A/N: Sorry for such a length between updates! That's why I'm trying to make each chapter a complete story- I'm a senior in college who writes this for fun, but this comes after schoolwork, working, and looking for employment after I graduate. : ). Don't forget- there are two chapters in this section, and they are both posted! So don't forget to hit the next button when you're done! And please review! I don't own anything concerning NCIS, this is written for fun, not for profit.

It was 3:21 in the morning when Leroy Jethro Gibbs was aroused from a very sound sleep to the sound of his phone ringing insistently in his ear. Using one eye, he managed to peer at the clock, and, past it, the window. It was absolutely pouring out, the tree branches outside the window illuminated frequently by lightning and mind-splitting thunder.

He managed to grab the phone one ring before it was set to hang up. "Yeah, Gibbs," he muttered darkly into an equally bleak darkness. Thunder rang out. It matched the thunder that hurdled through the phone connection. There was silence. "…Is anyone there?"

---------

"Oh! …Gibbs?"

His eyebrows furrowed. The voice was unexpected, but familier.

"I'm sorry to call and bother you, but I don't have anyone else to call-."

"Abby Sciuto?"

"Yeah, and I'm-," thunder rolled again, cutting off her voice for a long moment, "-so I guess you could say I'm currently living in this phone booth?"

Gibbs could almost see her in the small glass booth, knocking her knuckles together worriedly, and sat up. "Where are you?"

She told him.

"There? At this time of night?" He rubbed his face, forcing himself to focus.

"I live near here- used to? I don't know, he changed the locks when he found out I knew about him fucking my best friend, Gibbs."

Are you serious? He wanted to ask, preferably in a demanding tone.

"Okay. Look, I want you to stay there, Abby, and I'll come get you."

"Okay. Th-hanks, Gibbs."

"Don't open that door for anybody but me, you hear me?" He was already pulling on some pants- the work pants he'd discarded in the nearby hamper last night, leaving his old Navy sleep shirt on.

"I won't," she promised, and he hung up the phone.

-------

Abby hid quite admirably in the shadows until the car pulled up, attempting to wring out her ponytails, until she gave up and just took them out. Soaked was a word she would have used a few hours ago- she was now more along the lines of completely waterlogged.

Gibbs rolled down his window and flicked the light on so she could see it was him. He gestured madly for her to come get in the car until she saw him, and took off like a bat out of hell from the leaky, ceilingless phone booth.

He handed her a towel without a word the moment she clambered into the car, as he simultaneously took off with a screech of the tires on wet pavement. Abby was soaking wet everywhere, still in her -now thoroughly soaked- party clothes, with way too much fishnet and black and silver studwork to give Jethro Gibbs any peace of mind.

Abby's strange style, of dress and of life, was like a strange flare, something he was fascinated by. He'd never heard of most of the strange fetishes and crazy music and beliefs she dabbled in until he'd met her. A lot of it sounded really deviant or macabre, but then she was just so full of life in this way he'd rarely seen before.

Not every suicidal tendency was weaned out of him, not by a long shot. His own unsteady footing with life made her vibrance helplessly fascinating, like a moth to a flickering flame.

Something thwacked off of the windshield. Abby was trying to dry out her hair and the numerous impossible folds and fine fabrics, stripping off what wasn't vital for decency and what couldn't be saved. Gibbs cranked up the heat until the windows started to fog, but she still shivered like crazy. There was a lot he wanted to demand- what was she doing, living around here with some moron, anyway? Why was she coming in at three in the morning when she had work the next day- putting in overtime to get another agent's case done? Where was her car? Why was he the one she thought to call? He'd barely known her for a year and a half.

More chunks of ice hit the windshield. Abby paused, her head buried under the towel. "Gibbs, was that-?"

Hail suddenly pounded down on the windshield, accompanied by suddenly howling winds and sheets of rain, as if the true fury of the storm was suddenly turned on by a switch.

This wasn't any good- he couldn't even see the front of his car. Signalling, he pulled over to about where he thought the side of the road was. They sat in silence. Gibbs knew if he started demanding knowing things about her life, then that would be it- he would be involved in this strange woman's life until she chose to let him go.

Abby shivered, using the wet towel as a blanket. "Thanks for picking me up, Gibbs," she said into pounding wind, rain, hail, and thunder. Her accompanying sniffle rivaled all of them.

