Timothy McGee sighed in the soft darkness as he rolled over in the bed to watch Abby sleep. A sliver of moonlight pierced between the thick velvet curtains she had drawn over the windows making her pale soft skin seem to glow. Her long black hair tumbled against the silk pillows and she breathed deep and contented, happy in her dreams.

It almost made him weep that she was so close, close enough to touch but she was still too far away for him to be happy. He loved her and while she willingly gave him everything she could freely give to him, her body and her mind, her heart lay untouched.

And it was her heart that he wanted most.

He knew he was drunk. He knew that Abby was drunk otherwise she wouldn't have asked him to come back with her after meeting the team after work for drinks. When she was sober she knew it hurt him too much to be with her in this way, even though he craved it with his very soul. To touch her warm naked body with his hands as she lay free of her lab coat, collars and chains. He saw her truly underneath her protective layer and gloried in her strength, intelligence and vulnerability.

He didn't know whether to weep or pull her close to him and fall asleep with her scent flavoring in his dreams. He couldn't seem to escape her although he had tried. He wasn't free to love another because he already knew who he wanted and how perfect it could be between them. And yet they weren't together and he couldn't accept what she could offer him because it was hollow. Sex with respect and friendship but not love. Joyful conversation and teasing interaction but with no plan for a future.

Tim lay awake, the room slowly spinning around him as he contemplated how yet again he had been helpless to her advances. Her full red lips, her unique scent of gunpowder and roses, her beautiful eyes full of delight. He had promised himself after the last time that he wouldn't do this again.

To have all and yet nothing tasted like ashes in his mouth and it was slowly killing the pleasure they genuinely had in each others company. It had taken weeks after the last time he had made love to her before he could laugh freely with her in the lab again and watch her walk out the door at the end of the day for another date with a faceless man.

If only she could understand what he truly felt. To love her would be a freedom not a sentence. He could then just let himself go and they could soar together. Every time he had tried to talk to her about it she had looked at him like he was trying to cage her or deny some part of her its freedom. She would become angry and defensive and wouldn't speak to him or she would twist his words until he hated the very sound of them.

So he would come to her silent. As he must. But it was a silence so loud he was amazed she didn't feel the ringing in her ears or see the dust breaking free of the mortar that bound them trailing him as he walked.

If only he had the words. The right words. Like a spell, an incantation. If he could put the right words together at the right time then he could be like Merlin the wizard and the locks around her heart would tumble free and she could be his.

And how he ached for her to be his.

But that was surely the fancy of a drunken mind. The pen mightier than the sword?

But no. This was the last time he would go through this agony again. He would tell her how he felt about her before all the words in his head slowly drowned him. But he would tell her silently so she didn't have to hear his words.

Abby murmured in her deep sleep as she felt Tim's kisses and gentle sweeping caresses on her naked body. She knew it was him and continued in her sleep feeling safe in his adoration. Timothy.

Abby awoke in the morning with a smile on her face. She contemplated last night and suddenly was awash in sorrow. She shouldn't have done it. Why did she turn to him when she knew what pain it brought him? He was almost helpless in his love for her and she felt almost cruel for offering herself up to him again.

Once she wouldn't have though much of it. Two consenting adults achieving physical release with each other. Something simple in a world that was often crazy. The fact that they were trusted friends made it even better.

But she had seen that look in his eyes again as he made love to her. And that's what it was for him. It wasn't sex. He made love to her, body mind and soul. Perhaps that was why she turned to him when her own barriers were down. For an experience that couldn't be replicated with anyone else.

Although she had tried.

Abby held back her sigh and turned over in the bed to see if she could repair some of the damage she had done to their friendship.

"Oh Timothy!" Abby gasped as she saw him passed out naked on the other side of her large bed, tears still wet on his smooth cheeks. He looked so vulnerable as he lay curled in on himself as if to try and hold in the pain. She reached for him to see what he was grasping so tightly in his fist. She sat up and pried it gently out of his fingers and stared at it in the dim light.

A black marker pen.

Abby's attention was suddenly drawn down to her bare body as she remembered the gentle feathery touches of her dreams last night and she drew in her breath.

He had marked her all over. Her entire body was covered in his words as he made her his. Abby flung back the covers and stared at herself made unfamiliar.

There wasn't a spot on her body that he had left untouched. She stood in amazement and stood in front of the mirror. He had turned her into a living canvas for his poetry. Poetry of his love for her.

She stared at the beautiful scrolling script running across her slightly rounded belly as he declared his desire for her to carry a child for him. A child with her boldness and desire for life.

He had written the chemical equation for star dust between her breasts where he liked to lay his head before falling asleep and declared he would love her till he too turned to dust and was returned to the stars.

He had written a poem about sweet kisses down her neck and trailed it down her back. He declared how the taste of her haunted him along her left inner thigh and how he admired her strength and conviction down her right.

He had told her how he did not want to shackle her with obligations by winding it around her ankle and had drawn a bird soaring free on her calf.

He had traced around his hand on her hip and told her how he felt when he got to hold her in his arms, away from the world and free of convention and expectation. How she had freed him and his heart with her laughter.

Words, single words, poetry, whole chapters soaked her skin. Adoration, love, trust, desire, beauty, faith, passion, fidelity marked her in black ink.

Abby felt the tears running down her face at his passion as she slowly absorbed his words and feelings as she slowly turned and read herself. Some of the words made her laugh. The back of her left arm had his thoughts from when they first met all those years ago for their lunch date and his butt had still been sore from the tattoo artist's needle. And then she was crying again as she read down the back of her right arm. Pleasure and pain she had always been to him but he would have it no other way as she made him feel like no other in the world.

Abby had spent years slowly claiming herself with her body art and Tim had taken a night to claim her with his words.

She heard Tim stir on the bed and didn't move from the mirror as he stood and flushing with embarrassment walked up behind her.

"Why Tim"" Abby asked softly, tears streaking her face and spiking her eyelashes.

"I don't know. You never like to hear my words and I thought that maybe….. if you knew. If you really knew how I felt about you that….. you might somehow love me too."

He stood sorrowful and bereft and Abby felt her heart break free from the safe place she had firmly secured it at the great love this amazing man offered her.

With a shuddering breath she turned and threw herself into his arms and burst into tears.

"I'm so sorry I didn't mean to be horrible to you all this time. You are everything and more than I could ever deserve to ask for." Abby mumbled into his neck as her tears feel hot and wet against his shoulder.

Tim just closed his eyes and held her tight in his arms as they rocked slowly together while Abby sobbed releasing her fears.

Tim lifted her chin. "Hey it's ok. I …."

"I love you Timothy McGee." Abby looked up at him with adoring tear stained eyes and Tim's heart almost burst. He stood and just looked at her in amazement.

"Really?"

"Really truly, always." She reached for him and they kissed, long and slow as the joy flooding through them made a mockery of any happiness they had previously shared. She could truly be free in this mans arms.

"Tim please? Let me make Love to you." Abby held his hand and drew him back to her bed. And this time there would be only the sweetness and not the sorrow.