A/N: So, uh, yeah. Ziva's disappeared with no explanation. My original story had Ziva still around. Which is great and all, but it's been so long since I watched any Ziva that I really don't know how to write her, and she's such a great character I don't want to get her completely wrong. So I didn't write her. Sorry, Ziva fans, but I didn't want to butcher her character, and figured leaving her out was the better option.

Spoilers: Slight references to S13 E20 "Charade" and a single scene from S14 E8 "Enemy Combatant". But still set firmly in Season 13 when DiNozzo's still on the team.

That night, as they sat down in the living room to eat the pizza they had picked up on the way back from the office, Bishop asked the question that had been on her mind ever since the case had come to it's abrupt close.

"You kissed me back." (Okay, so that wasn't actually a question, but there was at least a question behind it.)

"Mmm. Hoping you hadn't noticed," he replied, echoing back the words she'd said regarding waking up curled next to him on the trip back from Oklahoma.

Taking a deep breath, Bishop began, "I know you probably don't feel the same, I know there's a huge age gap between us, and I know it goes against rule twelve, but I really like you." Taking another breath, she prepared to go on with all the reasons that it could possibly work, and why they should at least try it, but Gibbs cut her off.

"You're not the only one."

She started to launch into all her arguments when she realized what he had said. "Wait, What?! You do like me?"

"Despite all attempts not to, yes."

Bishop sat there, gaping not unlike a fish, unsure of what to say, or what was happening. "Does that mean…you'll go out with me?" she asked hesitantly after a moment, trying to figure out what her boss was really saying.

"That is typically what people who like each other do," replied Gibbs.

Bishop smiled brightly, and returned to her pizza. Gibbs had actually agreed to date her.

As they got into bed that night, Bishop turned to face Gibbs. Figuring she might as well use him as a pillow from the start, she leaned up and gave him a quick peck on the lips before settling onto his chest before he could say anything.

"Night, Gibbs."

"Night, Bishop."

The next morning, Bishop slipped into her desk, actually sitting in her seat for once, hoping Tony and McGee wouldn't notice her. Needless to say, she wasn't so lucky.

"Bishop…"

Bishop looked up to see Tony staring at her.

Tony and McGee were of course the only ones to have seen her kiss their boss, and neither of them had any reason to tell anyone, which of course meant the entire office knew by now. She and Gibbs had agreed it was best not to say anything about their new relationship; the office rumor mill didn't need confirmation. Which meant she had to deal with her teammates' prying without revealing anything, intentionally or accidentally.

"Yes, Tony?"

"We weren't sure you were going to be in this morning."

"Because of your gun wound," interjected McGee, trying to save Bishop.

"Oh, no, McNot-Nosy. Because we thought Gibbs might have killed you," said Tony.

"Thought wrong," came Gibbs' voice, as he breezed into the Bullpen out of nowhere. "Got a body in Falls Church. Grab your gear."

"Hey Bish, why don't you ride with me?" said Tony several minutes later as he and Gibbs each got into the driver's seats of the two Chargers.

Bishop rolled her eyes, but got into the passenger seat of Tony's car, leaving McGee to ride with Gibbs. She wasn't going to be able to avoid him forever; might as well get it over with sooner rather than later.

As soon as they pulled out of the garage, Tony said, "So if Gibbs didn't kill you last night, what did happen?"

"It was heat of the moment, an impulse reaction. He understood that," replied Bishop, not lying. It certainly had been an impulse reaction to the situation, even if it had turned out quite favorably.

"Have you met Gibbs!?" Tony exclaimed incredulously.

"My apartment's still a burnt pile of ashes, even if the threat to my life is over; he wouldn't just kick me out on the street in the middle of the night."

"He would me, if I kissed him on a mission."

"I'm pretty sure he would kill you if you ever kissed him," retorted Bishop.

"So nothing happened? No long speeches, no irritated grunts, no 'I'll fire you if you ever kiss me again', nothing?" asked Tony.

"Oh I'm sure he will fire me if I ever kiss him on a case again," answered Bishop. Gibbs might have agreed to date her, but if she ever let it show on a case, she had no doubt that would be the end of it, and her position at NCIS; the job always came first.

Bishop could tell that Tony knew she was intentionally avoiding answering his questions, but he didn't press her about it, which she was thankful for. The more questions he asked, the harder it was for her to keep everything merely a rumor.

Sensing he wasn't going to get a straight answer out of her, Tony decided to drop his line of questioning for the moment, to be revisited at a later date.

"You do realize if we go together we aren't going to be able to keep it a secret, right?" said Gibbs, as he straightened his tie. It was a couple weeks later, and they were getting ready for an awards gala that Vance had insisted the entire team attend.

