was broken and Gibbs returned to his usual self. Abby just looked at him as the two giant tears that had escaped her eyes ran slowly down her face.

"Just like that, Gibbs." She sniffled and before the sniffle was complete, Gibbs had swiped a bar napkin from a table and brought it to her face. She took it out of his hands and dabbed at her eyes gratefully, saying "thank you" with every dab.

"Why did you want me to read that, Abbs? Just to hear the sound of my voice?" He smiled a little, knowing how much she liked to hear the sound of her own voice too.

"No, well not really. I do love it when you talk to me Gibbs. You could read the phone book and I would listen. It wasn't really that." She sniffled again but the two tears were the only physical evidence of her emotion.

"Then what was it?" He smiled a little again, looking at how unwilling she had become to discuss it. She was embarrassed; he liked that a bit because it meant she hadn't just done it for the sake of it.

"You, you never tell us anything personal Gibbs. Anything we've found out about you has either been not so important, or come from other people. Mike, you when you didn't know us any more. You never tell us things yourself. But when I read that monologue, I thought it sounded like you. I thought if you read it I would learn something new about you. Even if it weren't true Gibbs, that could be something right out of your life. That was what I wanted for my birthday. I wanted to hear you tell me something personal about yourself. You just did, I think." She heaved a sigh that betrayed that she didn't expect the moment to become so personal indeed.

Gibbs reached out for her, "Oh come here kid" "I'm not a ki-," "KID." He wrapped her up in a hug that was no bigger than the ones she got at work, but definitely tighter because she DID intend to squeeze the life out of his sweater. The fabric was as soft as she imagined and she took a deep breath of it to recover from her sighing.

"I might not tell you things Abby, but that's my fault, not yours. Don't ever think I don't want you to know me." They smiled into each other's faces for a moment before Gibbs let her go saying, "Happy birthday. You know you will have a present from me by Monday though, right?" Abby took two steps back.

"I'll expect nothing less Gibbs." The rest of the group seemed to have recovered from the awkward moments and were chatting again on the sidelines.

Ducky saw that the intimacy between Gibbs and Abby had returned to normal levels and announced as he programmed a few songs into the jukebox in the room "And now, for dancing!"

Tony clapped his hands; Palmer and Lee started dancing immediately, Ziva just groaned as McGee grabbed her by the hand. Ducky was leading the Director in to a slightly larger space between the tables and Gibbs just said to no one in particular, "I'll sit this evening out."

"Its ok Gibbs." Abby said as Tony did a one-man Conga line toward her. She smiled at him and looked back to where Gibbs had propped himself with his drink. "I got my present. You can go back to being just you. I like you that way anyway."