Spunky, unselfconscious, full of life and happy despite the most discouraging of personal circumstances- maybe he was afraid of her because she reminded him of the best qualities of another woman he still missed so much it hurt like hellfire.

Gibbs didn't want to think about it.

"We'll wait until the hail dies down," he said abruptly. "Where can I take you?"

"Uhm…" Abby thought earnestly for a moment. "Do you know any all-night diners on a bus line that would get me to NCIS in the morning?"

Gibbs tried to look out the window to diffuse his frustration at this woman who could not seem to get it all together today, but he couldn't see past the rain, and he didn't want to stare at the rain. So, gripping the steering wheel, he turned angrily to the woman beside him.

"You mean to tell me you don't have anywhere to go, Abby?"

She started to knock her knuckles together, unable to look at him. She missed clinking the knuckles together more often than not, he noticed, because she was shuddering with cold. Her breath came in small, frozen little gasps.

"Not anywhere… dry," she offered at last.

"No friends? Family?" He pressed.

Abby's lips trembled, and, pitifully, she shook her head, hanging it. "My family's not from around here. And I don't know anyone who's… going to answer their phone at three in the morning. For me."

Gibbs tried to think. "I thought you said you had a friend-."

"She's in my apartment-," Abby cut him off, stumbling miserably through the sentence to arrive at the end, "in my bed- my side of the bed, with my boyfriend- my roommate… yeah."

Abby turned away from him, and faced her window. In the reflection, he saw her wipe a tear away with the soaked towel, before she shivered again and pulled it around her. Her lips held a steady, stubborn line.

"What about your car- that hearse?" The last word bit a little harder off his lips than he intended.

"I had to sell it," she said as if he was using wild dogs to pull the information from her, "about a month ago."

Gibbs watched her for a minute, then shook his head, and hooked his sleep shirt over his head. It took her a moment to notice that he was now bare-chested, holding it out to her. She half-turned, looking at him questioningly. She'd missed a tear on one cheek.

"You're freezing," he noted, "It's 'cause you're soaked."'

Abby blinked and took the shirt, holding it away from her wet body.

"Just put on the shirt," Gibbs said, exasperatedly.

"…Are you going to cover your eyes?" She demanded, as if it was the most natural idea in the world. Then, the next thing he knew, she was holding the wet towel out to him. "Put this over your head."

"What?"

"Put it over your head- so I can change without you peeking."

Gibbs looked vaguely affronted, but she cut him a look that could fry a chicken. He put the towel on his head. It was as damp against his skin as it had promised to be, and smelled like rain, his laundry detergent, and her- an earthy, spicy smell, only very slightly tempered by a flower.

From his vantage point under the towel- he would have closed his eyes if she'd trusted him, but now that she'd made her own arrangements for her modesty, he felt little compunction with breaking them if he could do it without cheating- he caught a glimpse of her back, with a large black cross on the small of her back. Then his shirt slipped over it, and she turned and yanked the towel off his head.

Her shirt, undershirt made of fishnet, and bra were laying on the floor of his car, along with her drenched tights, leaving her pale legs exposed with only her damp black skirt on. It didn't reach her knees, but she pulled on it modestly as if she could make it stretch.

"Where are you going to drop me?" Abby asked as he pulled away into the lessening hail, the moment Gibbs could see a little of the road again.

"Not dropping you anywhere." Was all he said in reply. Abby snuck a look at his shirtless self and his sleep-tousled hair. She caught him rubbing his eyes with one hand, the other on the steering wheel. "It's my day off tomorrow. I'm going home and going to sleep."

"Well, I-."

"I've got a guest bedroom, Abbs."

Abbs, she thought with her first smile of the evening. She liked it. Gibbs seemed unconscious of the change.

"I don't want to be a burd-."

"You'll sleep in the guest bedroom, Abbs."

Abbs, she thought again with another small smile, followed by a sniffle that, embarrassingly, was not due to the cold. Kindness after a boatload of misery was always what got her in the end, more than the unkindnesses in the world themselves.

Gibbs just drove in companionable silence as she tried and failed to stifle her tears and sniffs, for which she was grateful.

--------

Not sure what else to do, Abby followed Gibbs like a little lost puppy while he set up the guest bedroom- to the hall closet to get fresh pillows, to the basement to get his spare blanket.

