Acknowledgments: To my three beta readers, celli, medie and merlins_sister, the latter two of whom not only beta-ed and encouraged me, but also came up with the same title suggestion completely independent of each other--I decided it must be fate! ;-) Thanks to all three for helping me refine this!

Note: The request was for Gibbs/Tony angst, but while there is angst...the--well, not happy but hopeful--ending kinda crept up on me. Hope that’s not a problem! This is also my first time ever writing m/m slash, but luckily this is one of the few slash pairings I *do* see, so that made it much easier. ;-)

Written for: Sophia Prester, for yuletide.