Push
They push at each other constantly. They taunt each other, vie for the spotlight, and sometimes they squabble like children. Some days it's worse than others; some days it seems they may come to blows in the middle of the bullpen, when they go toe to toe and hiss and spit like cats. Other days it's friendly, light jabs and quips lobbed across the space between them like water balloons, designed to tease, not to hurt.
Like today, for example, when Tony teased Kate about an ex-boyfriend, and she threw ice at him for the rest of the afternoon. So Gibbs made Tony clean it up, since Tony started it anyway, and then he made Kate do all the paperwork filing down in the archive (which she hates because it's boring and lonely down there) because he's warned her about throwing food in the bullpen before.
There's something comforting about the squabbling, to Gibbs. He almost likes it, in a slightly twisted way, because if they are fighting each other for his attention and approval, it means a) that they're doing the best work they can do in order to win said attention and approval and b) they care about his opinion of them. They respect him, and they want him to respect them, and they will go to their greatest lengths to ensure that he does so, which means they are busting their asses in everything they do in order to be the best agents they can be for him. He likes that.
Pull
They would do anything for each other. They may fight like siblings, but also like siblings, if anyone else were to try to encroach on that territory, they will immediately go back-to-back to defend one another. They have each other's backs in every situation imaginable, right down to the wire, even if it means that they are crouched in the same foxhole, insulting one another as they take it in turns to shoot out at their enemies.
Like yesterday, for example, when Melinda from the mail room tried to complain to Kate about Tony's puerile behavior, and Kate immediately launched into a laundry list of ways in which Tony DiNozzo is a stellar agent and exactly the man she wants on her side in a firefight. Or last week, when Axelrod called Kate a frigid bitch in the break room because she turned him down (for the tenth time in a row) and McGee had to restrain Tony from cramming Axelrod's teeth down his throat.
There's something heartening about the way they back each other up in every situation. Gibbs likes watching them work together, when they become the well-oiled machine that he has been training them to become. He likes knowing that if anything happens to him (which is incredibly likely, considering the insane risks he takes without even blinking), Kate and Tony will band together and continue to lead the team the way he wants them to. He likes knowing that between the two of them, they have all of his abilities and only a few of his faults. Of course, they have enough faults of their own, but that doesn't matter. He has faith in them.
Lift
The thing he never expected was for them to come together – after all the lectures he's given about rule twelve and how romance between agents doesn't work, trying to stave off this very thing because of the inherent danger to the team, they did it anyway. And he wonders how the hell they managed to pull it off behind his back. Over a year and he never knew; they never betrayed each other by a look or a touch or even the faintest trace of his cologne on her blouse or a stray long brown hair on his jacket – nothing.
They are sneaky, underhanded and devious. He likes that. If they could keep this from him, from Jethro Gibbs who prides himself on knowing everything about his team before they even know it themselves, they could keep secrets from God Himself it the need arose. He taught them to do that. There is a great deal of pride involved in knowing that he trained them to be that good.
There's even more pride involved in standing here today, wearing a tux, and watching nervous sweat pop out on DiNozzo's forehead when the big sanctuary doors open and Kate is suddenly there, dressed in her grandmother's ivory wedding gown, with the traditional old, new, borrowed and blue secreted in various places on her person. The old, of course, is the gown; the new are the shoes. The borrowed is the pearl necklace, which belongs to her sister, and the blue – well, he isn't supposed to know about that, but Abby told him in strictest confidence all about the garter that will be thrown later at the reception.
Her father is standing by her side, looking formidable and forbidding, and Gibbs hears Tony swallow hard and leans forward slightly. "Breathe, DiNozzo," he mutters low so that only Tony can hear him, and Tony does so. Then the wedding march begins, and there's no time now for pride or worry or fear or anything except the deep love that he feels for every member of his team. Across the tableau, from her place as maid of honor, Abby winks at him. He smiles back, and then he straightens himself and takes his role as best man a little more seriously.
-end-