Sighing when he heard the rather sluggish knock on the door, Tony fumbled with the blankets around him. It was late, it was Friday night, and he wasn't really in the mood for callers. Hoisting himself up with a scowl as the door rapped once more, he slouched across the room. His sweats and OSU t-shirt weren't exactly up to par if this was to be a lady caller, but he was honestly too tired to care. Throwing open the door with manners Ducky would most certainly not approve of, his jaw hit the floor.

Before descending through the floor and penetrating the earths crust itself.

Gibbs swayed unsteadily as the door vanished beneath him. With a drunken belch he stumbled right into the apartment and into Tony's arms. Only managing to get the door closed as a reflex, Tony struggled slightly under Gibbs' considerable muscle mass as he instinctively tottered towards the sofa. Placing his clearly drunk as hell boss down where he had just vacated, he stood back and scratched his head. Gibbs looked blearily up at him, his gaze unfocused and with a rather vacant expression.

"Hello Di…Di-Di."

He chuckled rather insanely to himself as Tony's incredulity and horror levels rose.

A stench of pure, raw liquor hit him as Gibbs practically giggled, his head lolling on his chest. He'd seen the boss man drunk many a time, but never this out of it. It was like he barely knew where he was, or who he was. Seized by inspiration, Tony ensured there was no way the elder agent could roll off the sofa and concuss himself, before darting into the kitchen. Hastily rooting through a press, he found the strongest coffee he possessed and set a pot on to brew. Waiting impatiently, and keeping a subtle watch on his unexpected caller, he dumped an inhuman amount of the brew in of his supersize mugs before returning.

Sitting down on the footrest in front of him, Tony forced the mug into Gibbs' hand with considerable difficulty. Threats of scalding suddenly assailed him, but the trademark caffeine in the man's blood seemed to resonate as he smelled the brew, and he grasped the mug blearily. "What…ain't you got any drink Di…Di-Di?" Tony, with considerable strength of mind and character, resisted the urge to record Leroy Jethro Gibbs calling him Di-Di. "No Boss, I'm all out," he replied softly, resisting the very unwise "Besides, you've clearly had enough."

Sighing at this news as one might in a snow storm, Gibbs stared glumly into his coffee.

"Boss," Tony hedged quietly, taking advantage of the silence, "Uhh…not that I'm not thrilled you're here and everything, but uhm, are you ok?" He chewed his lip, awaiting perhaps an attempt at a very drunken headslap or a stuttering rebuke at his question. He certainly wasn't expecting Gibbs' eyes to take on a near watery hue as he stared steadily over his second in command's head into the distance. "No…" he mumbled disjointedly, "I…well, ok…no I'm not…ok, that is."

Tony's alarm bells were instantly at claxon levels.

To his relief, Gibbs gulped down a rather worrying amount of coffee, which all things considered ought to have a sobering effect. Giving up on choosing his words carefully, Tony leaned forwards slightly, concern coating him. "What's up Boss?" he asked urgently, "What's the matter? Is it a case? Are you sick?" He cast his eyes over the man and instantly deduced there had been more than one or two bottles of bourbon consumed. "You're pretty blitzed man," he added quietly, "There must be something serious the matter. Tell me. I might be able to help."

Gibbs looked at him as if he was seeing him for the first time.

A smile that seemed to radiate with a palpable sadness crossed his face.

Tony's pulse quickened.

"You're…you're a good kid," Gibbs muttered, "Always looking….always looking to help ain't ya? On my six, night…night and day…" he scrubbed a hand across his face, narrowly avoiding poking his eye out. Tony gently reached out and pulled the dangerously wandering hand away from any vital organs. "Boss, what are you talking about?" he reiterated, trying to keep the urgency out his voice. "C'mon man, tell me. What happened?"

Gibbs stared at him silently, a haze of confusion hanging over him.

Tony tried again, speaking as slowly and clearly as possible.

"Boss…why did you come here?"

That question seemed to register with Gibbs, as he gulped down another mouthful of scalding coffee like it was lukewarm herbal tea. He didn't look at Tony as he spoke, drunkenness and grief making his usual insistence on eye contact an impossible feat. Grasping the mug in hands that trembled, he found solace in gazing at the ceiling, therefore not seeing the look of pure anxiety that shot across Tony's face in response.

