As he lay in the bed, still unconscious and so still, she had a hard time reconciling the recumbent figure with Gibbs. It wasn't that he was never still, but that there was usually a tension about his frame, a poised awareness that was an integral part of him. Other than the lines in his face, that occasionally creased in pain or in reaction to whatever he was dreaming about, he seemed completely relaxed, probably due to whatever meds they had pumping through the IV in the back of his hands.
It was his hands that really caught her attention, as always, and she longed to see them moving with their usual rapid motion, punctuating his speech, hitting Tony or Tim in the back of the head, holding her. Mostly she missed the little messages that he would form, meant for her eyes only. It was like their own language, a private code that only they could decipher.
It had shocked her, the first time they had "talked" this way. She had been swamped with work, and short of sleep. Gibbs had just dropped off the latest trace evidence from the third crime scene in as many days, and the printer that was supposed to be spitting out her results had chewed them up instead.
She was too much of a lady to actually curse, most of the time, but she had a large vocabulary and several choice things to say about malfunctioning equipment, bossy supervisors, and evil murderers who kept giving her more work to do. She fell into an old habit, and her hands flew in frustration, giving voice to the words that she couldn't sound, less they overwhelm her, too.
The quiet chuckle behind her caused her to falter in her tirade, only to turn to a smiling Gibbs and give him what for - still forming the soundless invective with her hands. It wasn't until he calmly answered her back in kind that she was truly speechless. She had frowned and stomped her foot, really letting her frustration show, before slumping her shoulders and returning to the printer like a good little soldier, to rescue her mangled report from it's jaws.
A short while later, Gibbs had returned with a conciliatory smile and a Caf-Pow. Her anger had faded by then, but his quick signs about beautiful girls and naughty words had caused it to fade completely.
A few weeks later, a fresh-faced and eager DiNozzo was getting on her nerves and she turned to Gibbs and quickly signed her opinion of his new boy. Gibbs had smiled and shook his head, then reached out and bopped Tony on the back of his head, like a wayward puppy. Tony's wide-eyed look of surprise and instant compliance had only been a bonus. She had smiled back at Gibbs and then continued her report, blissfully uninterrupted. The warm, fuzzy feeling she had was more that the satisfaction of her amazing discovery, it was the blissful calm of having a new ally, a friend.
It wasn't a habit that they often repeated, but a few short strokes and movements could say so much between them, when needed. It could even say, "I love you" when their hands were saying something else entirely.