Demons of the past
Disclaimer: I don´t own any characters or anything
Summary: Have you ever wondered why Gibbs is never called Leroy? On a boring day, some people start to wonder about it, but they will get more than they were ready to find...
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8- The true meaning of friendship
After a moment, he started to speak, his voice calm, but shaking with emotions. "It was 12 years ago. We were at an Air Show in Norfolk." He said, his voice almost a whisper and she could sense how much this cost him. He paused for a moment and looked out of the window. Kate wasn´t sure what to do and just waited. She felt her heart breaking when she saw a single tear rolling down his face as he continued, but his voice broke when he came to the part about the marine.
She got up from the armchair and sat down on the couch next to him, carefully placing her hand on his arm. "It wasn´t your fault." She said and his head shot up. She just looked at him and saw more tears rising into his eyes. "It was not your fault he turned to the wrong guy." Kate told him and suddenly those tears started to fall. She didn´t move and let him cry against her shoulder.
After a while, the sobs subsided and he looked up again. "How did you know?" He asked, his voice still shaking. This was so unlike Gibbs, but seeing him vulnerable like this was something she would never forget.
"I saw the picture in your bathroom and asked Ducky. He didn´t want to tell me, so I forced it out of him. I´m sorry." She said, but much to her surprise, he didn´t seem mad about it.
"It just hurts so much." He didn´t try to pull out of her embrace and put his head onto her shoulder again. This simple gesture meant more than just that and she understood. "I never dared to tell anyone and nobody ever seemed to notice."
She smiled. "Remember when you locked us in the elevator? We had been thinking about that name thing just then." She told him and looked at him. He seemed surprised to hear that. "We do care, Gibbs. We really do, well we try to, but you´re not making it easy." Kate said and tried to smile, but felt a tear escaping her eye.
Gibbs raised his hand and brushed the tear from her face. "I didn´t want to make you sad." He said, but she shook her head. "I like your smile. It always makes me happy, you know."
"I just don´t understand how you could go on with that secret for so long." She told him and noted that he had lowered the walls around his heart completely now.
There was a faint smile on his face. "And I don´t understand how you can put up with a tyrant like me for so long." He replied, trying to make it sound like a joke, but she knew it was not.
"You´re no tyrant, Jethro." She said and saw how his head shot up at the sound of his first name. She had never used it before. "You´re the best boss we could hope for -all of us are still there after two years in the field. I´ve seen whole teams down within less than that. You´ve been keeping us save. And eventhough you keep barking at me when we´re at work, I see you as a friend."
He sat up a bit and searched for the right words for a moment. "Thank you for saying that. You don´t know how much it means to me." He got up and pulled a bottle of wine from the cupboard. "Care for some of this?" She just nodded, noting that he looked a bit better now.
Two hours later, Kate had fallen asleep in the armchair yet again. Gibbs watched her sleep and smiled. She was a very special person. She was a wonderful agent, tougher than others he had worked with, but she could be caring and sweet at the same time. He walked into the kitchen when he noted that his cell phone was ringing. He had turned the volume down earlier that evening. "Gibbs." He answered it and noted that the last glass of wine had been a little too much.
"Jethro, I tried calling you twice already. Are you all right?" It was Ducky on the other end of the line.
"Yep, think I am." Gibbs replied and looked back into the livingroom for a moment.
"Jethro, have you been drinking?" Mallard inquired, clearly worried. He had always feared that some day his friend would do something stupid when this anniversary came around.
"Just some wine, Duck. I...well, Kate is here." He admitted and heard his friend swallow hard. "How did she make you tell?"
"Jethro, I´m sorry. I shouldn´t have told her, I know, but it´s Caitlin we are talking about..." Ducky started, but he didn´t need to apologize.
"Duck, it´s fine, really. Maybe I shouldn´t have been hiding from this for so long. It screwed up my life back then and it still does, which it shouldn´t be doing." It was hard to say these words, but they had to be said.
There was a long silence. "Do you mind if I come over for a moment?" Ducky then asked and Gibbs knew that he was still worried, maybe even thought he would be lying to him about what was going on.
"Just come around, you know where I live." He hung up and walked back to the livingroom, putting a soft cover over Kate´s sleeping form. He sat out on the front porch when a car pulled up into his driveway. "Hey, Duck." He greeted the older man, who came over with a worried look on his face.
"Now, I was right about you lying to me again, Jethro." He said, but Gibbs grinned.
"No, I didn´t. Just don´t wake her up when you go in." Gibbs opened the front door and lead the doctor in, who smiled when he noted the sleeping woman in the armchair. They walked into the kitchen and sat down at the table with two glasses of wine. "I´m not sure what I would have done if she hadn´t been here tonight, Duck. It scares me to realize that."
"Most likely, you would have finished at least one bottle of scotch in the basement, while sanding the boat and fallen asleep at some point, like all those years before." Ducky said and smiled. "Caitlin is a wonderful person. She can address any topic openly, she is a good listener and she is the best profiler I have met during my career. I call myself lucky to count her among my friends."
Gibbs looked at his friend. "Duck, don´t get me wrong. She is a wonderful person and she really means a lot to me, but..."
"But you would never look at her as a woman. My, Jethro, did you really think I hadn´t figured that out for a long time? From the way you treat her, she´s like a daughter to you. You care, you worry about her safety and you want to see her happy. Does that sum it up correctly?" Ducky asked and smiled.
"That´s about it, yes. Listen, it´s late and we got to be at the office at 8. I think it´s time to retire. You can have the guest room, if you want to." Gibbs offered and smiled. He knew that Ducky had brought some clothes along. He always did when he came over at such a time.
"I shall take you up on that offer. Are you going to leave poor Caitlin slumped into that chair or will you put her onto the couch? She will be all sore tomorrow." Mallard said when he headed out to his car again. When he returned, Gibbs was covering Kate with the cover again. She was now settled onto the large couch in the middle of the room, still sleeping peacefully.
Sleep wouldn´t come that night, at least for one of the three inhabitants of the house. Jethro Gibbs stared up at the ceiling and wondered what the next day would bring. He had never dared to talk to his team about what had happened. Knowing now that they had tried to find out by themselves somehow touched him. It showed that they cared about each other -even about him. At some point, he finally dozed off only to be woken by the sound of his alarmclock a few hours later. It wasn´t only a new day, it was a new chapter of his life that would start today. Today he would face the demons that had haunted him for so many years.