She had a scar on her lower left back, leading into the dip of her lower arch, small and unobtrusive. Likely it was completely unnoticeable from more than a few feet away. But he liked to drag the sheet down her hip and run a finger along it, just to see how long it would take for the touch to wake her up. He watched her spine for a twitch of recognition, smiled small when she just shifted in her sleep and cocked her left knee higher with a sleep ridden groaning.

He'd stripped her hours before and tugged her close when they were finished, refusing her urge to put something back on. She'd just arched a smile at him and folded both arms up into his chest, letting him wrap against her as she'd hooked her leg onto his hip and snugged close.

Hadn't lasted long, though. And she'd nearly kneed him in the groin as she'd rolled her shoulders into his chest and cuddled back into his arm slinging down her waist.

He could have kept watching her sleep for another hour or five, wiping her hair back with the other hand. It wouldn't have bothered him in the least. Not with the graceful way she'd cradled around one pillow and drawn a knee higher than the other, her hips slanting into an angle that made laying his palm against her ass a delightfully possessive image.

He wanted her awake, though. Needed her eyes brightened up and smiling before she left.

So he'd shifted downward enough to kiss the line of her spine, not necessarily all that careful about the movements, but slow.

He heard her sleepy moaning when he stroked his tongue against the scar, nearly as much as he felt her back arch.

"It's three in the morning, Jethro." Her face was stuffed into the pillow but her voice muffled past it, a mingling of slight annoyance and keened pleasure. Like even she didn't know exactly what to do with him. "This isn't cute."

"This one. Tell me." He was tapping his fingertip against it as he wiped the whisper onto her lower spine, his tongue skimming skin. "You've always had this."

A huff of breath raked over the pillow as her jaw lifted, head angling down.

"Danny pushed me off a tree limb when I was seven." Her voice was slacked low and hushed, full of breathy anticipation as her jaw turned against her shoulder, the muscles in the back of her thigh tensing up as he stroked his full palm along them and gripped. "I landed on his bike."

Gibbs lifted a frown up her back as he brought his palm back to stroking, letting his hand slope against her ass and squeeze gently, "Intentionally?"

The laugh that jangled off her lips sharpened his head up higher in confusion, a look on her face that was all amusement as she shifted her shoulders and leaned around. He banked up enough to let her shift, palm rubbing down the back of her thigh before he pried her completely onto her back and stretched back over her.

"Sure." The shrug she gave him had her hair rubbing loose against his pillow as she watched him, jaw downwardly turned against her shoulder as he skiffed fingers up her thigh. "You really are an only child, aren't you?"

His face just went mildly annoyed as he drew up against her, laying against the way she arched toward him intentionally. "Your brothers really are sorta psychotic, aren't they?"

"Naw." Her smile went warm and wide, a breathy and sweetened laugh through her nose as she touched her fingertips against his forehead and then sluiced her fingers slowly back through his hair. "They're just brothers, Gunny."

A nearly annoyed squint led into the way he shut his eyes as she braced along the back of his head, drawing him down so that he could rub his mouth along her clavicle. "Maybe Danny and I need to have a talk about how to properly treat Todd women."

His accusatory whisper was so lushly curving up her throat, his hips driving up against hers as he brooked his arms along her sides and lifted his head. The implied heat of the threat hushed off him, matched the way his eyes had shaded a singularly sinful cerulean.

Kate upped her jaw into his movement, smirking as he let his glance strafe over her mouth. "I think... I would love to observe that conversation."

"Yeah?"

"Mmmm." The sound had started as agreement and went sleekly moaning, her head sinking back and lips parting open as he pulled her legs apart, teasing the inside of one thigh. "How exactly should one treat a Todd woman?"

"Very," He traced a fingertip up into wetness, groaning his face down into her throat as he felt how slick and warm she was. "very well."

Another throaty laugh came off her, head driving back as his fingertip circled her clit in a slow pattern, refusing to rub against it even as her hips thrummed up and she pressed into his hand. "I promise not to tell my dad what you were doing while you said that. However..."

His eyes thinned over her wickedly made smirk, finger lowering to tease just slightly into her. "Kate - "

"I will be telling him you said it." The words rushed off her lungs as her hips drove back down, trying to aim him closer.

"You tell your father about me?"

Shit... um, no? Because... but, yes.

She trapped her bottom lip into her teeth as her eyes blinked open, suddenly self conscious of the squinted way he was looking at her. "Just... little things."

"In what capacity?"

She gave him a sobered look, her face suddenly pinched in confusion and a hint of self defense, "In what... what?"

"As your co-worker?" Gibbs dipped his smile over her. "Or the man who makes you - "

"Gibbs."