"Didn't…didn't have any place else to go."

The foundation within Tony that viewed Gibbs as the man pain could not penetrate shattered at the man's words. It was clear he was in his own sphere of anguish, and it was clear that it was an emotional despair. The kind that no one else can help, heal or hold at bay. The kind that everyone else had to stand by and watch as it ate away at its host. Such facts were common knowledge, but Tony wasn't about to give in without a fight. Moving closer to the man than he would ever dare should he have been sober, he tilted his head.

"What are you talking about Boss? What's going on?"

Gibbs shrugged rather jerkily, the movement making his head spin. Tiredness began to overcome him and the mug slipped in his grasp. Reaching out instinctively as Gibbs slumped into the sofa, Tony relieved him of it. "My girls…today….shouldn't have happened. Shoulda been there…but wasn't." He fixed Tony with one last stare before drunken fatigue took him. "When you get yourself a girl…the girl…don't ever…don't you ever leave her alone. Be there….be…there."

The room was filled with snoring a moment later.

Sitting with his mouth slightly agape, the pieces fell together in their puzzle of misery for Tony. Shannon and Kelly, it was their anniversary. Gibbs always went a bit…funny, around this time of year, but this was the worst Tony had ever seen him. An almost suffocating degree of sympathy engulfed him as he took in the unusually prone figure sprawled out on his sofa. Standing, he gently placed the blankets he himself had been nesting in around the sleeping frame. About to step back, the jingle and flash of metal caught his eye. They must have fallen out of Gibbs' pocket as he slumped to sleep.

Tony's eyes and mouth tightened when he identified them.

Hoping he was jumping to conclusions, he swept to the window that oversaw the car lot of his apartment building. His heart plummeted when he saw it. Parked haphazardly across two spaces was none other than Gibbs' car, with the driver's side door left utterly ajar. Glancing back at the slumbering frame, Tony shook his head as anger and disappointment course through him.

"One rule for me, and another for you huh?"

He spoke quietly and to himself. Slipping on a jacket, he quickly made his way out of the apartment and into the crisp night air. It didn't take long to reach Gibbs' car and clamber in. Righting the disgraceful parking and securing the car, Tony walked slowly back into his building, his head and heart heavy. Checking on Gibbs once more, he left one light on before flicking everything off and going to bed himself.

His night had taken an unexpected turn, and he hadn't expected to toss and turn all night.

But he did.

The next morning broke with a splitting sun that bore through Tony's curtains with indecency. Sitting up groggily, a thirst overtook him and he plodded out to the kitchen. He wasn't surprised to see Gibbs already at the kitchen table, but it was clear he had only reached it about five minutes before him. Running a hand through his wild hair and accepting the mug of coffee thrust at him, Tony threw himself down opposite his houseguest.

"Morning Boss, how's the head?"

Gibb grimaced.

"You got any painkillers in this place?"

It was only the memory of Gibbs' garish parking and the considerable distance from his apartment to his house that stopped Tony laughing. Instead he nodded rather stonily and left the table. Returning a moment later, he placed the aspirin in front of the elder man who took it gratefully. Tony expected a certain awkwardness to coat the words he was going to say, but all it took was the image of Gibbs in a casket to relieve him of it.

And the image of an incident of times gone by.

But his good nature won out first, as it always did.

"You ok?" he asked as gently as he knew Gibbs could handle, and with as much vagueness as he knew he could take. Appreciating both factors in Tony's simple question, the older man nodded. "Yeah I'm fine," he sighed, "Hope you don't mind my gate crashing gig. Heard all the kids were doing it, thought I'd keep myself young."

Nodding with a small smile at the man's deflection, Tony gestured around his apartment.

"Door's always open, Boss."

A warmth that he worked hard to hide spread through Gibbs as he nodded over a mouthful of coffee. He knew he didn't need to say anything, Tony didn't expect it. Despite that fact, guilt bubbled in the man's gut. He should never have let his second in command see him in the state he could only assume he was in last night. He didn't actually remember it, any of it. What he said, why he said it. He knew Tony would never mention it, and for that fact, he was rather intensely grateful.

