Work Text:
Window of opportunity
by Ceindreadh
Leroy Jethro Gibbs didn't know when exactly he had fallen in love with Anthony DiNozzo.
It hadn't happened the first time they'd met. When NCIS had been investigating the death of a Petty Officer in Baltimore, Gibbs had had to deal with this cocky Detective who thought he knew everything. The annoying part had been that he *had* known everything. Or at least he had figured it out during the course of their shared investigation. Detective DiNozzo had certainly known the effect that his smile had on people. Gibbs hadn't fallen in love with him then, but he had certainly fallen for the young man's investigative skills. And he had to like the sheer stubbornness of the kid who had somehow managed to convince him that the investigation needed to be a joint one. DiNozzo had reminded Gibbs of himself at that age, and while that hadn't been the only factor behind Gibbs giving him a job at NCIS, it had certainly helped.
It hadn't been during the first few years Tony worked with him. Hell, the first case Tony had worked as a fully fledged NCIS agent, and Gibbs spent half the time thinking his gut had been wrong, and that he should have left Tony in Baltimore where he'd found him. And then Tony in the middle of one of his rambling comments about some movie or other had connected the dots and come up with a completely outrageous and totally implausible motive for a guy who hadn't even been on their suspect list. Gibbs had been ready to slap some sense into him, until he'd actually thought about what the kid had been saying, and damn him if he hadn't been right all along.
While Gibbs may not have been in love with Tony all those years, he certainly cared for him. In fairness though, he cared about all his team. They were almost like a family to him. Albeit a crazy dysfunctional family that would have any social worker in the vicinity screaming for an intervention. But they were his family, or at least the only ones he allowed himself to have any more. It was easier with people who weren't related to you by blood or marriage. While Gibbs knew he would be hurt inside if anything happened to a member of his team, he also believed that by keeping them at a certain distance that he'd be able to survive their loss if he outlived them.
And it wasn't just the agents on his team that he counted as his little family. Ducky too was part of the family tree; having been Gibbs's friend and confidant almost from the first day he'd joined NCIS. Gibbs still remembered walking into the morgue and catching Ducky mid-conversation with a corpse. He almost wished he'd known a bit of ventriloquism, just to see Ducky's reaction had the conversation suddenly become a little less one-sided.
Heck, even Mrs. Mallard had earned herself a place in the tree. And that in spite of or maybe because of their first meeting. She had waited until Ducky had left the room to prepare tea before grabbing Gibbs by the ear and threatening to remove his manhood with a knife if he dared to look down her blouse. It had been that encounter and a few similar ones that had made Gibbs decide to assign Tony to take first shift as her bodyguard when Ducky's safety had been under threat, and boy he wished he'd been a fly on the wall for *that* encounter!
But when Gibbs thought back on the years, he couldn't really put his finger on just one moment when his feelings for Tony had changed from those of colleague and partner and responsibility to those of something more.
Gibbs knew it hadn't been a sudden realization, more of a slow but subtle chipping away of his resolve to ever open his heart completely to another person after Shannon and Kelly had died. But slowly and surely, like the constant dripping of a tap, and sometimes as irritating as one, Tony had inched his way closer to Gibbs core.
It wasn't as if there was intentional on his part, at least Gibbs didn't think so. At least he hoped that Tony wasn't in the habit of deliberately putting himself in danger just to provoke Gibbs's feelings. No, Tony was just being Tony and putting himself in the line of fire to solve a case or protect an innocent was part of who he was. When Tony had fallen out of that airplane, Gibbs heart felt like it had stopped beating, and it wasn't until he saw the blossom of Tony's chute that it had started again. When Tony had collapsed while talking to him on the phone, Gibbs had yelled down the line, knowing that if those were the last words Tony heard from him, or indeed anyone, then he wanted him to know that there was somebody out there who had his six, who would move heaven and earth to find him.
Of course after Tony had been rescued, a part of Gibbs had wanted to let him know just how much he meant to him, to acknowledge to him just how good a job he'd done of insinuating himself into Gibbs's heart. But the more rational part of Gibbs had overruled that idea, and he had convinced himself that to let Tony know it would be the start of a slippery slope which could end in declarations of feelings and love and would all end in tears when sooner or later Tony would either get killed on the job or move on to another one. A heart can only be shattered so many times in a lifetime, and Gibbs wasn't about to risk exposing himself to that kind of pain again, or so he'd thought.
So he'd continued with the head slaps and the growling and the watching as Tony was hit on the head and chained to a killer and faced down murderers and low-lifes and he tried to harden his heart, but to no avail.
Then there came the plague, and Gibbs was faced with the very real prospect of losing Tony, and it was like somebody had started running a home movie in Gibbs's mind, only every shot, every scene was of him and Tony and all the hours and days they'd spent together, working and playing and all the times Tony had had his six and all the times Gibbs had looked out for him, and Gibbs knew that all his efforts to shut Tony out of his heart had failed miserably because he was already there and Gibbs couldn't bear the thought of losing him.