"You moan so quietly sometimes." His whisper shushed against her cheekbone as he deflected her teasing, taking on his own version, leaning his body more to one side so he could maneuver his hand exactly where he wanted it. "Like you don't want anyone to know how much you enjoy my fingers inside you."

He exacted torture, even the most pleasurable sort, in such a clean and tactical fashion.

Because the softness of the words was the metered guiding of his middle finger stroking tightly into her, driving hard inside her as he lifted his head to watch her reaction.

"Oh my hell." Mumbling. Most people, Kate, would call that 'mumbling'.

You can't even speak English properly when this man is... well -

"You don't stay quiet, though." He laid the words out between kisses down her cheekbone and back up her jaw, his other hand keeping his head up as though they were just having an innocent conversation in the middle of the night, as though he wasn't teasing his finger deeper into her as his nose rubbed her cheek. "Do you?"

Her head dipped into the way he was nibbling along her ear, lungs catching, "Jethro."

"What?" His thumb rubbed lightly over her clit and he lifted his head into how uncontrollably roughly she arched up. "It's true."

"Shut up."

Gibbs gave a full breathing chuckle over her and she felt his smile in the sound of it, didn't need to turn her head to see how smugly amused he was. "Why should I? You certainly don't."

Is a full body blush even possible? Exactly how visible is it in the dark?

"I can't help it." She crowded her face into the side of his neck, finding a swath of skin to kiss and lick and nip against as he started moving his fingers.

She also couldn't help the way her hips started shifting in time with his touches, the way he circled her clit slowly closer and then farther away. His fingers stroking in and out of her, one and then another and then none. She panted quietly past her lips as he finally let her meet the rhythm of his fingers, let her rise and fall into his hand as he watched her dig her teeth into her lip. He was finally stroking her clit repeatedly, circling it and touching and pinching against it.

"Can't help it." She repeated when she caught the hard swallow he made as he watched her, her voice littering low and raspy even to her own ears as he grinned wide.

"I am not complaining. Trust me." His whisper was like quiet murder, intimate and ending. "I like hearing you moan, Katya. Making you moan for me? It's a pleasure."

He stopped the rub of his thumb suddenly and she whimpered a mewed noise into his jaw, listened to the groaning he gave in response.

"You make this little sound in your throat when I get just deep enough." Two fingers pressed into her slowly, his thumb tapping lightly on her clit as he turned the words into kisses along her lips. "It's amazing."

"Jethro."

"I mean it." There was a happily made confession to his tone and it made her smile, regardless of how wickedly teasing he was. "Damn near come every time."

"Stop teasing me."

"I'm not teasing. I love that sound." She hadn't expected so much honesty in the color of his eyes. "And when you think I'm as far as I'm gonna go? And I push just a little deeper?"

A groaning guttered off her that she hadn't thought was possible.

At least not until she'd let him start taunting his fingertips anywhere on her body that he liked.

Excellent decision, Kate. Mistake or not.

"Mmm. Almost like that." His voice was a coercion, an unending push that was edging her closer to coming only to slack back and leave her shivering. "Lower in your throat, though. Like you can't control yourself."

"Don't stop."

He smirked suddenly, a bright surprise in his eyes as he caught her glance.

As though he were proudly surprised that he could get her so riled just by the mostly controlled rise and fall of his voice, the tracing tease of his fingers.

"Like you just can't breathe until I get all the way into you." The very silken quality of his voice was somewhat entrancing, the way he could lull it quietly comforting but assertive and controlling and damn dirty at once. "Your body gets so tight. Everything just clamps up and then you make this... sound. It's perfect."

No, you're perfect. Perfect hands. Perfect amount of too tall. Perfect damn smile.

And you're making me fall in love with you.

Asshole.

She didn't mean to make a sound at all – because he was being a snot and didn't necessarily deserve it.

It sank out of her anyhow, her fingers jerked into her own hair as he just let a sweet sway of laughter ride along her skin.

"More of a whimper, maybe." He considered it quietly up at her, twisting his fingers slightly and grinning when the sound she made went a little closer to his description. "Better. You get so tight, krasavitsa. One of these days you're gonna kill me."

"Please?"

"Please what?" His face was guileless as he studied her, the brightness of his eyes seeming so innocent even as he pulled his fingers carefully from inside her.

She dropped her head back, groaning out a sound of utter frustration before both of her hands dug into her hair and she drove a heel up against his bed sheets. Her breathing was far past ragged and she closed her eyes, trying to slack her hips flatter even as everything between her thighs throbbed. She could feel the heat of his breathy laughter as he stretched back up against her, balancing his weight along her frame.