"Well," he muttered gruffly, "I'm not gonna take up any more of your Saturday."

He made to stand, but Tony's hand suddenly shot out, grasping him tightly around the wrist.

Gibbs' eyes widened as he was stalled and he saw the grip held on him.

"I don't have any plans," Tony stated quietly, "So there's no rush. Besides, there's something I wanted to talk to you about." He gestured to the chair Gibbs was half in and half out of. "So why don't you have a seat?" Feeling his brow knit together, the team-lead slowly acquiesced. He knew his protégée inside and out, he knew he wasn't about to treat him to a blow by blow account of how he may have made an ass out of himself last night. Yet there was a certain tightness materialising around Tony's eyes that was rare to see, that was off character. Gibbs' alarms were instantly ringing as he raised a brow.

"You gonna go all Oprah on me right now?"

Tony shook his head.

"Nope. I don't think Oprah knows much about the business of an undertaker."

Confusion hit Gibbs like an armoured tank. Shaking his head at his second in command, he cleared his throat. "It's a bit early for riddles Tony, give me a break would ya?" Tony's eyes and mouth instantly tightened further at his words as inclined his head. "Funny you should mention a break," he replied, almost cordially, "Or breaks, plural, to be more precise. Of bones and such, I mean." Seeing Gibbs look of utter bewilderment evoked the same sense of terror and anger he had felt last night. Rusting in the pocket of his sweats where he had kept the car keys for safe keeping, he placed them slowly on the table.

"You'll be needing these to get home."

Gibbs' eyes found the shining keys on the table top, and suddenly it all made sense. His mouth instantly ran dry at the implications the inoffensive metal provided. Very blurry and hazy flashbacks entered his mind as he stared. Beeping horns, glaring lights, confusion. Squealing tires, freezing fogs and a succession of near misses. Swallowing rather loudly, he reached out and picked the keys up, running them through his fingers like water.

"I drove here?"

Tony's brows shot up.

"Yes," he replied in a dry tone that was exceedingly rare for him to direct towards Gibbs, "That was my conclusion as well. Of course my conclusion was helped along by the fact you parked across two spaces in the lot and left your driver's door wide open." He took a swig of his coffee. "Be a hard job to explain to the insurance company if it got stolen. Guess you got lucky, huh? No harm no foul and all that."

There was a hardness to his words that Gibbs had rarely heard.

Before he could speak, his protégée had beaten him to the punch.

"Do you remember Boss, a couple of years back? My father came to town and we got into it. I got blind drunk and drove to your place in a state. You remember the next day, the next week actually?" He took another swig of coffee, as the great, apparently unshakable Leroy Jethro Gibbs paled. "You remember what you did? To me?"

Staring at the keys in his hands, Gibbs felt the weight of his own hypocrisy threaten to drown him. But he'd never been a man to run away from a hard question, particularly when it was posed by one of the few people in the world he cared deeply about. Using every bit of his Marine Corps stoicism, he forced himself to look Tony in the eye. It was very hard not to wince when he saw that the usually laughing green eyes were as cold as an iceberg. He took a deep breath, and cleared his throat.

"I punished you. I remember."

Tony nodded curtly.

"So do I."

Gibbs felt a coldness sweep through him as he recalled the incident. The burning fury he had felt with his second in command. The terror he had felt for him. How hard he had been on him, telling him that his upset was no excuse for putting his life on the line or breaking the law. The scorched behind he had given him, the confiscation of his car. The dismantling of his beloved car. It all washed over him like an acidic shower as he sat mutely at the table, guilt bubbling in his gut.

"I wonder what Abby would wear to your funeral?"

Gibbs' head shot up as his eyes widened.

"What?"

Tony shrugged unrepentantly. "If you'd crashed your car and died last night," he explained easily. "I wonder what Abby would have worn to your funeral. I mean, she'd want to go all out probably? But my main worry is she wouldn't make it there. I could easily see her passing out or needing to be medicated from grief." He shrugged. "Then there's Tim of course. I'm not sure how he'd react. Not well anyway, but he'd want to be strong for Abby. It would take its toll on him eventually, especially given his relationship with his own father."

