Gibbs’ gut was in an uproar, and he didn’t know why.

At first he thought it was about the upcoming conversation with Tony, but that wouldn’t justify this level of uneasiness. He felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up, and his shoulder blades twitched of their own accord.

He felt like he was being watched.

He had long ago given up questioning the how of his gut. He had enough training and experience to put together dozens of little clues, tiny flecks of sensory input from every direction fusing into a coherent whole in the forge of his subconscious. It worked, and it had kept him alive when he should have died more times than he was comfortable counting.

He glanced around the trail with a feigned casualness as he walked, trying to spot something out of the ordinary that would confirm his suspicions, but he saw and heard nothing. Everything appeared normal, but his hand instinctively went to his hip where his Sig rested, reassuring himself with that little gesture that he was armed and ready for anything.

Shaking his head, he refocused on the man in front of him, trying his best to put aside his uneasiness. Getting paranoid in your old age, Marine, seeing enemies around every corner now.

He briefly considered saying something to Tony, but with absolutely no proof or real reason other than his gut, he decided to hold his peace for now. What was he going to say, anyway? He knew that Tony would follow his lead on just his gut, but his inability to pin down anything specific kept his mouth shut.

Besides, he had bigger, more tangible problems to deal with.

Gibbs ran a hand over his face as he turned his mind towards last night’s conversation. Part of his silence on the subject was due to the shock that had yet to fade fully away. His mind still stumbled over the enormity of what Tony had confessed.

He hadn’t pressed Tony any further after his breakdown. He might be known as a bastard, but even Gibbs had his limits, especially with those he cared about. Tony had been completely drained by the whole ordeal, and Gibbs was too emotionally gutted to do more than haul Tony to bed. His desperate need to comfort Tony had clashed with his emotionally taciturn nature, but he couldn’t resist the kiss to the forehead and the hand that had carded gently through Tony’s hair. Something about the exhausted younger man had reminded him so much of Kelly in that moment, had resurrected some deeply buried instinct that had laid mostly dormant for years.

As Gibbs had laid in his own tent, tossing and turning, he had reached a realization that had been a long time coming. He had never allowed himself to dwell on exactly what Tony meant to him before, too scarred and scared to open himself up to the possibility of love and loss again. Oh, he knew, in some vague and undefined way, that he cared about Tony and the rest of his team, but he’d never quantified or qualified exactly what that meant.

Slowly but surely, Tony had worked his way through the many layers of Gibbs’ grief, stubbornness, and aloof nature to wind up as one of the most important people in his life. Perhaps there had been just a bit of pride standing in the way as well. Gibbs didn’t like admitting that he needed anyone or anything, especially not to the person or thing in question. But as he laid there, running the events of the evening through his head, he knew that he had to stop pussyfooting around (as his father would call it) and accept the truth.

He loved Tony, not in a romantic way, but deeply nonetheless. He was a son and a brother and a friend all rolled into one, and Gibbs couldn’t imagine his life without his SFA on his six. Right now, Tony needed him, and if that meant confronting the truth and admitting to it, then so be it.

Gibbs gave a mental sigh at his roaming mind and rolled his shoulders to release the tension that had built there. He really wished he could escape to his basement for a few hours to work out his jumbled thoughts as he sanded and shaped disconnected pieces of wood into a coherent whole.

Before his longing for his favorite pastime could grow too strong, they had arrived at the stream. It was rather large for a mountain run, too wide to jump across, with several deeper pools and eddies that were sure to hide some nice trout. Gibbs and Tony made short work of assembling their fishing rods and baiting their hooks with nightcrawlers. In moments, they had both cast upstream and were quietly engaged in the art of fishing.

Gibbs felt himself relax a bit as he cast his line. Outside of woodworking, fishing was probably his favorite activity. He had always loved the long hours in a boat or on the shores of various bodies of water, casting and reeling in the warm sun either alone or with a fishing buddy. Conversation was usually optional, and Gibbs could spend hours just fishing in companionable silence, simply enjoying the outdoors and the small thrills of catching fish.

He glanced over at Tony and saw that some of the tension that the younger man had carried all morning had been shed as well. The contented sigh that slid out of him was an echo of Gibbs’ own thoughts.

They fished in silence for about an hour, neither getting more than a nibble or two, both content to hold their peace. However, Gibbs knew that they needed to talk about last night; he just wasn’t sure how to broach the subject.

There’s really no easy way to do this. Might as well just go for it.

Before he could get any words out, Tony’s line started to jerk a bit as he got a bite.

“Finally got some action here, Boss!” Tony said.

For a moment, Gibbs saw an excited kid proud to share his moment of triumph in the flash of Tony’s smile and his enthusiasm as he reeled in the fish. An ache for the boy Tony had been blossomed unexpectedly in Gibbs’ chest. Who wouldn’t be proud to have a son like Tony? Why would any parent ever throw away such a precious gift?

An old memory of fishing with Kelly flashed through Gibbs’ mind; he remembered her similar excitement as they reeled in a fish together, his gentle words of instruction and praise lighting up both their faces as they caught the fish. The overlay of Tony and Kelly in Gibbs’ mind should have caught him by surprise, but the feeling of rightness it brought seemed as natural as his next breath.

Barely had that thought formed in Gibbs’ mind when Tony was turning to him, the happiness on his face at sharing this moment with Gibbs radiating off him like heat from a fire.

“Hurry up and get the net, Boss! Looks like we got ourselves a nice brook trout for dinner!”

They quickly netted the fish and took it off the line. Tony had packed a collapsible bucket in his gear; he placed the fish in the bucket that was filled with water from the stream. Soon enough he had baited the hook again and recast, but this time the silence was filled with quintessential Tony.