"Look at me." He'd taken on that thrumming of authority in leaning over her, that valved tone that made her spine arch instantly as he nipped against the inside curve of one breast. "Want me to make you moan? That sweet little sound you make?"

Kate growled slight annoyance, the noise rattling off her. "You know I do."

"Yeah, I do." He kissed chastely against her sternum before lifting his head, shrugging as damp fingers lifted between them. "I'm getting there."

"Gibbs."

"I said I'm getting there." His voice struck sharp but dangerously quiet, the sparked warning of it leaning off his throat as he wiped his fingertips against her parted lips. His eyes stayed focused on her mouth as he made the movement. "Be patient, Katya. We have all morning."

She did whimper then, but a noise more of regret and sorrow than pleasure. "But we don't."

A growl came off him that legitimately had her body tensing still, trapped motionless until he lowered his mouth against hers and sucked along her bottom lip. He let her soften the movement, her head lifting to make it a fully met kiss. Her tongue passed against his before he drew back enough to nip along her lip again.

"Don't." He shook it off sharply, his whisper slightly strangled. "Don't go there."

Her only response to his order was to edge the boundary of exactly where he'd told her not to go, her arms wrapping suddenly against his shoulders as she slung him closer. "I don't wanna leave you here."

A bittersweet laugh echoed along her ear. "Pretty sure your training agent would frown on you bringing me along, Probie."

Kate turned to lick against his ear in retaliation for the nickname, smiling her teeth lightly into him as she felt him shudder farther over her.

"She can be a little... hardcore." She whispered down the side of his neck.

"She?"

"I'm not telling you." Kate huffed off, fluttering her fingers rapidly and unconsciously off his shoulder as his head drew back enough to meet her eyes. "Get over it."

A thoughtful nod of acceptance tipped on him as he dipped his hand lower again, one palm roughing her leg closer to him before he slicked his fingers into her, curled them and then slowly brought his hand back up. "I thought you were supposed to be moaning."

"Mmmm." She watched him suck against his fingers, one after the other with his eyes dipped shut. And she was fairly sure her lungs had stopped working entirely. "I thought so too."

"I need to taste more of you." If Jethro Gibbs being gruff hadn't been sorta sexy before, it damn well was when he was absolutely positive he just needed to put his mouth between her legs. "That wasn't nearly enough."

She sighed out in an oddly minced mingling of agreement and stalling, "Jethro - "

"You gonna complain?"

"I want you." She murmured quietly, head tipping the pillow as she gave him a dimpled smile, fingers teasing a line down his nose that made his head shy down slightly.

His face slacked passive, went completely resigned and calm as he blinked back at her. "You have me, Kate."

The admission was softly laced with something that sounded distinctly self conscious and not at all what she'd expected after so much self satisfied and confident teasing. He repeated it in another language with a small softened shrug, the Russian silking off him and against her stomach. She felt her muscles tighten up reflexively under the damp warmth of his breath, her eyes sliding closed as he licked against her and then started slow shifting kisses down her pelvis.

She let her body slack back, stretched into how guardingly he moved down the length of her, all hands and mouth and a surety that he knew exactly where they were going and what she'd need for the trip. His hands smoothing her thighs as he shouldered down between them, palms affectionately squeezing against suddenly taut muscle as he kissed one and then the other and then back again. Then he traced his tongue to the inside of the left, the right, kissed his way back down toward each knee.

She knew she was breathing out more than just air, she was making the very same sounds he'd proudly teased her about. And so long as he was the one making it happen, she didn't much care.

She fleetingly thought it ironic that 'expiration' meant both breathing and the very end of the action itself.

Because he's going to kill me like this someday...or I'm gonna kill him.

Federal Agents found dead, suspected cause: combined cunnilingual strangulation.

But he was obviously intent on teasing, and she was equally intent on enjoying the hell out of it.

And by the time he actually laid his tongue along her clit she was soaked and the groan he made said that he'd found exactly what he'd wanted.

By the time he'd added his fingers to the teasing of his tongue, she was gripping into his hair with one hand and he had the other grasped against her pelvis with his own closed fist, pressing her hips down and mostly still with combined force.

By the time he put fingers and tongue inside her, she'd signed her own death warrant. She momentarily stopped breathing when she came, the moans silenced as her hips shuddered and thighs tensed and he still stubbornly kept his tongue swiping against her as she shivered back down.

She was still flexing her fingers between his, keeping their hands tangled into a sweated knot and driven into her stomach as he finally lifted his head with an fondly tame smile. "Please, Jethro?"

The smile dropped as she'd said it, his eyes wide open but pinned dark as he searched up over her.

