Act Two

Two and a half years ago

One of the things Kate Todd was known for around the Navy Yard was guarding her privacy like a pit bull. She very much believed that what she did in her off hours was no one's business, including her coworkers, unless she chose herself to invite them in.

It didn't keep her from butting in on others' privacy from time to time - like the time she and Tony DiNozzo broke into Tim McGee's apartment - but she generally practiced what she preached. Her philosophy didn't stop others, especially DiNozzo, from prying into her business, and she always fended them off.

Her boss, Leroy Jethro Gibbs, was another matter.

He didn't know every single thing about the members of his team, but knew them much better than he let on. He knew their backgrounds, where they lived, who they were dating, even what kind of coffee they drank (including that latte crap DiNozzo was so fond of). Unlike DiNozzo, he believed in keeping what he found out about others to himself, discussing them only when necessary.

Without realizing it at the time, that was one of the first qualities that attracted Kate Todd to her boss.

Along with the banter, that he would throw her snarky comments right back at her. The heart of a good man behind the bastard persona he projected. His love for children - and the fact that he was always kind, gentle and affectionate towards them, even when he wasn't always so towards the adults he cared about.

And, though he was older than the men she dated, Gibbs was no less strong, energetic, masculine, nor brave. And his eyes.

Full of goodness, strength, integrity. Mystery. And pain.

She never knew how much pain until he finally opened that door on a horrific chapter of his life.

The basement

Gibbs swore to himself he would never, ever, break Rule 12. His partnership with the current director of NCIS had taught him the necessity to have a rule against dating co-workers. Rule 12 didn't originate with him, of course, and he had seen enough blowups and disasters in the workplace to make it one of his core rules.

So it never crossed his mind when he hired Kate Todd from the Secret Service that Rule 12 might ever be shattered. It wasn't the reason he hired her - the first rule that came to his mind after bringing her onto the Major Case Response Team was Rule 5, 'Don't waste good'.

Bringing onto the team was good, in so many ways, for her, for the team, and the agency...and himself. And it didn't take all that long for him to think of Kate as more than a subordinate.

While he thought of Tony as a son and Abby as a daughter, he thought of Kate as a friend, although differently than Ducky. Dr. Mallard was a peer, from the same generation as himself, a man. They saw the world much the same way, though Ducky was not the bastard that Gibbs could be. Kate? Also a friend, but he regarded her differently.

Without admitting it to himself, he yelled at Kate for not fatally stabbing Ari in the morgue, not just out of concern for his subordinate and teammate, his friend, but because he felt more for her than mere friendship.

When Ari kidnapped Kate, and they found her, and Ari was allowed by the agency heads to leave the country, Gibbs knew beyond a shadow of a doubt what he felt for her was more than friendship, more than family.

He'd have to act on it, soon, and decisively.

Gibbs took the summer, invoking Rule 4 - "if you have a secret, keep it to yourself" - and working out his emotions and thoughts by working on that boat of his in the basement. Hammering nails into the boards, sanding the wood just right until it had that velvety finish he wanted, varnishing it perfectly.

Between drinks of whiskey from one of his nail jars, he'd talk. Not to himself, and not to the damned boat. But to his wife, Shannon, long since deceased, along with their daughter, Kelly.

You see, Gibbs technically was lying when said he had three ex-wives. He had four. But, in his mind, the way he explained his marital past, he in fact was 'married' three times, all of whom were his exes.

Shannon...was different.

She was, in his mind, The One. Nothing like Diane, and Stephanie and the one in between, and certainly not like Jenny or the woman he dated during Kate's first year on the team, nor any other woman he dated since...

...since Hernandez took The One, and their pride and joy, away from him.

He long ago resigned himself to thinking that it would be the rare woman who broke through his emotional fortress, that his life would be NCIS and casual relationships with redheads and that he'd die alone, hopefully with the chance to take his boat out of his basement, put it on a lake somewhere, and sail it into his last sunset.

One night during that summer, between the kidnapping and the case where the Naval captain threw away his own wife and daughter for thirty pieces of silver, Gibbs was having a conversation with Shannon. The volume on Gibbs' transistor radio was at a low but listenable level, and one of her favorite songs happened to be playing.

"You always loved that song, Shannon," Gibbs said, smiling at the memories. He had bunches of them, about she and Kelly, and he indulged himself as often as he could. Talking to her was new, but just thinking about what she might say about his new relationship and breaking Rule 12 hadn't gotten him anywhere, and he sure as hell couldn't talk to Ducky nor Jenny. And he wasn't about to take time off from work to go see a shrink and risk bringing a stranger into the loop.

So here he was, sanding on his boat, talking to his dead wife, who was talking back to him in his mind.

