CHAPTER 9
Gibbs, it turned out, had a sailboat docked at a marina near Alexandria. Taking Time was her name, and she was a 22-foot, wooden Amigo cruiser. "I built her before I met you," Gibbs said. "The only boat with a name that had no ties to anyone I know."
Gibbs took Tony sailing along the coast for a 3-day weekend, and getting away did them both a lot of good. Tony noticed Gibbs was starting to put a little bit of weight back on his lean frame, and told him he looked sexy. Gibbs blushed a little and told Tony he looked beautiful wearing only a tan.
"Guess it's back to the old grind on Monday," Tony said, sidling up to Gibbs, who was at the helm. He hugged him around he waist and kissed his sunburned neck. He liked lazing around in the sun and making love to Gibbs whenever he felt like it, but he was starting to look forward to a good murder investigation.
Gibbs said, a bit too casually, "We don't have to go back."
Tony laughed it off. "Well yeah, we do. They're giving us our badges back and everything."
"We could keep on sailing…"
Tony leaned to one side to look at Gibbs' face. "You're serious," he said, surprised.
With a shrug, Gibbs said, "There's an opening in a Southwest regional office. In Lemoore."
"Okay, stop the boat! You want to leave DC? Where's Lemoore, anyway?"
"California."
Tony looked at Gibbs with narrowed eyes. "Where, exactly?"
"Near Fresno."
"That's…in the middle of nowhere? It's flat? It's desert…isn't it? What the hell is an NCIS office doing there?"
Gibbs smiled at Tony's barrage of questions. "It's at the Naval Air Station," he said patiently. "A buddy of mine is retiring. He says it's a good post. He's head of the command, makes all his own decisions."
"How many men has he got under his command, anyway?"
"Two."
"Two? And himself?"
"Nope, just the two of them. Him and his partner, who is going agent afloat soon. It's a big territory to cover."
"Jethro Gibbs, have you got sunstroke or something? Why would you want to go there?"
Gibbs turned towards Tony, keeping one hand on the wheel, and slipped his arm around his waist. "Like I said, it's a big territory."
"And?"
Gibbs smirked. "And there are perks."
Tony asked slowly, "And… what perks are those?"
"For starters, we get our own helicopter, and a pilot."
After Tony got over the excitement of getting a job in which he'd fly around in a helicopter, just like Magnum, the two men sat down to work out the pros and cons of leaving NCIS in DC.
"We just bought our first house together," said Gibbs. "I'm really looking forward to starting a new boat out in that workshop."
"Deputy Director Craig is nice enough but they're going to replace him, for sure. Who knows what kind of director we'll end up with. Probably some hardass whose goal is to make all the NCIS employees into robots," Tony pointed out glumly.
Gibbs nodded. "You haven't met my dad yet. Stillwater's only two and a half hours away from DC."
"You have a father?" Tony asked. "You told us he was dead!"
Gibbs shrugged.
"I want to meet your dad! I can't believe you never mentioned him."
"We had a falling out."
"When?"
"Long enough ago I don't remember when exactly."
Tony understood not wanting to talk about fathers; his own dad was a selfish bastard. Still, he had to warn Gibbs. "You haven't met my father, either, but if we stay in DC, he's likely to turn up one day."
"Is that a bad thing?"
"Proably. I know you'll hate him."
"Tony!"
"Believe me, you'll get it when you meet him," Tony said, rolling his eyes.
Gibbs sighed and took Tony in his arms. "Tell you what. Let's settle into our new home. Take things easy for a while. We can talk about this again at a later date. There's no rush."
"We'll just hang on… to each other…"
"We'll hang on 'til the tide turns."
"I love you, Jethro."
"And I love you, Tony, more every day."
ooOoo
EPILOG
Tony never regretted killing Trent Kort. He did, however, regret Jenny Shepard's death, and wondered what kind of director she might have been, had she not been driven by her need for revenge. He heard Jeanne Benoit got married, but her husband, a Metro detective he'd met a couple of times, was killed in the line of duty soon after. She became a doctor with a relief agency and within a year died in Africa, of ebola.
Ziva left NCIS without notice within a month of her reinstatement. She sent Abby postcards from all over the world: Nigeria, Iraq, Somalia, Guatemala. They theorized she was either a mercenary or a peace worker. She never married but had a long-term relationship with an Israeli she'd known since childhood. Tony hoped she had found happiness with him.