He was, more often than not, much faster than she expected him to be. And the limitless patience he generally had for teasing her was obviously shredded through as he drew himself up over her and gracelessly jerked her legs against his hips. She reached to touch him, wanted to feel her fingers curling around him and frowned as he batted her hand away, a negative jerk of his head catching her attention.

"Just..." he exhaled roughly, "let me."

The tension in his spine was nothing in comparison to how tightly he was suddenly rigging his hands against her, drawing her still even as he leaned to kiss her. All teeth and tongue and groaning as his fingers pried her lower under him, jerking her down from the mess of pillows and sluicing her hair up in a way that caught the flashing of his eyes. He gave up a moaning noise, something that keened off his lungs as he dropped his face into the warm waved darkness of it just before his short nails raked down both sides of her ribs.

She felt him drive one hand between them, loosened her legs farther apart as he closed his hand against his length and leaned into her. The slowly teasing way he rubbed the tip against her clit, up and down in wetness, it made her lungs lock all over again. Her eyes fluttered closed, squeezed tighter shut when he started stroking just barely into her only to pull out and rub along her still throbbing clit again.

"Please?" It whimpered off her, quiet and weaker than she expected as she forced her hand along with his.

"Caitlin - "

"Please?" She lifted her jaw into whispering it as she replaced her hand with his, stroking him slowly before taking over the circuit of teasing he'd been in the middle of making. Using him along her clit, nearly taking the tip into her before sliding it back up, circling her clit again.

She was pretty sure there was a long string of Russian curse words rubbing into her throat but she was too busy enjoying how hard he was in her hand to really try to translate any of them.

"Kate." Warning shot, kissed along her cheek.

She'd never been one to back down just because someone else thought something may be dangerous.

"Caitlin." His hand pulled hers up, clenching her fingers still and tightly into his own.

He'd snapped somehow, lost the Gibbsian veneer that often came down over him like the measured closing of a garage door. He loosened her fingers and the moan she made as he jerked her hips down and drove inside her wasn't anything of a tease, it wasn't just gamely playing along with his murmurings. He was staring at her after she'd made it, his breathing roughing through his nose and his jaw tightly flexed as his palms pressed the mattress at her sides.

Kate kept the eye contact, knowing he was waiting for something, weighing his options, considering variations of roughness. Knowing he was waiting for an invitation to break them both down, regardless of the fact she'd told him (months and months before) that he didn't need invitations or second guessing.

Even when he was being a smug little shit, at least he was still some sort of gentleman.

And, really, he only ever looked at her like that when he wanted to lay down and bury himself.

"It's okay." She wasn't even sure herself what she was assuring him of as she nodded, lifting a palm along his tensed jaw and just watching him shudder the air from his lungs into her palm. Didn't need to be sure, not when she suddenly realized how very much she actually trusted him.

He'd hurt himself, with a masochistically sweet pleasure, before he'd dare allow himself to really hurt her - the unconscious and unspoken mantra of Leroy Jethro Gibbs.

She lifted her knees higher into his sides, digging her heels into his ass as she nodded, pressed down on his back as he ducked his face into her throat and sucked down the scent of her. Then his arms came in and she was sure that somehow he'd manage to lift her off the bed if her curled her any higher into his chest and hips, arching his arms up under her back as she wiped against the sweat on his.

"It's okay." She repeated it against the short trimmed hair along the side of his head, unsure as to why, just feeling like she needed to as he growled his teeth against her collarbone and dug his head down into her chest. The sharp thrust of his hips jerking himself deeper into her as he dug closed around her made her spine arch with the same curving as the drawn moan that sighed off her throat.

"That's it." His whisper was harsh between her breasts, his tongue following to soothe and soften its roughness. "That fucking sound. I love that sound."

That all you love?

Because I don't think it is...

She dragged his head back up by her hands, jerking him into kissing her with an intensity he seemed surprised by, a noise falling into her mouth that was stunned and pleased. And the kissing was what was important to her, the lazy way he explored her mouth and sucked along her tongue as he wrapped the strength of his arms bracing around her. His movements started slow and shallow, hips barely shifting at first, dangerously slow in how lulling it was. And he kept it slow, but deepened each thrust, pulled from kissing her enough that he could watch her face as both his hands spread flat beneath her and splayed up her back.

So slow. Too slow. Too sweetly slow in the way he was just driving into her over and over again without moving his hands, without looking away. "You're gorgeous, ya know?"

"Don't," she let the words slake out on a moaning, barely able to hold his glance as she tried to breathe and blush and speak at once, "don't flirt with me right now."