"Zip me up," replied Bishop, turning so Gibbs could zip up her dress. "I still haven't found my own place to live, which Tony is fully aware of, and rumors have been flying around the office since our kiss, which were undoubtedly started by Tony himself. So it's not like Tony and McGee don't already suspect it, and you know Abby will be happy about it."

Gibbs pulled on his coat. "It's my boss that's the issue. You're the only one who has to deal with DiNozzo and McGee. But Vance is more than aware of why rule twelve exists in the first place."

"I didn't think about Director Vance. Will he tell us we can't date?" asked Bishop, as they walked out to Gibbs' truck.

"He'll warn me against it, and question whether I know what I'm doing, but rule twelve is the most blatantly broken rule; as long as it doesn't interfere with the job, he's not going to fire us when he does eventually find out."

"Fire me, you mean" replied Bishop. "We both know he isn't going to fire you."

Thirty minutes later they pulled into the conference center parking lot. Bishop linked her arm in Gibbs' as they walked across the parking lot, and into the ballroom.

Unsurprisingly, Tony was the first to see them.

"Hey boss, Bishop" he said, walking up to them. "You're looking lovely tonight," he added to Bishop, before doing a double take at their linked arms. His jaw dropped slightly, before exclaiming, "I knew it! You are, aren't you?"

Before either of them could respond, Tony rushed off yelling, "McGee! McGee!", much to the disapproval of everyone within hearing distance; people who liked their highfalutin events to be substantially more lacking in yelling across the room.

"Ooh, food," responded Bishop, dropping Gibbs' arm and grabbing some food off a passing hors d'oeuvres plate.

"No wonder your team never gets invited to any banquets."

Gibbs and Bishop spun around on the spot to find the Director giving them the slightest hint of a smile.

"Seems odd given how much my team loves coming to these events," deadpanned Gibbs in reply.

But before Vance could respond, they were interrupted by Tony dragging McGee along behind him.

"See? I told you!" he exclaimed, spreading his arms towards Gibbs and Bishop, and now Director Vance as well.

"See what?" asked McGee, looking at the normal looking trio. "Bishop eating and Gibbs and Director Vance talking? I'm pretty sure we've seen both of those plenty of times at work."

"I think Tony might have tied his tie on too tight," replied Bishop. "He wasn't making much sense the first time we saw him either."

Before things could escalate any further, the banquet host called everyone to sit down for the awards presentations. Gibbs and Bishop took seats next to each other, earning them another look from Tony, and earning McGee a nudge from Tony. But as they both gave their full attention to the presentations, and not each other, Tony found no new ammunition to further his suspicions.

After the presentations finished, everyone dissipated to talk to people they knew.

Unsurprisingly, Tony found Bishop thirty minutes later hanging around the snack tables, people watching. Being the newest member of the MCRT, Bishop knew the fewest amount of people there, not having had the time to run across as many of them on cases; and being the analyst, observing the big picture was kind of her thing.

"Seen anything interesting?" he asked, sliding up next to her, stealing a cookie off her overflowing plate of food.

"Well, famous men are surprisingly unconcerned about the fact their wives are standing right next to them as they unabashedly flirt with anything pretty with a pulse. I thought they'd be a little more subtle about it in the presence of their wives."

"Both sides know that both sides know, and yet they're still together, so neither side really cares anymore," replied Tony with a shrug. "And half of these wives are just in their marriages for the power they get out of it, they could care less what their husbands are doing behind their backs; or not so behind their backs, as the case seems to be."

"Yeah," said Bishop with a sigh, just continuing to watch. After a few seconds of quiet, she added, "And it seems like Gibbs is a magnet for older redheads. That's the third one tonight to try to get close to him while he's talking to someone. Just to add to the three exes he's already gone through."

Tony was about to make a comment about Bishop not rescuing her date when he recognized the latest Gibbs flirter. "Wait, isn't that Senator Bransfield's wife?"

"Yep. The senator blackmailed by you because he was cheating with your brief date."

"Gee thanks, I really needed reminded of that," retorted Tony, stealing another cookie off Bishop's plate as retribution. "Looks like she's not quite so upstanding herself."

Before they could say anything else, Gibbs walked up, with said redhead trailing not so surreptitiously a little distance behind him.

"What is it with redheads?" grumbled Gibbs as he came to stand on Bishop's other side.

"Want me...?" began Bishop quietly, trailing off, cocking an eyebrow at the approaching redhead.

