I Know You Can Feel This Too
A/N: Just a short ticking over chapter...
Chapter 5 – Building Tension
During the following week, every time Gibbs turned round, he seemed to bump into Fornell. For a guy who was an FBI agent, he seemed almost to live at the Navy Yard.
But Gibbs had to grudgingly acknowledge that at least Fornell had a legitimate reason for being at NCIS. Balboa was conducting a joint fraud investigation with the FBI, which partly explained why Fornell seemed to be continually under his feet.
Not that that made Gibbs any less cranky.
Whatever his excuse for being there, it seemed that every day Fornell would arrive either to deliver a picnic lunch to Abby in her lab, or take her out to lunch. Tobias had even taken to bringing her Caf!Pow, and Gibbs felt positively juvenile when his anger rose out of all proportion to the simple gesture.
Hell, he even heard Fornell calling her 'Abbs,' which was their… his… nickname for her.
Gibbs didn't know if Abby was also going out with Fornell, as in dating going out. He tried to tell himself that it was none of his business anyway, but with little success.
One day Abby came in full of excitement at going to Emily's concert the previous evening and how much fun she'd had with them both. He'd tried to show an interest for Emily's sake. But all he succeeded in doing was getting irritated, which was just plain silly to be jealous of a ten year old… or a ten year old's father, his subconscious supplied.
He knew one thing for sure.
He was fed up of hearing 'Toby this' and 'Toby that.'
Gibbs kept replaying in his mind the events of the past couple of weeks... how comfortable Abby had looked on Fornell's arm as they left the bullpen for dinner... the way they stood close together in Abby's lab looking over the photos... and the laughter they shared over lunch with Emily, the way Fornell had looked at her when he didn't think he was being observed.
Gibbs was pissed off, and he didn't like it one little bit.
He was too old to be jealous, wasn't he?
In typical fashion, Gibbs was taking out his anxiety on the one person he knew didn't deserve it... Abby. And that just made him feel even more annoyed and guilty.
And it didn't take Abby long to pick up on his irritation.
In contrast to her usual anticipation when she knew a visit from Gibbs was imminent, Abby paced her lab, feeling nervous.
He'd been snappy with her for several days now and she wasn't sure what she'd done to deserve such treatment. She tried to think back over everything she'd said and done lately, to try to figure out why Gibbs was mad at her. She hated it when he was angry and she didn't know why.
Every time he'd visited her lab this week, Gibbs had been more impatient and brusque than normal. The cheek kisses had stopped, he hardly smiled at her anymore, he didn't stay to talk after he'd picked up her results, and their usual flirty banter was non-existent.
It was such a contrast to their usual closeness.
Even if Abby had given up on there ever being a romantic relationship between them, she still considered Gibbs to be one of her closest friends.
But this week he'd been barely civil to her.
The team were also suffering the fall-out from Gibbs' temper. He'd been a bear with everyone all week and all the team had come down to her lab at various times to escape from him, and to see if she was okay. They could all see how she was affected by Gibbs' behaviour.
When Abby went out to lunch with Toby in the week, he too soon picked up that something was wrong.
She didn't want to talk about what was happening with Gibbs and shrugged it off that she was just generally tired and stressed. Abby was relieved when Toby didn't press her further, despite the concern written all over his face. But she enjoyed the chance to relax outside the building and get away from what felt like a building tension.
TBC