The smile on him wrecked her, burned her up as he husked off a rattled sound, "Can't help it."

There was no argument to be made when he used her own innocent argument against her.

Investigative interrogator, my ass. That's called 'manipulative son of a bitch'.

And you absolutely love it.

She gave him a smile anyhow, raking her nails up his back as he laughed mouth to hers and started a long deluge of kisses all over again. The strength of the way he kissed her back had him growling as his teeth ticked along her bottom lip, nibbling there as he finally sped his movements. She urged him quietly, digging deeper against his shoulders, letting her hands spread and swipe over his back and down to grip against his ass as her heel pressed into his thighs. He didn't need much more of a suggestion, groaning fully from his lungs as he pressed them quicker and rougher.

He kept kissing her as he tried to shift a hand from around her, their mouths breaking apart when she just made a noise of negation and pressed back to still the movement.

"You." She nodded her mouth back to his, rubbing the words against his lips. "Just you."

He flared her a guarded look, something swilling between sweet and confused as his fingers dug into her skin.

Kate just smiled back to kissing over his jaw, whispering encouragement and permission and she wasn't even sure what anymore when he came raggedly.

And she just wrapped tighter around him as his body loosened and slacked into hers, made a noise in her throat as he tried to shift his weight, her arms catching him still and keeping him close.

"I'm coming home, Gibbs." She watched his eyes flinch thin as he tiredly lifted his head from sweated skin, his tongue running his lips as he searched silently over her face. "I mean it."

They went even thinner, the angling of his jaw stone set as he glared at her, "I'm draggin' your ass back here if I have to."

"Over your shoulder?" Kate teased over the crown of his head, the smell of sweat and a combination of the two of them tinting the laundered scent of the sheets. "Neanderthal style?"

"Will if I have to, sweetheart." The slow maze of kisses he was making between her breasts was entrancing, even if she didn't really have the energy to mentally follow its path. "Shouldna woken you up."

A laugh tripped past her lips before she could catch on it, the flat of her palm scrubbing against the back of his head before she jerked into his hair and forced him to look up at her. "No need to apologize for that, Gunny."

"Didn't actually apologize."

"No." She dropped her lips against his as he half smirked. "Of course you didn't."

The only issue he had with spending so much time intentionally making her smile was that he felt like he'd lost some ground in watching her frown a few hours later. She was perfectly still, hip at an angle to her desk as her right hand pressed arching against the open file she was glaring down on. The turn of her jaw was nearly as viciously strong as the squinted look she was giving the papers. Her other hand was lifted so her fingers were pressing her lips and there was a paleness to her. Something so remarkably ashen and opposite of the flush he'd left along her breasts before forcing himself into the shower where he could keep his hands to his own damn self and blast the cold water on.

"That look is... familiar." He murmured softly into the stillness of her shared but otherwise empty office.

Concern skittered down his spine when she jumped, her entire body shunting straight as her head jerked up in his direction. Her eyes were prettily dark but far too reactionary, their near feral blackness a sort of unspoken warning as to her mood. Still, as concerned as he was, he cocked her a nearly bemused look when he realized how quickly she'd palmed against her holster. Once she realized she'd reached for her weapon her shoulders took a moment to settle, a breath forced loudly through her lungs and out her nose as she shook off his attention and flicked the folder closed.

Gibbs frowned as he lifted his head, jaw jerking in her direction as he used one palm to swing the door shut behind him. "Jumpy?"

The hand that had been roving her lips lifted into rubbing her forehead and he felt his own frowning deepen in reaction to her sighing. "Last minute change in orders."

He stepped toward her desk, angling a glance over it as he made a disgruntled noise. "You leave in an hour and a half."

"You did hear me say 'last minute'?" Her hand snapped sharply between them, fingers lifted to stall his encroachment into her work space. "Gibbs. Don't."

"Easy there, Secret Service." His voice went as thick with warning as hers had, the both of them matching the other glare for glare as she shifted up straighter behind her own desk, the sleeveless shirt she'd chosen for the day only momentarily distracting his focus. "You are jumpy."

An oddly new mixture of guilted apology and still stubbornly ruthless pride made her features sour a little as she shook her head, voice hushing down. "I prefer being prepared. You know that."

She turned on him then and he instantly despised the movement, disliked the fact that she'd space them so distinctly apart when she was obviously upset, when he was obviously standing right in front of her as an optional outlet for her frustration – and her preference was to turn her back to him. But then, really... they were similar in this. This forced enclosure of the emotional. She wasn't the type to come crying to him if she had an issue with whatever was in that folder she'd been glaring over. And, to be fair, he usually found it refreshing that she was so intentionally independent.