"Gibbs?"

Usually when someone entered his unlocked house, Gibbs knew. His Sig Sauer would've been out, ready for use if an intruder (like Ari) had walked in, put back in its holster if someone like Ducky, Tony or Fornell came in.

But she snuck up on him. He had no idea she even knew where he lived, much less:

drove up in front of the house

knocked on the front door

rang the door bell (which reminded him, he needed to get that fixed)

found the door unlocked

opened it, her Sig Sauer in hand, ready for use in case something had happened to him;

heard him talking to himself with the radio on, sanding away on something from the basement;

and, as silently as possible, gun in hand, crept down the basement stairs, only to see a sight she never really expected to see.

"Gibbs? What in the world are you doing?"

Gibbs stared at the first person who ever got the drop on him when he was in his basement. He looked back, checking to see if Shannon was there, and she glanced at Kate, then at him, and nodded her approval.

"Agent Todd?" said Gibbs, looking ever-so-attractive in his blue jeans and grey NIS T-shirt to Kate. "Wasn't expectin' to see you. Thought I gave you an' DiNozzo the night off."

"You did. I...I just happened to be in the neighborhood," she said, while breaking her newest rule: never lie to Gibbs. "Figured I'd stop and say hello."

"Figured you'd be at home, resting," Gibbs replied. "Coulson case took a lot out of us. That's one reason I gave you two the night off."

"I know, Gibbs. I couldn't stay at home, all cooped up. I had to get out," she said, this time more truthfully.

Gibbs put down his sandpaper and stepped away from the boat; surprisingly, Shannon was still nearby in his mind, looking on with interest, almost egging him on to tell Kate how he really felt.

He stepped toward Kate, intending to ask her to go up to the kitchen so he could offer her some coffee.

"What's that?" she said, looking straight at the boat. He noticed she didn't have the wide-eyed, disbelieving look that DiNozzo did when he first invaded his basement, but there was a look of surprise behind her eyes.

"Hobby," he said, putting his right hand on the frame. "Thought DiNozzo was pulling one on ya?"

Kate momentarily was stunned, that Gibbs knew she and Tony had talked about Gibbs' house, and basement, and the boat. She in fact thought Tony was exaggerating things, and that at best the boss would have one of those model boats in a bottle, next to boxes of stuff and whatever else most people kept in their basements.

This was something else.

"Kate? Agent Todd, you alright?" said Gibbs, his voice suddenly calling to her, his eyes drawing her, towards him and his mysteries...including his boat.

"I'm fine, Gibbs," she said, regaining her composure. She was a professional, after all. "Your door was unlocked. I heard noises from the basement, heard you talking to yourself. I wanted to make sure you were okay."

"Always leave my door unlocked, and I wasn't talkin' to myself," Gibbs said, the first part intentionally, the second part finding its way out of his mouth.

Anyone else - except perhaps for Abby - he would've kicked out by now. And with Abby, he would've met her upstairs when she walked in the door, so she wouldn't have gotten this far.

He wouldn't have let Kate get this far either, but now she had, and he could see Shannon nodding at him, encouraging him to let this girl into his fortress.

"She likes you, Gibbs," he saw Shannon say to him, even as Kate looked at him curiously.

And then she - Shannon - was gone, leaving him alone with the boat, the basement, and Kate.

"Gibbs? Are you alright?" Kate said, concerned about him.

"Why wouldn't I be, Agent Todd?"

"Because," she said, switching into snark mode, "I thought you might be losing your mind...only question is when did you lose it? Before you started talking to yourself, or before you started building...that thing?"

Kate walked straight up to the boat. Gibbs didn't answer, especially as she began looking it over, stopping when she saw the stencil of the name on it.

Shannon.

"Shannon...you're building a boat, Gibbs, in your basement. You named it-"

Gibbs put a finger on Kate's mouth, to quiet her. Feeling his finger on her lips, she wondered what his mouth would feel like, there.

"Why don'tcha come upstairs, to the kitchen? I'll fix us a pot of coffee, fix some dinner," he said, calmly, sincerely and every bit the gentleman she knew he could be. "And I'll tell you all about it."

"About what? That boat? You talking to yourself?"

"Everything," Gibbs said, deciding right there and then that if Kate felt the same way towards him, and since Shannon would be okay with it, he would be all in.

As they ascended the stairs - and Kate looked back at the frame of the boat - he forgot the number of one of the rules he was going to invoke for his and Kate's 'thing': never second guess yourself in a relationship and life.

He remembered Rule Four, though: "The best way to keep a secret? Keep it to yourself. Second best? Tell one other person - if you must. There is no third best."

And for as long as he could keep it so, whatever this was between he and Kate, was going to stay a secret.