"Nice boat." She meant it sincerely, but it was obvious that she didn't want to actually ask about it. He nodded, accepting the compliment. It also acknowledged the latent awkwardness of exposing her to the intimate situation of being in his house, but yet to the strangeness of not wanting to expose himself and his life stories to her.

"Thanks." She followed him back upstairs, up to the guest room where he deposited the blanket and made up the bed. He tossed her one side of the sheets and she pulled corners over the ends without him having to say anything.

"Look," Gibbs told her when he was done, "I'll go find something of mine for you to wear to bed. Go poke around the kitchen and find something to eat- whatever you want."

"Okay," Abby nodded vigorously, knocking her knuckles together again at the prospect of rooting around his kitchen.

"Set the coffee pot to time delay when you're down there, too." He was already turning out of the room. Abby scurried after him.

By the time Gibbs got back downstairs, carrying his dubious offerings of another clean shirt like the one she wore- his other sleep shirt- and a pair of boxer shorts- was that awkward, even if they were clean?, Abby was munching on toast with butter and jam. Next to her elbow was a glass of orange juice.

"When you're done with that, put these on and give me your wet clothes," he instructed, then watched as she sucked down the orange juice and toast in record time before she snatched the clothes and went into the little bathroom at the end of the hall.

Gibbs went and put her dishes in the sink.

Abby came back out for inspection. She'd braided her wet hair so it fell down her back in a way he hadn't seen before –or since that day- in a single plait down her back. She'd washed off all of her streaked makeup, leaving her face blank and pale, but pretty in a way that was more than a little striking to him.

"Will they fit?" He asked over his shoulder. Is it weird to be wearing my boxers?

"Yeah, they're good," she affirmed. "Thanks." Looking around awkwardly, "Do you, uh, have a toothbrush? Like a spare one from the dentist, or something? I really don't like not being able to brush my teeth…"

"Can you skip it for one night?"

Abby blushed a little. "I guess. I just don't want any cavities." Blushing a little more as Gibbs looked on, amused, out of the corner of his eye, she moved toward the stairs as fast as politeness would allow. "Thanks for everything- I'll just… turn in now, okay?"

Gibbs remembered something, and went to the cabinet by the downstairs bathroom. "Hold it, Abbs."

It was the nickname more than the order that did it. Abby paused.

Gibbs fished out a bright green toothbrush, still in its original packaging, and walked it over to her. Abby took it, and scrutinized it closely, looking up with humor in her green-blue eyes.

"Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Gibbs? Someone was a big boy for getting his teeth cleaned!"

Gibbs felt a smile rise in a return. "Yeah, I wondered about that, too."

-------

Gibbs looked in on her before he went to bed. Abby was already asleep, tangled up in the blankets like she'd belonged in his guest bedroom for years. She sighed in her sleep.

Somewhere else, her best friend was screwing her boyfriend in Abby's own bed. He found his fist curling up in anger against the doorframe. The light from the lightning outside illuminated all of the mature lines in her face.

He couldn't just look at her like a girl to protect when she looked like that.

She was a woman to be cherished, loved well. Better than these assholes managed to do, whatever meager feelings they managed to scrape up to match her boundless love for just about anyone she took into her heart.

Jethro Gibbs wasn't any good at cherishing people, not anymore. Not since the two people he loved most in the world were taken from him, and the series of lovers and wives. Not when everything was revealed to be violent and bleak in the world.

But Abby- didn't see things like that. And one Leroy Jethro Gibbs could almost look through her eyes and see the world in vibrant color like he used to- the vibrant color like Shannon's luxurious red hair.

So maybe he couldn't be the one to love Abby the way she needed, the way she deserved. But he could do a hell of a better job than these idiots she seemed to attract.

Maybe he could look after her until she could get someone she could really count on to love her. It seemed like he was most of the way there, anyway. Even his lovers didn't stay at his house, not the whole night. Not to sleep peacefully.

"Don't cry," Abby said clearly in her sleep- he jumped until he realized her eyes were closed. Then she tucked her thumb under her chin and flicked it out, and signed something else with her hand.

Gibbs shook his head at himself with a rueful smile for watching her sleep, and headed off to bed himself, closing the door as noiselessly as possible.