Something had untethered her control, though.

And especially if it meant she didn't wanna face him about it.

"Kate?" He'd be damned if she was going to use work as an excuse to distance him, considering she generally didn't allow him that indulgence. Considering they'd started this (whatever the hell this really was) around the same time she'd signed employment papers. Considering she didn't let him wallow in his cases nearly as much as he'd done before, that she'd just talk it out with him while she typed on the laptop she'd taken to leaving plugged in beside his couch.

He realized then that she'd become an unintentional sounding board of sorts. That he'd, more than once, subtly drawn out her opinion on a case without necessarily realizing he was looking for another angle. Realized that he'd often left the case open to her perusal, made her an outwardly silent partner while she drank his coffee (usually without complaint) and made his boxers look devilishly adorable as she sat cross legged on his couch.

He'd gotten her on his team somehow anyhow, whether the rest of the agency knew it or not and regardless of her actual job title. She was pulling double duty some nights, letting him block out his case and offering the Devil's side of advocacy while at the same time tracking her targets and, more than likely, having chats with agents half round the world away. And somehow she seemed to unconsciously know when neither of them had any more answers that would be of use to him – because that was about when she'd put her work away as well. That was when he'd end up leaned frustrated into the small kitchen counter and exhale a half smile of bittered exhaustion as she just quietly curled around up the back of him. That was when she let him stew in the basement until three in the morning before stalking down the steps, wordlessly striding across the room, and leaning a kiss on his mouth that silently said it was damn well past time for bed, Jethro, get upstairs.

That was when she answered his frustrated roughness with a controlled fervor of her own. Matching him with a strength that was, comfortingly, exactly what he wanted when he lifted her against the nearest wall or piece of furniture or just over him.

But the fact that she was excellent at making him slack back into the shower wall and groan as he came into her mouth made no damn difference when it came to these moments – because this was just work.

Work was what they were. And when they weren't their work, they were just... together.

"What?" She still hadn't turned back to him and the stubborn control of her shoulders still turned in his direction made him verge toward furious and he wasn't entirely sure as to why.

He had two particular modes of living lately: 'On Case' and 'On Kate'.

He wasn't about to apologize for it - he lived and loved them near equally, he thought.

Despite the fact that the very concept of making them equally important parts in his life was...

Fuck. Oh, god. Again?

She was better at her job than even she suspected.

She'd infiltrated his life and invaded senses, space, emotions, thoughts...

You're more than half in love with her, Gunny.

But you already knew that, didn't you?

"You're nervous. What changed?" He'd softened his voice. Or, rather, his own emotions had done it, forced the words quiet and cautiously concerned.

"My orders."

The way she breathed deeply and turned toward him after saying it was the clinching shift of his own silent realization. Because regardless of how internally upset she obviously was, the acceptance of the situation had her lithe little body so sure and tight and compactly controlled. So unexplainably sexy in how easily she mantled responsibility and accepted whatever she'd been given.

Maybe that's what he'd seen in her.

The ability to be limitlessly strong. The ability to outlast the very worst of him.

"You were fine this morning."

That's what had been so clearly evident in Shannon.

What he'd thought he'd maybe seen in Diane and the others.

That they could work and linger and last and just... accept that he was a bastard.

"Yeah, well... this morning I was scheduled to land in Oslo at Happy Hour." Her hands were shuffling her paperwork, her voice derogatory in the same way he sometimes heard his own words. The similarity nearly making a hysterical laugh chuckle up his throat. "Things change."

"You're scared." He softened the assumption (because he wasn't actually sure if he was talking to her or himself), made it more patient than he normally would have considering how prickly she seemed in her version of self defense.

"This is not fear, Gibbs."

His glare went unintentionally uncontrolled, nearly as digging as his tone. "Don't lie to me."

Not when I'm dealing with the fact that half of me thinks you're perfect and the other half isn't arguing very well.

"I'm not." He wasn't used to her snapping so thoroughly into an authoritative presence, something so steel-straight rather than curved soft. It was righteously attractive - and it also had the sound of a warning bell klaxoning off in the back of his head. "This is not fear."

It was disgust. Frustration and fury.

Self hatred, verging on a despondent sort of despair.

All of it knotted round by a weight of responsibility that was lowering her shoulders in a fashion he actually knew rather well.

"What do I need to know?" He asked quietly, even as she rolled her eyes at the request. "Tell me, Kate. To watch your back, what do I need to know?"

"Nothing." A sound of revulsion came off her throat as her hands both came up, palms wiping along her nose and mouth before she panned her glance back down over her desk and lowered her voice. "Seems I'm not the one with a back that needs watching in this particular scenario."