Bishop saw Gibbs give Tony the slightest glance that she wouldn't have seen if she hadn't been paying close attention to his face, and Tony no doubt completely missed, paying more attention to the approaching visitor, before Gibbs decided it would be the lesser of the two evils, and mumbled under his breath, "Fine."

So Bishop waited a couple more seconds, watching the redhead out of the corner of her eye, until the older woman was almost up to them, and then Bishop reached up and pulled Gibbs down to her and gave him a soft, but purposeful kiss on the lips.

As soon as she saw their lips meet, the senator's wife burst out, "You skank!", causing everyone in the nearby vicinity to turn and look.

"At least I'm not married," replied Bishop smoothly as she pulled away and wrapped an arm around Gibbs' waist, turning slightly to look at the intruder.

The older woman blushed a shade of red rivaled only by her hair, before she turned and stalked away.

During this interaction Tony had stood frozen in shock, but now hissed, "I knew it! I'm not crazy!"

Once the older woman had stalked away, most of the surrounding people turned back to their own conversations, but that merely revealed McGee and Director Vance, who had apparently been much closer than anyone had realized.

"See? I told you!" exclaimed Tony as soon as he saw McGee.

"You know, Abby's going to have a field day with this when she finds out," McGee whispered to Tony as he and Vance walked up.

"Are you kidding me? I'm going to have a field day with this," replied Tony in an equal whisper.

Vance meanwhile walked to where Gibbs and Bishop stood, Bishop's arm still firmly around her boss's waist.

"Do I want to know why Senator Bransfield's wife just stormed away looking like she might murder someone?"

"Well, it wasn't DiNozzo's fault this time that a Bransfield hates NCIS," replied Gibbs.

Vance nodded slightly, before looking down at Bishop, who looked back slightly sheepishly, but kept her arm firmly around Gibbs.

"I'm going to pretend I don't see anything here, and continue my rounds," said Vance, before giving a curt nod and moving off.

"Well, that went better than—" began Bishop, dropping her arm and turning to face Gibbs, before being interrupted by an overly bubbly forensic scientist.

"Everybody's here! What did I miss?"

"Oh, did you miss everything—" began Tony, before being cut off by McGee.

"Typical boring awards presentation, and Senator Bransfield's wife hitting on Gibbs."

"Oh, is she trying to become ex-wife number four? She's certainly got the hair for it," replied Abby, looking over to where Mrs. Bransfield stood by the bar, nursing a drink, glaring at the ever-growing NCIS team.

At that moment Gibbs' phone rang, so he stepped off to the side to answer it, leaving Bishop alone with her teammates.

Taking advantage of the distraction, Tony pulled Abby to the side as McGee started talking to Bishop. "Bishop kissed Gibbs again," he said without preamble as soon as they were out of earshot.

"Gibbs and Bishop are finally together?" she asked excitedly.

"Oh yeah," replied Tony. "Wait? You expected them to get together?"

"Of course! It was all predicted by my statistical analysis. I can show you at work Monday."

"You're telling me you predicted this? When?" asked McGee, as he and Tony stood around Abby in front of the plasma Monday afternoon.

"Wouldn't you like to know."

Glancing around the Big Orange Room to make sure neither Gibbs nor Bishop were around (they were supposed to be out interviewing their latest suspect, but they'd left a while back, so who knew how much time there was before they would return), Tony motioned the all clear for Abby to put her findings up on the screen.

"I did a statistical analysis of Bishop's personality, and cross-referenced it with everyone on the team," began Abby, showing her 'Heart-O-Graph' meter. "McGee, you only scored a 17% probability."

"Well that's good, I doubt Delilah would like it very much if you thought I belonged with Bishop," said McGee.

"Jimmy scored a similarly low 22%," continued Abby, clicking on to the next graph. "Tony, you scored an impressive 65%. Though you do have a thing for girls with a badge."

"Yeah, well I'm not the subject of this discussion. Move on to what we all came here for," replied Tony, not particularly wanting to dwell on Ziva or Keets.

"All right then. The last member of the team," said Abby. "Presenting, with a whopping 87% probability, Leroy Jethro Gibbs. Which is a better probability than you had with Delilah, McGee."

"Wait — Delilah and I? You ran this test on—?"

"What test?" came Gibbs' voice out of nowhere.

Abby spun around, clicking off the plasma with a skill that could only come from being caught too many times by their boss, while the other two did a very convincing job of looking like they were trying to pretend they hadn't just been looking at something they didn't want their boss to see.

"Hey, Gibbs, hey! We were just, uh, you know, sharing some enlightening scientific analysis here," replied Abby, certainly not guilty sounding.

"How about sharing something else? Like a lead," answered Gibbs, as Bishop joined them around the tv.

