Notes: The titles belong to Van Morrison. Written for NCIS Flashfiction's midnight challenge.
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to the sound of the breezes that blow
He lies awake at midnight and watches his lover sleep.
It�s a ridiculous word, lover, and he wishes sometimes that he had another term for it, but there isn�t one, because their nights together aren�t just random fucks anymore, and the thought of being partners scares him more than he�d ever like to admit. So they are lovers, and thinking now of the word, he wonders if Gibbs has ever even considered loving him. He doesn�t think so, but then he�s never been a very good judge of this inscrutable man.
He watches him sleep, his legs tangled up in the sheets, and he wonders if he�s dreaming of him. Somehow he doubts it, but he knows that if he closes his eyes and drifts off, his own dreams will be filled with the man lying by his side. It makes him sad, sometimes, the disparity of their relationship, but he has come to accept it because that�s just the way Gibbs is.
He imagines that he was like this with his wives too, and probably with Kate in those few failed months as well. He doesn�t know if it was something that happened to him through heartbreak somewhere along the way, or if maybe he was just born this detached, but either way it bothers him, even now as he lies here stretched out on the bed, watching the moonlight dance sporadically across his boss�s sleeping form.
It started suddenly, and it would probably end the same way, because Gibbs was not the kind of man to tolerate lingering goodbyes.
There had been moments in the past, brief glances across the room, silent exchanges beneath the fabric of their everyday existence, but Tony had come to understand that nothing would come of it, because he had watched Gibbs and Kate dissolve, and he knew without a shade of doubt that he wouldn�t let himself get into her position.
And then came a night like any other, a night that was so routine it was painful, right up until the point where Gibbs stepped into the elevator with him and their hands brushed reaching for the button and then he was pressed against the wall, the emergency stop digging into his back as his hands found their helpless way up to tangle in hair that felt like silk, soft and strong and indestructible, like the man beneath it.
So now he lies in silence and listens to the wind rustle the leaves outside his window, and he wonders how long this can last.
Slowly he drifts off to sleep, and in his dream it lasts forever.
Beside him, Gibbs lies awake and listens to his lover breathing while a part of him is already planning an exit strategy.
let your soul and spirit fly into the mystic
She sits by the river at midnight and watches the moon play across the water.
Most nights find her here, because it�s when she does her best thinking, and McGee has become accustomed to waking up alone in the middle of the night. She remembers the first time it happened, when she slipped out from the sheets to steal down to the riverside, and it still makes her smile. There was this betrayed little boy look on his face when she got back, as if he really thought she was the kind of woman to sneak out on a man who was sleeping in her own bed.
The next night he woke up when she left, and he asked to come with her, but she had laughed at him, and pushed him lightly back down onto the bed. This was her alone time, her Abby time, and as time passed he finally began to understand that. Tonight he had stirred a little when she got up, and mumbled something unintelligible over his shoulder at her. She kissed his forehead on the way out, and she saw a tiny smile tug at his lips as the hallway light trickled in around her.
It was a new experience for her, being the one in charge in a relationship. She knew that the others at work would probably laugh at the thought of her being subject to any man, but it had been true, for far too many years, and far too many men. It seemed like she was always the one who was left alone in a cold bed at the end of a relationship, and this time she knew that if it ended that way it was going to McGee there instead of her.
It almost hurt more, knowing that she had the capacity to break someone�s heart like that.
She has no intentions of leaving him, but intentions change, and that is what she thinks about as she watches the river ripple in the night breeze. She wonders if some day his teddy bear huggability and na�ve charms won�t be enough for her anymore. She has tried to discount thoughts like that, but it�s hard, because so many men have lost interest in her over the years that she fears she may have caught their disease.
She tosses a rock into the river and watches it sink, and then she makes her way back up to the house, fluffy slippers padding quietly across the asphalt.
Under the rustling cover of her curtains flapping in the breeze, watches him sleep, and the part of her that still believes in things like love begins to wonder if she�s actually starting to fall into that trap she has avoided for so long. Then he opens his eyes and rolls over to smile sleepily at her, and she decides that the answer is probably yes.
It doesn�t bother her as much as she thought it would.
then we can get down to what is really wrong
She sits alone on her porch at midnight and pretends to work.
She doesn�t know why she bothers, really, because there�s no one around for her to fool. Even if there was someone to see her, it�s a ridiculous hour to be working, and she knows it. But there�s a part of her that doesn�t shut off when she leaves the office, and it sometimes demands her attention at the strangest times.
More than that, sometimes the distraction can make her feel less alone.
Things weren�t supposed to go like this, and they wouldn�t have if she had gotten her way. But it seems that no one ever really gets their way with Gibbs, and she probably should have realized that in the beginning. In the months after him, work had been her refuge, even though he was there, because in the office he had always been a different person than the man he became when he was alone with her. It was easy, then, to pretend that her boss was a different man from Gibbs, her Gibbs.
Then something had shifted, something subtle and inexplicable and undeniable, and she knew that he had never been hers, not really, because now Tony came in with tired eyes and a contentment in his face that she had never seen before, and sometimes flickers of that other Gibbs would show through his hardened exterior when his eyes would stray over to Tony�s desk. She tried not to let it hurt, but it did, because he had never shown that side of him at work when he had been with her.
She had never made him that vulnerable.
He isn�t what causes her to lose sleep these days, because if she�s honest with herself, it started before he left. She doesn�t know what it is, not really, but she knows that if she were to go into her room and lay down on the bed, the darkness would press in on her until she couldn�t breathe, couldn�t move or say a word. Not that there would be anyone there to hear her if she did.
She wonders idly where this bitterness came from, because she never used to be that kind of woman, the one who loses herself in the wreckage of a doomed relationship and spends her nights thinking vengeful thoughts about the man who left her. That wasn�t her, never had been, and it made her angry to think that he had reduced her to this.
She might be imagining it, but she thinks she can see the sun beginning to rise in the distance when she finally closes the computer and stumbles inside to collapse on the couch.
Soon the alarm will go off in the bedroom and she�ll stagger in to shut it off, muttering curses under her breath at it. The water in her shower won�t heat up fast enough for her, so she�ll get in while it�s still cold, and by the time she starts shampooing her hair it will be scalding the skin of her back. She�ll set the coffeemaker to brew while she�s changing, and she�ll spill some of it somewhere, on the rug, on the seat in the car, on her skirt, and it will anger her to disproportionate levels, because things have a tendency to do that these days.
Then she�ll walk into the office, and they�ll be there, all of them, McGee casting hangdog glances at Abby every time she�s in the room, Tony doing the same to Gibbs in a slightly more manly way, and she will be alone, even in a room full of them, because they are all together in a way that doesn�t include her.
Just another morning that she�s lived a thousand times before, and as she drifts off to sleep she wonders vaguely what the point really is in waking up at all.