From the moment Tony had been admitted to the hospital, Gibbs had known that the only thing he could do to help was to find the bastard responsible for the infected letter and get the antidote out of him. He hated the thought of leaving Tony to be poked and prodded but had told himself that Tony was in the best place for him. Gibbs's priority was the case...and not the agent.
It wasn't until Gibbs had finally closed the case and returned to Tony's side that he started to wonder if maybe he should have reassessed his priorities. A fifteen percent chance of survival, that was what the scientist had said. Fifteen chances in a hundred that Tony would recover...and eighty-five chances that he wouldn't. Gibbs hadn't liked those odds, not one bit. He'd stood by Tony's bedside, knowing that there was nothing he could do...nothing the doctors could to...it was all down to Tony...and he had struggled to find the words that would make Tony fight for his life.
In the end, he'd simply ordered him not to die. Gibbs knew Tony and he knew that he'd never disobey one of his orders while there was breath in his body. He knew just the right tone to use; just the right buttons to push to make Tony keep fighting even against the odds just to do what Gibbs wanted.
Gibbs just wished that he hadn't lacked the courage to speak his mind to Tony that day...to tell him that he wasn't going to die because Gibbs wasn't going to let him die...because he wasn't going to let Tony die before he knew Gibbs's real feelings for him. But he'd held his tongue, knowing instinctively that it wasn't the right time or place. Tony needed to concentrate all his resources on getting better, Gibbs had told himself. He didn't need the added distraction of a declaration of love from his Boss.
At least that was the excuse Gibbs had used while Tony was recuperating in hospital and throughout his convalescence at home. "I'll talk to him when he's back at work," Gibbs had told himself. He should have known that that time would come sooner rather than later. Gibbs had hardly been able to keep the smile off his face when Tony had insisted on coming back to work a week early. He'd cracked a few jokes about how crappy Tony was looking, but in his heart he was just thoroughly relieved that Tony was making such a fast recovery. "I'll talk to him this evening, after work," Gibbs had told himself. "Drive him home and make sure he gets to his apartment safely."
But none of them had gone home that night, and the next day Kate had been murdered right in front of them, and all their focus had gone into finding Ari. And when Gibbs had found out that Kate had been deliberately targeted so as to hurt him most, he had known that he was never going to have that conversation with Tony. Hard and all as it had been to say goodbye to Kate, it would have been a thousand times harder if Tony had been the one in the coffin. Ari had targeted Kate only because he didn't know how much Tony meant to Gibbs, and Gibbs knew that the only way to assure Tony's safety from the next nutcase who wanted to harm him was to make sure that nobody, not even Tony, knew of Gibbs's true feelings for him.
So Gibbs had kept silent, telling himself that it was for his own good...for Tony's own good as well. When Tony had been framed for murder, Gibbs had wondered briefly if it had been an attack on *him* rather than Tony. He'd been almost relieved to find that Chip was responsible, knowing that at least this time it wasn't *his* fault that one of his team had been targeted.
Eventually though, Gibbs knew that things couldn't go on the way they were. Tony going missing with Ziva had brought everything to a head. For the few hours that Gibbs hadn't known whether he'd ever see Tony alive again, he had been working on autopilot, unable to let himself even think of the possibility he'd missed his chance. It had hit him that day that however hard it might be for him to one day lose Tony, it was nothing compared to the pain he would feel if he lost Tony without having once let him know exactly how much he meant to him.
In the aftermath of that incident though, it just hadn't been the right time. Tony had had some sort of chip on his shoulder about missing Ziva's dinner party, and while Gibbs was the first person to admit that he wasn't the most tactful person when it came to relationships, he had an inkling that any approach by him at that time was unlikely to be well received.
So he'd decided to wait for a few days to let things settle. But then there was a missing Lieutenant Commander, and Gibbs had to wait until she'd been found. And then he had had to find the killer of two Marine wives, deal with a severed head, an exploding ambulance, a serial killer, more dead marines, a hostage situation, Abby's stalker, the Director being kidnapped. It seemed like once Gibbs had made up his mind to act, that the whole universe conspired to keep him from it.
Or maybe it was his own fear that kept urging him to bide his time. The fear that once he spoke up that his life would be changed irrevocably. The fear that by speaking up that he would push Tony away.
Gibbs knew that would have to get these feelings off his chest once and for all. And if Tony reacted badly, or worse, didn't react at all, well so be it. No, as soon as they'd finished their current case, he was going to sit down with Tony and lay all his cards on the table.
The decision finally made, Gibbs turned his attention back to the case file. It was going to be a straightforward one he thought. Attend a passport check on a freighter, the Bakir Kamir. Make contact with Galib, the mole on board. Get his report; pass on the information to the right people. A simple operation, shouldn't take them more than a day or two to clear up. Then he would definitely make the time to have that conversation with Tony, and after that, who knew where life would take them.
The End