“Ya know, Boss, there’s a really funny 1964 fishing movie called Man’s Favorite Sport. Starred Rock Hudson and Paula Prentiss. Hudson plays a guy named Roger Willoughby who is supposedly this great fishing expert, but Prentiss’ character, Abigail Page, finds out he’s a phony and forces him to enter a fishing contest. If you think about it, Willoughby and I are the inverse of each other. He pretends to be outdoorsy but isn’t, and I pretend not to be but am. Hey, you could totally rig an office pool now that you know…”

As Tony rambled on, Gibbs let the endless yabba-yabba wash over him as his thoughts drifted. Tony wasn’t talking at much more than a whisper, but he still managed to pack a lot of sound into each breath. Gibbs wondered if Tony had been that talkative as a child or if it was a personality quirk that had emerged in adulthood. Gibbs pictured a small child with brown hair and hazel eyes wandering a lonely mansion with nobody to talk to, and suddenly he couldn’t find it in him to be annoyed at Tony’s endless noise and motion.

The thought of that same little boy, bruised and bloody at the hands of his father, had Gibbs’ unconsciously tightening the grip on his fishing pole and his eyes narrowing dangerously.

“You OK, Boss? You look like you’re about to jump across the interrogation room table and slam somebody’s head against the wall. Was it something I said?”

Gibbs snapped out of his burgeoning anger and glanced over at Tony. The uncertainty on Tony’s face mixed with a tinge of apprehension made him force himself to calm down, loosening his grip on the pole and relaxing the muscles in his face and shoulders. He gave Tony a small smile with just a hint of chagrin, feeling like a total heel.

“Nah, nothing you said, DiNozzo. Just remembering some things from last night is all.”

And just like that, the mood between them changed. Tony’s face went deliberately blank, his body language a tense neutral that gave very little away. Gibbs expected an oppressive silence to fall between them, but Tony once again managed to surprise him.

“What part of last night, exactly?” Tony asked.

Gibbs kept his eyes on the water in front of them, giving Tony a bit of breathing room as he answered.

“I was thinking of what you must’ve been like as a kid and how much of an ungrateful bastard your father is. If I ever meet Senior, I might just be taking Abby up on her threat to kill someone and leave no forensic evidence.”

Gibbs’ hands tightened on the fishing pole again as he imagined them wrapped around Senior’s neck. He would gladly strangle the life out of the man if he got the chance, and if he was discovered, well, he could always hightail it off to Mexico again, this time with Tony in tow. Gibbs knew how to disappear without a trace if need be - not that he would ever get caught, of course, but just in case...

“Oh.”

Gibbs raised an eyebrow at Tony’s quiet response as he turned his head to look at his SFA. Tony looked perplexed, as if he didn’t know what to do with such a sentiment. He probably doesn’t, Gibbs realized. He has no idea how much he means to me, hell, to the team. We’d all take a bullet for him; killing for him would be nothing compared to that.

“What, you think you’re not worth it, is that it, DiNozzo? You think I would just let this go? You’re the best agent I’ve ever worked with, a damn good friend, and the closest thing to a son I’ll ever have. I’d love nothing more than to hunt down Senior and those boys from boarding school and leave them all in shallow graves. You’re worth a thousand of them, and don’t you dare tell yourself otherwise, you hear me?”

Tony stood stock still, staring at Gibbs with wide eyes. His mouth worked for a few moments like he was chewing on his words before he finally spoke.

“You can’t really... you don’t… Boss!” Tony could barely get the words out, looking for all the world like a feather could knock him over.

The look of aching vulnerability and uncertainty in Tony’s eyes was like a red flag to a bull. Gibbs dropped his pole and pivoted his body, taking two big steps until he was right in Tony’s face. His arms snaked out like lightning, one grasping Tony’s forearm and the other reaching up to grasp the nape of his neck and pull him in until their foreheads were almost touching.

“You ever know me to say something I don’t mean, Tony? Do you really think I would have kept you on my team this long if I didn’t believe you were worth it, let alone let you be my Senior Field Agent? Hell, you’ve stuck with me longer than any other agent, longer than my three ex-wives combined. You pulled me out of that river last year, saved my life when I didn’t even know I wanted saving. You’ve held your own even after Jenny used you, after Jeanne left you, after I left you to run off to Mexico, after Ziva and Rivkin and Somalia and all the other piles of crap you’ve been forced to slog through. Any other man would’ve given up a long time ago, but you haven’t and I’m damn proud of you for it!”

Gibbs’ chest was heaving by the end of his speech, his eyes blazing with the weight of his sincerity. Tony stared back at him, searching his face as if he held the answers to the universe, and the silence stretched out between them like a gossamer thread.

Tony’s reply, when it finally came, was like the sun coming out from behind dark clouds.

“I think that’s the most I’ve ever heard you say at one time, Boss. You’ve probably used up your word quota for a whole month.”

It was flippant and irreverent and completely Tony, but it was said with a genuine smile and an easing of tension that spoke louder than anything Tony could’ve said that he had heard Gibbs, really heard him. Gibbs found himself letting out a deep breath of relief as he fondly squeezed the back of Tony’s neck.

“Atta boy, Tony.”

He stepped back, out of Tony’s space, confident that he had been understood. They stood staring at each other for a few moments, small smiles on their faces, both realizing the monumental step each had taken and the shift in their relationship that was a confirmation years in the making.

Just before Gibbs turned to go back to his fishing rod, a single shot rang out. Gibbs watched in horror and shock as Tony staggered and hit the ground hard. The echo of the shot reverberated through the mountains and came back to them again, seeming to mock them as it finally faded.

Gibbs grabbed Tony and hauled hard, dragging them both back into the trees and cover. Gibbs crouched protectively over Tony, gun out, his eyes scanning the forest around them, and prayed for the first time in years.

Dear God, please don’t let him be dead.