He swigged another gulp of coffee.

"Then there's our Ziva of course. She wouldn't allow herself to cry, again, for Abby's sake. But she'd get angry, wouldn't she? In time of course, but she'd get there. Probably pick a fight with some dude in a bar three times her size and cave his skull in. And let's not get started on the relationship with her father, shall we not?" He resolutely ignored Gibbs' unusual and rather stupefied silence, pressing on. "Then we have Ducky…I wonder would he be the one to perform the post mortem? It seems like our Duck man, doesn't it? That he'd have to be the one to do it, wouldn't really trust anyone else. Wouldn't be easy for him, what with you being one of his oldest friends and all, but I'm sure he'd struggle through."

He set the coffee cup down with a snap.

"And then I guess there's me. But hey, what the hell? I'll survive." He flashed a brilliantly sardonic smile, "I'll even pack up your house and figure out how the hell you get those damned boats out of your basement." He spread his arms wide. "There, that's it isn't it? Everything taken care of?" He glanced down at the coffee cup in front of Gibbs and feigned an apologetic smile. "Gee Boss, I don't know what I was thinking. You'll want to be getting on the road, you'll need some fuel." His voice took on a deathly hard edge. "Could I interest you in a beer? Something stronger?"

His chest was heaving with the effort of the tirade he hadn't actually meant to speak as Gibbs stared at him silently.

For once in his life, the team-lead had zero difficulty in saying his own part.

"I'm sorry, Tony."

Before the younger man could even register his words fully, he pressed on. "It ain't an excuse, because there isn't one. I got caught up in my own past last night and…didn't want to be on my own any more. I don't remember getting in the car, but I do remember wanting to come here." He scrubbed his face in agitation. "There's nothing I can say to make this better, I know, but…I am sorry."

Tony stared.

"Two apologies in two minutes?" he eventually grunted, "You sickening for something?"

Gibbs smiled a desperately sad smile. "Just sick in the head at times," he mumbled. Tony's outburst as to how his team would have dealt with his untimely and selfish death were burning into his mind and a sickening sense of guilt consumed him. "Tony…I'm sitting here now, as a hypocritical son of a bitch. I know I came down on you and I came down on you hard when you drove to my place blitzed." He gestured around the apartment and grimaced. "Now here I am, having done the exact same thing. There's no excuse, there's no justification."

Tony heard the sincerity in the man's voice and he mellowed some.

But only some.

"I know…Shannon and Kelly…it must be hard…"

Gibbs immediately shook his head. "Listen to me," he insisted, with a note of urgency. "You can bet your ass its hard, but it's still no excuse. I'm a federal agent for the love of…" he shook his head angrily, at himself. "There's no excuse," he repeated, "Just like I told you when I laid into you. Being…upset or whatever the hell goes in life, is no excuse. I could have killed anyone on the way over here last night. A kid, anyone." Shame coated him once more as he dropped his head and mumbled into his chest. "There's no excuse…"

Tony stared for a moment, his mouth dry.

He knew exactly what Gibbs was going through, what he was feeling.

Another stalagmite of anger melted away.

"I felt better," he blurted after a moment, "You know…when you….after I was punished."

Gibbs gazed silently at him for a moment, before nodding with a certain heaviness. "I know," he sighed, "But…" he paused, as if stricken by a sudden thought. "Tony…if you're thinking what I think you're thinking, that isn't going to happen. Not saying I don't…deserve it, but between me and you it can never work like that. I'm still your boss, and this doesn't change that. Maybe it should, but it doesn't…you get that, right?"

Tony felt confusion lap him.

Before certainty swallowed him up.

"What, no," he blurted out, his cheeks reddening. "You think…that I think…you think I want…"

Gibbs seemed to have no issue in making sense of this rambling, as he tilted his head towards his protégée. "Isn't it what you're thinking?" he countered quietly, "It's understandable, I guess. But…that would be…."

"Freaky as all hell."

