Title: Logically Anomalous
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: Friends and Lovers, season four
Summary: Abby receives an unusual valentine…

Author's Note: I'm an hour late, UK time, but hey. It's still Valentine's Day in the US! Dedicated to everyone who reviews my stuff regularly. I loooove youuu! :D

The card arrives with NCIS' morning mail. Smiling flirtatiously at the new mailroom guy, she accepts the small stack of envelopes from him and takes it through to her inner office, where three bouquets of black roses are already placed around the room.

Abby sends valentines to every single one of the agents she handles the forensics for, as well as Ducky, Palmer, the Director and assorted personnel throughout the agency. It doesn't strike her as unusual that she gets more than the average amount of gifts and mail back; she just chalks it up to friendship in most cases.

When she opens this particular card, however, her curiosity is well and truly awakened.

It's a laminated rectangle of cardboard, and it reminds her of the one she spent forever trying to get forensic evidence from, back when Gibbs' team found a body in an abandoned restaurant. Come to think of it, that case had been around Valentine's Day, too…

Abby drops it on the desk before she can contaminate the evidence with more prints than she already has, leaning forward to read the message on it. Individual letters have been cut out of a magazine to form words, which means she can't identify the sender by his handwriting.

Figure out who sent this, and he's yours. Always.

"A challenge," she breathes, torn between a frown and a smile. "You are on, Secret Admirer."

"Who's on what?" Gibbs strides in with her Valentine's Day Caf-Pow!, complete with the usual fuzzy heart attached to a straw.

Abby takes a moment to smile at the sentiment before pointing down at the card. He might not think of her as romantically as she'd like, but she knows he loves her. "I have a secret admirer."

Gibbs gazes around the room, raising an eyebrow. "Looks like you have about thirty."

"Oh, I know who most of them are from," she explains. "But this one… it looks like whoever sent it is sending me a forensic challenge. Do you know how hot that is? I can't wait to unravel this mystery."

Gibbs tugs on one of her pigtails tolerantly. "Work first, Abby. Secret admirers later."

With a pout that lasts all of two seconds, Abby leaves the card on her desk and beckons him through to her outer lab, sipping on her Caf-Pow! as she walks. It only takes a couple of minutes to fill him in on the DNA match her babies found overnight, and then he's leaving again, with another warning for her to concentrate on her work.

"Romance really is dead for you, isn't it?" she calls after him, but he doesn't bother to reply.

Alone again, Abby assesses her workload and decides that it probably won't take her too long to figure out her secret admirer's identity. Gibbs won't be back for a while, and it's not like she doesn't have other tests running already…

An hour later, she hasn't found a single useable print on the surface of the card, or any DNA, fibres or residues. The envelope is the exact opposite – it's so contaminated with different samples that it's forensically useless.

She's gonna have to go deeper.

"Go home, Abbs." Gibbs is back in her lab, where she's still feverishly at work despite the late hour. "We got the guy. You can stop for a while."

"I got your guy," Abby corrects. "I didn't get my guy yet. He's better than I thought he'd be, which just makes him even hotter."

Gibbs kisses her cheek. "Remember to sleep."

"Bye," she calls over her shoulder, and then scowls down at the offending card on her worktable, a scalpel in hand.

"Time for an autopsy," she mutters, and sets to work peeling back the laminate to get at the cardboard beneath.

It's almost midnight when Major Mass Spec has something for her, and she pulls up the result hastily, anticipation coiling in her shoulders.

For a few seconds she just blinks at the screen, unable to believe what the machine has found. Then she begins to pace, talking to the spectrometer out of habit.

"You better not be lying to me, Major. Okay, so you can't lie, but this is logically anomalous, and you know it. I mean, it doesn't make any sense! He never said anything to me before, and he's a grown man, y'know? He knows what he wants, and if he wanted me, he would have said something before now, because he knows everything, so he probably knows that I want him…"

Stopping to stare at the result again, she takes a deep breath, reaching out for Bert and squeezing the hippo for reassurance. "Okay. I better be jumping to the right conclusion here. What if I'm overlooking someone else because of wishful thinking? That's gonna end up awkward…"

The card's words return to her, a final persuasion. Find out who sent this, and he's yours. Always.

"Wish me luck, guys," she murmurs to her hippo and machinery. "I'm gonna go see a man about a card."

She takes the steps down into Gibbs' basement slowly, the card held between her fingers. He's sitting at his bench, working on one of the technical drawings he sketches out before beginning a new project, and he takes a moment to make a notation before glancing up. "Hey, Abbs. No luck with your secret admirer?"

Now that she's listening for it, there's an element to his voice that's almost too casual. Her self-doubt diminishing, she crosses the distance between them and drops the card on top of his drawing, then sits on the edge of his workbench. "Game's up, Gibbs. I know it's you."

He cocks his head, gazing up at her; only the tiniest curve of his lips gives him away. "Sure about that, Abby?"

"I found traces of sawdust and wood glue under the laminate."

His smile grows, and he nods. "Damn stuff gets everywhere."

Her heart leaps at the confirmation of her suspicions, and she gives him a flirtatious glance. "So… does this mean you're mine?"

He stands up, pulling her with him, and murmurs against her lips, "That what you want, Abbs?"

She kisses him experimentally, and he responds with a firm warmth that sends her halfway to dizziness. By the time he draws back, she's breathless and euphoric and indescribably turned on.

"Does that answer your question?"

He laughs softly, kissing her forehead and then guiding her toward the stairs up into the cosier rooms of his house. "It does."

As they settle down on the couch, snuggled close together, Gibbs makes a deliberate gesture in sign language; one that she recognises immediately. My girl.

"Always," she tells him, and tilts her head up for another kiss.

END