Fear
(05x05 Leap of Faith)
"What if he pulled you down with him, Jethro?" The brunette asked heatedly and her dark brown eyes were sparkling with a mix of anger, fear and frustration about her husband´s reactions or lack thereof. Gibbs just went on sanding a rib of his boat, seemingly almost oblivious to her pacing through the basement like a caged tiger. "What did you think then? Or did you think at all? That was just reckless and you know it wasn´t necessary."
"You know how I do my job, Kate... You worked for me Long enough..." The gray-haired man replied calmly and switched to a finer grain of sanding paper, before he decided to finally face his wife, turning around on his stool. "It was safe, if it hadn´t been I wouldn´t have done it."
"But what if you stumbled or worse…? I still don´t get why you had to do that." Now she was gesturing wildly and he could tell by the rising pitch of her voice that she was really getting angry with him. "You just can´t do that anymore, Jethro, I thought we had talked about it. If it was still just you and me, okay I could cope but it´s different now… We´ve a little boy sleeping upstairs and I really don´t want to raise him alone, because you fell from a building or something like that…"
"Come here, Katie…" The older man said and motioned for his wife to stand between his legs. He loosely rested his arms on her hips and looked into her still sparkling hazel eyes, a soft smile playing around his lips. He knew that his smile made her even more furious than she already was, but he thought that the brunette was too cute when she was mad, especially when she was mad at him. "Look at me."
Caitlin did what he demanded softly and wanted to pull away, but his playful smile faded. "I get your point, I really do Katie, but I couldn´t let him jump without listening to him. He wouldn´t have listened to Tony, Tim or Ziva, so I climbed on this ledge. Sometimes it´s part of the job and you know that. As well as I always have in mind to be careful, so I come back to you and Liam in the evening in one piece."
"Using guns and saving innocent people is our job, hell even going on ships or planes, but definitely not climbing on ledges, Jethro..." She shook her head slowly and looked him in the eye again, letting out a frustrated sigh. Kate knew perfectly well that he almost always did something, because he was following his famous gut, but this looked more like a kamikaze mission to her. "I was scared like hell, when I saw it on TV earlier…"
"But I didn´t fall Katie, I´m sitting here unharmed, because I knew that I wouldn´t fall." The gray-haired man replied reassuringly and held her gaze, perfectly seeing her fear now. The anger and frustration were mostly gone and she looked quite tired now.
"But what if you fall next time?" The brunette whispered and let her head drop against his, resting her forehead against his. "What are we going to do then, Jethro?"
"There won´t be a next time. I promise I´ll stick to bullets and Kevlar, okay?" He answered and pulled her closer into him, feeling her nod against his shoulder. He brought his hands up to her face and again looked into her eyes. Her eyes were watery but no tear fell yet, cupping her cheeks with his larger hands he leant in to kiss her. "I would never leave you and our boy alone, Katie. You know that you two are the most important part for me in the world. I love you."