Despite the situation, despite the misery he felt, Gibbs couldn't help but laugh at the earnest sense of outrage stemming from his second in command. He was right. However appallingly and hypocritically he had behaved, the tables being turned between the two when a sore ass came into play, would indeed be freaky as all hell. "Yeah," he agreed quietly, "It would be all that for sure…."

An uncomfortable silence, rare for them, surrounded the kitchen.

"But I have a better idea," Tony muttered, "One that doesn't involve…uhh, any freakiness."

Gibbs said nothing, but didn't try and dissuade the younger man from speaking. Tony took a deep breath, his kitchen appliances seeming to gleam with the surreal nature of his morning. "You want to make this right?" he asked quietly, already knowing the answer. Gibbs' simple nod was unassuming and unquestioning. Swallowing loudly, Tony used the image of his more than just a boss lying cold in a casket to pull him through.

"You remember, when I did it, you took my car…my baby away from me? For a month?"

He paused, and raised a brow.

"Well actually, you forced me to mutilate her in both body and soul and then took her away from me?" Despite the situation and the seriousness of the whole mess, Gibbs couldn't quite help but smile slightly at the hyperbole. "I remember," he agreed, adding no more. Tony stared for a moment, before gesturing towards the keys in Gibbs' hands.

"Well, hand them over then."

The keys suddenly weighed heavy in the elder man's hands. Staring down at them and then across at his serious as all hell protégée, he acted on instinct. He acted in a way that if the kid had suggested it a mere day ago, he would be still seeing stars from a headslap. Reaching across the table, he deposited the keys in Tony's hands, without a word. Seeming slightly stunned by the easy acquiescence, Tony truly felt the degree of Gibbs' remorse and his remaining anger began to trickle away from him.

It was a mistake.

Even Gibbs, was allowed to make a mistake.

However surreal it seemed.

Tony took a breath so deep it flooded his brain slightly.

"And you tell Ducky about this."

Gibbs' head snapped up in pure and true consternation.

"Aw hell, Tony…c'mon, he-"

The younger man held up a hand, a hand he usually wouldn't have dared rise.

"You want to make this right? Then you tell him. I have very faith that he can get through to you in a way that no one else can. It's either you tell him, or I do. And if I tell him, Abby might just overhear me too. Your call Boss."

Misery thundered through Gibbs at the thoughts of telling his old friend about his…poor judgement. He loved Ducky dearly, but that man could give a lecture that put even him to shame, both in length and content. And damn it to hell if the kid didn't know that. Sighing and resigning himself to his fate, he nodded slowly, knowing Monday was going to be one hell of a miserable day. The slow grin that broke out over Tony's face as he handed himself into the gallows was nearly worth it.

"Two questions Boss, if I may?"

Gibbs waved his hand in acquiescence.

"Firstly, I need to know… that you know…that you're always welcome here. If you need, I mean. My sofa is yours, no matter how wasted you are. You know that right?"

Gibbs smiled one his rare, soft smiles.

"I know that, son."

Tony's relieved smile instantly morphed into a devilish grin, as he tilted his head cockily.

"So this is what it's like, huh?"

Gibbs raised a wearied brow.

"What what's like?"

Tony's grin, as easy and as natural as ever shone out and caused Gibbs a ridiculous burst of happiness as the guilt in his stomach eased some.

"Being the one with the power. More importantly, being the one with the power over you, Boss."

Gibbs snorted and shook his head. The genuine smile on Tony's face said everything words could not, and let him know that things would once again be ok between them. Reaching out, he issued a very gentle headslap to his usurping second in command.

"Once in a life time opportunity kid. Enjoy it."

…

A/N: I've been struck by the flu pandemic that's sweeping Ireland at the moment. This is the result of being confined to one's sickbed. Always wanted to do a sort of role reversal between the two, but not taking it too far, because that would be weird. I also wanted to do a fic where Gibbs sought comfort in Tony's house, instead of it always being the other way around. Anyhow, hope you enjoyed! The incident being referred to with Tony's car is a flashback to my first NCIS story, "A Tale of Two Fathers."

_Inks

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