The thing is, Nick knows that flirting comes as easy to him as breathing. Flirting with Ellie comes quite a bit easier. He’s been proving that since the day he met her and, over the last few months, she’s proven she can give as good as she gets.

Simply put, their entire relationship has been almost four years worth of foreplay. In that time, they’ve both been with other people. He’s seen her almost drown, she’s sat by his hospital bedside as he lay in a coma. They’ve both been kidnapped, he’s watched a plane blow up believing that she was on it.

Today he stood in front of her, her foot on a pressure place that would have blown them both to Kingdom Come because there was no way he was going to leave her. Ever.

His point, as he follows her home, as sure of what’s going to happen as it’s possible to be, is that he doesn’t know if any first kiss can ever live up to all that.

But man, is he looking forward to finding out.

And when he’s in her apartment, her legs around his waist, her arms around his neck, her back against the front door, when his lips slant over hers and her mouth opens under his, their tongues tangling and their breaths as one, it’s better than he’d ever hoped.

*

Their wedding day is, not to put too fine a cliché on it, something right out of a fairytale. Jimmy, pissed that he wasn’t asked to officiate until Nick asked him to best man instead, wears a grin from ear to ear. Even Gibbs cracks a smile, Ducky beside him passing a stiff handkerchief to a sniffling Kasie. Tony, Ziva and Tali arrive from Paris, Abby from London and Ellie’s entire family from Oklahoma, including her three brothers who never, not once, let Nick forget that he’d once told them that Ellie is, “not my type. Like at all.” (They take off their shirts at the rehearsal dinner to reveal undershirts with his face and that quote. Barbara Bishop is furious but Nick and Ellie think it’s hilarious, get pictures with the boys and laugh until they cry.)

But the next day, when Ellie walks down the aisle on her father’s arm, looking more beautiful than Nick has ever seen her, he’s crying for an entirely different reason.

He’s sure there’s a pool on that, sure he’s probably just won someone some serous money but he doesn’t care. Not when he kisses her and tastes in her smile the salt of her tears as well as his own. Not when he knows that this is the happiest he’s ever been.

*

Nick is dog tired when he arrives home from work, grateful that a long, horrible case has wrapped, looking forward to a couple of days off. He drags himself into the house, toes off his shoes in the hallway and tiptoes upstairs to the bedroom.

Shucking his clothes onto the floor - Ellie will understand and he’ll clean them up tomorrow morning - he crawls into bed behind her, wincing when it squeaks under his weight and she stirs.

“Nick?” she mumbles sleepily and he presses himself against her back, presses a gentle kiss to her shoulder blade.

“Yeah, baby, I’m home.” Another kiss, this time to the curve of her neck, and he slides his arm around her waist, stretching to accommodate the eight month bump he finds there. She sighs in contentment, relaxes against him and is back to sleep straight away, even though their daughter, like she knows he’s there, pushes against his hand, making him grin against Ellie’s skin.

Then he closes his eyes and he’s out in seconds.