They got a surprise one day when Ziva appeared at their home in Newburg. She said she was just passing by. They all sat on the porch drinking lemonade and talked over old times. Tony had to carry the conversation as Gibbs spent most of the time staring into his beer, as if it held some answer that eluded him. As the sun started to set, Ziva stood abruptly, saying she had to go. She hugged both of them tightly, and whispered in Tony's ear, "I always knew."
After she'd gone, Tony commented he thought she looked ill, and Gibbs said something must be troubling her. Later they heard she was aboard a cargo ship that got lost at sea off Africa, but the details were sketchy.
Jimmy Palmer gradually took over Ducky's work as ME, as Ducky spent more and more time traveling in Europe and enjoying wine tours. Tony told Jimmy about his relationship with Gibbs; Gibbs took Ducky aside and told him he loved Tony. Neither man seemed too surprised.
Abby found out about their relationship the night she took Tony out for his birthday, drinking and dancing. They were pretty drunk by the time they were ready to go home, but Tony had the sense to call Gibbs to pick them up. Gibbs drove all the way from Newburg, and was fuming by the time he got there. He stood in front of the club and told Tony off for having too much to drink, and for worrying him, and then he grabbed Tony and kissed him hard and told him to damn well get in the truck. They sat three abreast, with Tony in the middle. The whole way to Abby's apartment, she stared at them with huge eyes.
When Gibbs escorted her to her door, he said, "You may as well know I love him, and I don't know what I'd do if something happened to him." Abby hugged him while jumping up and down, and swore she'd never tell a soul. Within a couple of days everyone at NCIS had heard the news, but neither Tony nor Gibbs cared.
Tony and Gibbs stayed at NCIS in Washington for a few years, but when that post in Lemoore, on the Naval base, became available again, they took it. They worked there for six years and became known for their badass partnership and perfect solve rate.
Soon after Gibbs and Tony took the job in Lemoore, McGee and Abby moved to Monterey. McGee took a job at the NCIS there, and Abby worked at the aquarium and became an advocate for sea life. She invented innovative ways to stop pollution of the ocean and won many awards for her efforts.
It was only a one-hour flight by chopper between the two towns, so they got together as often as the job allowed. Tony got his helicopter pilot's license, but every time he took the controls Gibbs professed he was scared to fly with him. Tony would tell him to stop being such a wuss and they'd bicker until Gibbs finally got into the helicopter.
Tim and Abby got married on a beautiful northern California beach with Tony and Gibbs as their only guests. They went on to have five kids, all named after chemical elements: Magnesium (Maggie), Calcium (Cal), Beryllium (Beryl), and the twins Nitrogen (Nitro) and Neon (Neo).
After leaving NCIS Lemoore, Gibbs retired, and he and Tony returned to their house on the Potomac. They'd only visited it occasionally while working in California, but they'd always intended to retire there. It was good to be home.
Tony accepted the director's seat in DC, but he only remained at NCIS for another two years. It wasn't the same, working without Gibbs, he said, when he handed in his resignation. Tony spent his non-retirement, as he called it, writing books about a variety of subjects, including history, a Civil War guide for kids, and a best-seller entitled How to Live Like James Bond on a Government Salary. Gibbs taught boatbuilding workshops for extravagant amounts of money.
Tony got to know Gibbs' dad, and loved him more than anything. They always spent a few weeks together in the summer, plus visited around Thanksgiving and Christmas. Gibbs still had a fractious relationship with his father, but as the years wore on, they couldn't even recall what had initially sparked their animosity.
The day that Gibbs finally met Tony's father, Gibbs turned to Tony and said, "You're right, I just want to punch him in the face." Needless to say, Gibbs and Senior kept their distance from then on.
Gibbs never regained all his memories of his past, but he could never forget his first wife and his child, nor the pain of their passing. He learned that grief had its place and time, and that it was okay to feel intense sadness sweep over you when you least expected it. If Tony saw he was down, he'd leave him alone for a while, and then he'd come out to the workshop and take him upstairs to bed, where they'd make sweet, sweet love, and sleep entwined in each other's arms. They were married down by the river one warm spring afternoon, after being together for almost twenty years, with their closest friends as witnesses. They spent their honeymoon sailing on Gibbs' latest sailboat, named The Tide Will Turn.
ooOoo
the end
Note: I hope you enjoyed this story. I'd love to hear what you thought of it!