'Crisis of confidence' seemed like three awfully dramatic words to apply to the situation but, hell, those three seemed more likely to fit than most other combinations.

Maybe 'moral objection' was more like it, though. Similar symptoms, fewer syllables.

Because he suddenly realized what was likely in that folder and why her hand had been so magnetically drawn to her Sig when he'd disturbed her sullen contemplation.

He suddenly realized why it was so easy to fall for her when one spent so much time seeing her emotions tip through her beautifully colored eyes just before something stalwart glittered them dark.

Because she's good. God, better than.

And ya don't waste good.

"Stay focused. Stay on your target." He said it gently because there was no other way to say it, there was no other way to tell her that it wasn't really okay, but it would have to be. "Leave your morals at home, sweetheart. Leave 'em with me."

Her head half turned and she pulled a semi annoyed face at the endearment but he ignored it, "Don't - "

"This is your job and these are your orders, Kate." He tried to use an unbreakable tone with her, tried to make it threatening because he knew she needed the proverbial smack to get her on the defensive, to keep her edging and on guard. "You follow your orders and then bring yourself home. That's your responsibility to this agency."

It hadn't come off as strongly as he'd attempted, though - and she seemed to notice.

Because she tipped her head into a squint as she studied his face, "To you?"

Yes, to me. Is that a problem?

"That too." Gibbs murmured slowly.

She just blinked an acceptance that said they were having two completely conversations at once and she was fine with that so long as they didn't need to dwell too awfully deep into either of them at that particular moment.

Which was pretty damn fine with him too, thanks.

Because either they were headed toward too much touchy-feely for him to be comfortable, or they were about to discuss the fact that he'd gotten her a job as (what her practicality and stricter morals would deem) an underpaid assassin.

"This... it came sooner than I expected." Her eyes were a carameled color as he nodded a wordless acceptance of what she was saying, watching as he finally took up the space around the end of the desk and sat gently into her explanation. "I'm still in training, Gibbs. I don't..."

You don't want this.

This part is broken.

This part is irredeemable.

"You have a solid team, Kate. Morrow knows who's on Echo. He put all of you there." He tapped his fingertips against her stomach, trying to make it casual before giving up and digging into the warm fabric of her shirt to pull her closer. "He knows it's a good team, everyone knows it. You need to know it. You trust them?"

A dip to her jaw and a shrug and it seemed as though she was taking the time to really consider her answer to his question. "As much as I can this soon."

"Cassie and Snyder are good agents." He forced her to angle into the inside of his knee, dragged her closer as he realized that she was pliant to the movement, accepting of how controlling his was being with his hand against her. "I wouldn't have set you up with a team that wouldn't take care of you and each other."

"You trust them." She nodded agreement and her hand lifted so gracefully slowly that he caught himself leaning for the touch before she actually slid her fingertips along the slope of his shoulder.

"Implicitly." Gibbs nodded once. "You trust me?"

She didn't seem to need to consider it at all, at least not nearly as long as she had with the others.

"Implicitly." Kate murmured over him, her eyes following her fingers as she stroked back over his collarbone and then found the 'V' in the fabric of his shirt, pulling on it like a tether to safety.

"Yeah?"

A breathy laugh broke over her lips, her head lifting with a shift of an almost smile. "Terrifyingly? Yes."

He felt a smile start up, despite the attempt to quell it down. "We still talking about work?"

Kate just rolled her eyes as she snorted a laugh out. "You are work, Jethro Gibbs."

"I mean it, Katya." More emotion slipped into the words than he'd meant as he wiped against her throat, more loving in the whisper of them than he'd necessarily wanted her to hear. "Leave the good with me. I'll take care of it til you're home."

She was avoiding his eyes but it was a shy movement rather than deflection. "I have evidence of what he's planning to do and I still... It's murder."

"Yeah." He agreed quietly, fingering down the fabric of her shirt as she stayed hovered over his intentionally calmed posture. "It is. To save lives."

She jerked against his shirt, her frustration a generalized thing rather than just directed at him. "It's deceptive murder."

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry I put you here. I'm sorry.

Please, please know that I'm sorry.

"It's your job, your responsibility." Asshole was easier than Apology for him, always had been. She knew that. Somehow, he knew that she knew that. "And those are your orders. And if you can't do it - "

"I didn't say that." Her voice was still quiet but it had strained tight toward him, her head turned downwardly angled in a slant that made the smell of her hair the most prominent sensory stimulus in the wide fucking world.

"Caitlin," Gibbs let his head tip to counter the angle of hers, words quiet and low between them, "you knew this was coming. You've been trained to kill. It's an execution of orders in defense of your country."

