Title: Empty hands are my gift
Author: dannica webb
Fandom: NCIS
Status: Complete; drabble
Pairing: Gibbs/Abby
Rating: FR-15
Warnings: Strong language.
Spoilers: The final episodes of season seven. Specifically references scenes in Rule 51 and Patriot Down.
Summary: There are some things you just can't walk away from, no matter how much it hurts. Post-ep for Rule 51, written for the Hiatus Creative Drive at the Gibbs/Abby Shipper Forum (the prompt was "endings").

AN: Title is from the song The Lost and Found by Oysterband.

"You know too much."

The words he'd said in the lab clung to her, and then that kiss, so much like a beginning and so much like a goodbye –

She would end up totally certifiable over the man before this whole ordeal ended, she was certain. She tapped her fingers impatiently on the wheel as she sped the last few miles to his house, double checking in her rearview to make sure she'd shaken her "protection" detail.

When she thundered down the basement steps, not bothering to stand on formality, she had the sense of a broken record playing. He was bent over some household project or another – she wondered briefly if she'd find a new boat down here anytime soon – and he looked up with the same goddamned resigned expression on his face.

He opened his mouth to speak but she held up her hand and the words came tumbling out without censor. "You are not going to push me away again," she said, "and if you think for one minute that your overprotective fucking hero complex is an acceptable excuse – "

He dropped what he was holding and came over to put his hands on her shoulders, his stare suddenly turning to stone. "Abby, there are people out there who are willing to kill everyone I care about, and I'm not – "

The lines around his mouth softened slightly as his gaze caressed the curve of her neck and came back up to rest on her face. "I'm not ready to build a boat for you yet." His hands fell from her shoulders as he forced the last admission from his lips. "Or a coffin."

She reached up to cup his face in her hands, holding him there. "You're not the only one who's risking something here, Gibbs," she said, searching his eyes with her own. "So you know what? Too. Fucking. Bad." She rose up on tiptoe to press her lips lightly against his, and drew back just enough to whisper against his mouth, "I'm not willing to let us end before we've even begun."