Angel of the Morning
Author: Kerlin
Rating: PG-13
Category: Angst, Gibbs/Kate
Spoilers: Through "Minimum Security"
Disclaimer: Not mine. Just borrowing.
Summary: "Maybe the sun's light will be dim, so it won't matter anyhow."
Kate stubbed her toe on the coffee table on the way to the door, sleep making her blurry-eyed and thick-limbed.
His smirk only made her mood worse. When he asked her if she'd gotten up on the wrong side of the bed she told him exactly where he could take that smirk and swung the door, hard.
He caught it flat-handed and invited himself in. She threw her hands up in the air when he sat down at her breakfast bar and suggested they have something to drink.
Somehow, it didn't surprise her that Gibbs was a brandy drinker.
Two fifths of amber liquid and a short, stilted conversation about the weather later, he reached across the counter and tucked a fall of hair behind her ear. The smirk returned, and a moment after she saw it, she tasted it.
There were a thousand reasons she should have kicked him out right then, and only a handful why she should do nothing but sigh deep in her throat when he hooked his fingers around her waist and tugged her to him, hard. Sometimes, it seemed, the few could trump the many.
He didn't stay through the morning, and at work it was business as usual over the body of a young Seaman found dead of a drug overdose.
If it hadn't been for the sticky brandy snifter on her kitchen counter, Kate would have thought it was all a dream.
****
The second time, she knew it was him, but she opened the door anyway, a thousand angry objections on her lips.
Damn that smirk, anyway.
When he pressed the tip of his tongue against her skin, Kate cried out, and wondered if it was okay to pull this crap at NCIS if she was pulling it with the boss.
She found that she didn't really care what the answer was.
****
She told herself that she wasn't in over her head, that they were both adults. That she shouldn't question really great sex, that it wouldn't spill over into work if they were careful. That next time she wouldn't let him in, and would end this before it started to get dangerous.
That she wasn't falling in love with him.
Kate had always been very good at lying to herself.
****
It was snowing when she pulled the covers close up to her chin to preserve the warmth Gibbs had left behind him. She watched from half-lidded eyes as he buttoned the blue shirt, and felt the question on her lips.
"I thought you said that romance between agents never worked."
She hadn't meant to actually ask.
His hands stilled on the middle button, and he turned slightly to look at her.
"Does this look like a romance, Agent Todd?"
