A.N. - I wanted to write some fluff because well Dusk isn't exactly fluffy so... And then someone demanded I post it, when it was going to be posted all together as a one-shot. Hoping not to spend too long over this. Enjoy!

Disclaimer - I don't own them, because if I did things would be quite different.

The Home Front

Gibbs hadn't been home a lot lately – case had flowed seamlessly into case, keeping him at the Navy Yard long into the night and over the weekends. He'd lost track of the time somewhere along the way and summer had slipped into fall – the leaves were turning golden and bronze, the air was a little more chill in the evenings and it was getting dark earlier. The year would be over before he knew it and he wasn't sure that he could bring himself to care.

If he were honest it was easier not to notice, to pay attention to witnesses and forensics rather than his own life; easier not to think about the good woman enjoying her retirement in Hawaii and knowing that neither of them needed to be alone if only he had been able to open up a little, to meet her half way.

Still, he took it as a personal affront to his investigative skills that he had failed to notice that the house next door to his had been sold. It took the large van filled with furniture outside before he realised what was happening.

But he was on his way into work so the comings and goings of his neighbours was of little concern. He asked only that they weren't noisy when he was at home and, given his working hours, even that wasn't too much of a demand.

The case his team had been working was wrapped up by the time he had finished his second cut of coffee, the reports written up by mid afternoon. In a surprising fit of gratitude at the rapid and discrete conclusion to a case that could have been a cross-jurisdictional nightmare, Director Vance sent the team home for some rest. As a result it was barely five when he pulled back onto his drive.

The van was still there – though by the looks of it almost empty now. There was no sign of the team of house movers who should go along with the van, but an elderly man was leaning against the open back, cradling a cup of coffee as he looked around him.

"Need a hand?" Gibbs asked, nodding to the couch still inside the van.

"I would – but there are four guys inside drinking my daughter's coffee who we're paying to finish the job."

"i won't interfere then." As he turned towards his house the man said,

"Marine?" and Gibbs turned back – taking in his short haircut, the way he was standing.

"Army?" He offered in response.

"Jasper Shepard, retired from US Army quite a while ago now."

"Jethro Gibbs – once a Marine,"

"Always a Marine – I know." Gibbs put him in his seventies, but he looked lean and fit and if he was any judge the man had been an officer – perhaps a senior one. But Gibbs liked the way he hadn't offered his rank.

"It's a good house," he offered at last, nodding towards the house that was a little larger than his – with, if he remembered rightly, a slightly smaller garden.

"Seems to be – my daughter set her heart on it. I don't see what was wrong with living with me for a few more years but she made her mind up."

"Sounds determined."

"Stubborn more like." Shepard finished his coffee, "I'd best get back – make sure she isn't scaring the removals team. Good to meet you Jethro – I guess I might see you around."

Gibbs watched him wander into the house and then headed inside himself, to spend some much overdue time with his boat.

TBC