Nothing more was said about Gibbs and Bishop's now basically-confirmed relationship, but Tony did continue to watch the pair with an eagle eye, looking for any more signs of what was going on between them. But for all he could tell at work, there was nothing going on at all; not that he was particularly surprised, Gibbs would never let outside affairs affect the job, and Bishop had been around long enough to know to keep it out of work as well.

A couple weeks later, Vance called Gibbs and Bishop into his office.

"As you know Gibbs, I usually stay out of these matters when it comes to your team, because as long as they do their job, I'm willing to overlook anything that goes on inside your team. But it has come to HR's attention that you two are together. And while you know as well as I do that HR is against any kind of interoffice relationships, they have agreed not to say anything as long as you two make it official. Which includes telling your team; not that they don't obviously already know. You don't have to tell them immediately, but if you're going to stay together, it does need to be done, to get HR off my back."

Bishop looked over to Gibbs to see what he would say, but Gibbs merely nodded, before asking, "Anything else?"

It was Friday evening, and they had just finished up their latest case. Tony and McGee were packing up their bags, about to head out for the evening, ready for a relaxing weekend without any work (well, hopefully, anyway). Tony glanced across at Bishop, who was staring at her computer, but clearly not looking at it; the apple logo wasn't even lit, which meant she hadn't really been looking at it for a while.

"What's up, Bishop?" he asked. "Not heading home?"

Bishop slowly looked up at him, clearly still lost in thought.

After a few seconds, she asked, "Are Abby, Ducky, and Palmer still here?"

"Probably. Why?" asked Tony.

McGee had moved to stand by Tony's desk, looking concerned at their female teammate. It wasn't like her not to be ready to go home for the weekend.

"Get them up here," Bishop replied after a few moments consideration. She hadn't talked with Gibbs about it yet, but it had to be said sometime, and if everyone was still there, might as well go ahead and do it. Other than themselves, the Big Orange Room was empty.

"Um, okay," said Tony, pulling out his phone and sending a group text to the forensic scientist, ME, and autopsy gremlin. "You okay, Bishop?"

"Yeah. I'll tell you when everyone gets here," replied Bishop, still clearly distracted.

Tony and McGee let it go for the moment, waiting on the others to arrive.

As Abby, Ducky and Palmer walked into the Bullpen a few minutes later, Gibbs walked in from the other direction. He glanced at Bishop, who raised her eyebrows in silent question. Gibbs gave her a small nod as he walked past, before sitting down at his desk.

Getting up from her desk, Bishop stood between her desk and Gibbs', and looked around at everyone.

"Most of you already know this, or at least suspect it, but Director Vance wants it to be out in the clear." Bishop took a deep breath before continuing. "Gibbs and I are dating."

"Yay!" exclaimed the forensic scientist excitedly, and clicked the TV controller that she'd apparently picked up without anyone noticing, causing a photo of Gibbs and Bishop together at the awards gala a few weeks earlier to pop up, with animated balloons and confetti surrounding it, and 'Gibbs' and 'Bishop' written at the very top with a heart between them.

They all looked at it in surprise (well, Gibbs briefly glanced up at it, before resuming shuffling papers around his desk; the rest of them looked at it in surprise).

"How long have you been planning this?" asked Tony in disbelief, the first to recover.

"Ever since they finally kissed a month ago," replied Abby, walking over to Bishop and giving her an enthusiastic hug.

"Good for you," said McGee to Bishop and Gibbs. "Delilah will be excited to hear the news."

Everyone else joined in giving their congratulations to the now NCIS-official couple, and Bishop received several more hugs. After a while, the conversation began to lull slightly, so before anyone (Tony) could begin drilling Bishop for details on the month they'd already been together, Gibbs stood up, causing everyone to fall silent. He'd accepted his share of the congratulations gracefully, but even after as long as they'd all worked for him (or perhaps because of it), everyone was still a little scared of their boss.

"Go home, it's late" he said with a wave of his hand. "You'll have time to bother Bishop about it later."

So everyone gave a final congratulations and goodbye, and began moving towards the elevator.

"I expect to hear every juicy detail Monday morning," said Tony as he walked away last, throwing a wave over his shoulder as he joined everyone else in the elevator.

"Never in a million years," Bishop shouted out after him as the elevator doors began closing.

She then closed the few feet between where she had been standing and where Gibbs was, and wrapped her arms around him tightly.

"Thank you," she said, looking up at him with a warm smile.

Gibbs just gave her his signature Gibbs smile and nod, pressing a brief kiss to her forehead.

The End

A/N: MCRT = Major Case Response Team; i.e. Gibbs' team.