It's what she needs to hear.

It's the thing she needs to tell herself to accept this.

"It's still murder, Jethro."

Yes, it is.

I'm sorry.

I'm so sorry.

"Yes, it is." He stripped as much emotion from his voice as he could, tried not to sound concerned or accusatory or anything she could use to turn on him again. "Can you do this?"

"Yes." She said it as though she hated herself on the margins, she despised the edges of what she was and what she could actually be capable of doing if it was her job to do so. She hated that she would be willing to do it, even as she wasn't.

"I believe you." He just nodded it truthfully between them.

A worry flicked over her face suddenly, defensively, "Doesn't mean I want to."

A worry that he'd think less of her, maybe?

Hell... she had no full comprehension of some of the things he'd done.

And the sweet guilt of hoping he wouldn't judge her? When he'd done double worse and thanked Christ that the government was making the working of his hands secret to everyone, her included?

He just let his shoulders drop loosely, shaking his head slowly into her watching, "None of us want to, sweetheart."

Kate watched him a moment, stared at him like he'd blurted out every sin committed as she curled her hand into his shirt and let it hang gripped there.

Then she just nodded, like she'd been gifted the cosmic right to forgive them all and it was an easily made decision to absolve him of something, of everything.

"You don't usually come up here." Her fingers were suddenly spreading the fabric back out, brushing it flat against his chest as she avoided his watching. "Why are you in my office?"

"Thought I'd offer you a ride to your transport."

A smile crashed over her mouth before she looked up, eyes mirthy and surprisingly excited for how sullen she'd been. "Yeah?"

"I'm free for awhile."

"You mean DiNozzo's doing your leg work?" She taunted it at him, used to the teasing to bring them back somewhere safe from too much reality.

He appreciated the break.

His lungs felt like they were about to explode.

"And McGee's finishing my paperwork." His agreement went along with the push he made on her hip before he stood, watching her face as she made a small and internally amused smile.

"When are you gonna give that poor kid an official transfer? He worships you."

"Maybe after you get back." He chuckled back as he leaned along her side, feeling the strength in her shoulder as she accepted the physical connection and lifted her head into his lips along her cheek. "Depends on how well he can spy on the spy."

"I am not a spy." She murmured dryly, grabbing the papers and her bag and shaking her head as he forced himself away from touching her and took the steps that would make it less likely.

"Katie, you're a Navy Spook. Deal with it."

"You hate Spooks. And yet," she blew out a breath as she shrugged her bag up onto her shoulder, her other hand waving idly into the air between them as she searched over her desk, distracted and as though she were re-checking that she hadn't forgotten something, "you're sleeping with one."

"Love and hate are two sides of a very fine line, Agent Todd," he teased quietly over the desk, waving his fingers into her line of sight before pointing toward the door. "Let's go."

Her head lifted in sharp scrutiny even as she stepped around her desk, letting him meet her along the end of it with a little half smile. "You realize what you just implied there, Gunny?"

Shit. So... that came out.

Of course. Yeah, I do.

"I was hopin' you wouldn't notice."

She grinned up at him suddenly, her face widely flushed and adoring and more emotionally open in its pleasure than he'd expected. "I'm a very observant little Spook."

"'Observant' is not necessarily the word I would use," Gibbs hushed off as his hand cradled up into her lower back, angling her toward her own office door with a tense turn in his wrist. "Move out."

"Sir, yes, sir," she sniped back over her shoulder, tightening her bag higher up with fingers wrapped hard against the strap. "Can I tease you about that little misstep in the car?"

"Would saying 'no' really stop you?"

A jittered breath laughed off her. "Not so much, no."

She suddenly turned round into how he'd moved against her back, bringing them flush again as she searched over his face, a sudden wariness in her eyes as she caught the blue of his. Her teeth worried into her lip a moment and he caught how many questions she avoided asking even as they each tinted her eyes a different color of concern. Gibbs just tipped his head into her silent study, let her hold his glance a moment as he exhaled past parted lips.

Would it really be so bad? To actually just... be flat out in love with her?

Haven't you sorta tripped into it already?

Hasn't it made breathing easier?

"Then why ask permission?" He just shook his head gently back and forth as his fingers tugged at her shirt, letting a smile lay over his lips as she watched him speak, "Better to just beg forgiveness later."

It seemed to sway her sudden worry, seemed to calm the anxiety that had flushed the high edging of her cheekbones.

Because then she flicked him an even cheekier smile. "I only beg for one thing and you know it."

Wouldn't kill ya to let her break you.

She'd even stay to pick up the pieces.

"God, I'm gonna miss you."