He'd stalked her to the range and she'd damn well known he was there because...

Well, because all five senses seemed to be permanently and continually triangulating the proximity of his presence. It didn't matter when, didn't matter where. If he was in the vicinity, her body had honed itself to knowing exactly how far (how close?) and what his most direct path toward her would be. She liked to think it was a woman thing, really – although, he himself was fairly adept at knowing the exact moment certain presences darkened his door. But then, considering how otherwise macho and manly he seemed, his fairly famous gut instinct seemed almost nearer a woman's intuition. She quietly appreciated that someone so sometimes unconsciously chauvinistic would put so much faith in something that could be considered more feminine mystique.

And, well, maybe that was what really alerted her to his presence behind her.

That thing in her he'd tried to train and sharpen and mold more than anything else.

Sixth sense: the unquestioned impulse to trust and rely solely upon her better instinct, the judicious scales her morals made of her guts.

So she did.

And she let her entire body tip back into the unspoken and unwarned presence of him as she lowered the firearm.

He laughed, quietly and all with breath, but it was still a laugh. It still made a smile almost creep past how jittery and furious the rest of her frame still was. "This isn't a trust exercise, Kate."

Then he shouldn't have let his hands catch her ribs so perfectly easily, with such sturdy support and closing fast around how small she was in the middle compared to him.

He shouldn't have followed her if he didn't want her to lean on him.

They both damn well knew it (because this wasn't the first time and it sure as hell wouldn't be the last).

"Why'd you follow me?" She hadn't taken off the ear muffs, head turned as she demanded a response. She hadn't needed to in order to hear how loudly close he'd become.

He slid them down the back of her hair and let them loose around her neck himself, his fingers lifting back up to wipe once on the crown of her head. "Because you're still angry. Anger needs an outlet."

"He killed her, Gibbs." She wasn't sure if he was offering to be that outlet or just subtly commenting on where she'd chosen to go at five thirty in the morning when she was beyond frustrated, light years past exhausted, and still couldn't find a balance to her insides. "I know he did. I know - "

"I know, Kate," the agreement he gave her was more sad than angry and she winced against how softly he'd said it, slightly betrayed by the fact that he'd chosen to be far more passive in his fury than usual.

She didn't understand him sometimes (and especially not when he was curving both palms from her ribs to her back, incrementally stroking them up her spine with pressure in the heels of them, forcing her stance straighter and sharper).

"He murdered her," Kate spit out aside, sure she couldn't meet his softness in this.

Sure that it would only serve to remind her that he would, inevitably, always handle this sort of gutted and castrated frustration with more ease than she would.

The fingers of his right hand caged around the back of her neck, brushing up under her hair and the head gear to right the anatomy of her neck, straighten it with sure fingers and force her head up despite how low she'd felt it go. "Yeah, he did."

He was making her stare at the target with his fingertips putting pressure on her skull, his hand the ever-present control.

He was making sure she couldn't look at him as he gently kissed the side of her head and rubbed his lips into her hair.

"He got away with it."

"So far." The rub of careful words in her hair was a familiar movement of his mouth – and what he said never really seemed to matter so much as the gentled pressure of his affection wiping through darker hair than was his norm. "Relax your shoulders."

"I want him dead."

She knew he'd never believe that bitterly weak tone of voice and the grunt he made near the back of her ear proved the assumption correct. He had the uncanny ability to know exactly what feeling was going to responsively rise higher than the others. His eyes had a habit of softening before she even realized she was going to be sad, glittering before she'd even managed to wit up a taunt or a tease.

"No, you don't," Gibbs unnecessarily admonished as his left foot broached between hers and he kicked against her instep lightly, nudging at her right foot while his hips drove into her and she let her eyes slide closed into how deftly he managed to rub his groin right into her ass. "Feet, Todd. Pay attention to your feet."

No guilt to the movement, either. Not while his palms both cradled on her pelvis and she let her eyes open again to the reality of his (accepted and sometimes secretly appreciated) control over her. No guilt or hesitation as he jerked her hips tighter and closer and fit the breadth of himself around the smaller and more compact stretch of her. Like he owned the mathematical equation to each and every one of her curves. It was infuriating and strangely comforting at once (because she'd never let another man who didn't routinely share her bed slide against her that way but, Christ in Heaven, when he did it... it was so safely assuring somehow).

Still, she let her voice carry a little acid. "I know how to shoot."

"No, right now you know how to rage." And he was more than patient with it, surprisingly. His tone was just a low laid breathiness along the shell of her ear as his palms closed back along her ribs and rubbed open up and down the sides of her, urging but calming and curing at once. "Now control it. Use it."

Anger, he'd told her, needed an outlet.

She'd unconsciously chosen a gun and some alone time with the fantasy of a (paper cut-out) murderer in front of her – one she could finally punish for so grossly disregarding basic human decency. Seemed, though, that his anger needed more than one outlet - because he'd chosen the gun, the fantasy, and her. And he didn't seem to care who could be watching when his hand lifted, stroked and squeezed her already tautened wrist, the movement a catalyst to her own flex of fingers.

He timed the nip of his teeth along the side of her neck to the squeeze of her fingers, his other hand cradling under one of her breasts and rubbing heat as he just trusted that she'd hit the target square on.

It's what he'd taught her to do, really. Squeeze and release and rage and love at once. Kiss and kill and self flagellate to the echo of combined breathing. It wasn't the first time they'd had this lesson. It wasn't gonna be the last, either. She was sure of that, in some unquestionable way. And if she was simply angry now, he'd be furious (with his nails digging her hips and kisses and tongue along her throat) by the time they were done.

Sometimes his only patience was in absolving her rage.

But then... sometimes her rage was dissolved only by his patience.