AN: Thanks for the kinds reviews everyone!

When Jethro and Abby got back to his place, she made her way to the kitchen to finish up dinner, and he ran upstairs to quickly change his clothes. He'd gotten a little wet helping Tony, and his jeans were damp and uncomfortable. It didn't take long for her to have supper on the table and they dug in, both being exceptionally hungry due to the long delay in their plans.

Gibbs was quiet, not an unusual occurrence for him, but Abby noticed that he also seemed preoccupied, and had been since they left Tony's. After a few unsuccessful attempts to start conversation, she let it go. Despite of her usual tendency to chatter she knew when to be quiet, and was good at reading her friends. And tonight, for some reason, Gibbs needed quiet.

As soon as their dinner was over, they both got up and began to clear the table. When Gibbs made motions towards starting the dishes, Abby gently took him by the arm and pulled him over to the basement stairs.

"Go. You need to hold chisels and touch wood. I can see it in the crease between your eyebrows. I'll do the dishes and then I'm off to Tony's."

Gibbs put up a protest that it wasn't fair to her to pull KP duty after cooking, but she held her ground and firmly pushed him into the doorway. "Go. Move it. I'll be down to say goodbye before I leave." And in a reversal from their usual roles, she stretched up to press a kiss to his forehead. That got her a soft smile, a growly hug, and a "Thanks Abbs, love you" whispered into her neck before he jogged down the basement stairs to work though whatever was on his mind.

As Abby puttered around the kitchen, washing, drying, and wrapping leftovers for the freezer, she listened carefully for noise from the basement. Before too long she heard the faint rasping sounds of some woodworking project, and smiled. She'd done what she could to ensure all was right in the world of PapaBear. Now it was time to go coddle the second most important man in her life.

-0-0-0-

Gibbs took a seat on the high stool next to his project table, and picked up a partially wrapped shard of glass. An old trick his dad taught him decades ago to scrape old layers of paint off wood. He'd been working at stripping down this old rocking chair for a couple of weeks now, and had almost all the old paint scraped off. Another couple of evenings work should do the trick, then he could begin the process of sanding and staining it. The old wood was such a beautiful tone, why anyone had ever covered it up with paint he'd never know.

As usual when he worked on a project, once he had settled into a rhythm with the job his mind began drifting. Tonight, he couldn't keep it off of Tony. He idly thought about his back injury, and how severe it really was. Would he be okay tomorrow, or should he be confined to desk duty? Maybe he should have Ducky enforce some mandatory time off to let it heal completely. A bad back wasn't something you wanted to take lightly; it could really screw you up if you didn't take care. Maybe that would be the best option – make Tony take a few days off. He and Abbs could check in on him a couple of times a day, make sure he was resting it properly.

Thinking of Tony's back led to thoughts of Tony's predicament. Gibbs grinned to himself. Tony sure had a way of getting himself into situations. Although he knew it wasn't funny, he still couldn't help but smile at the picture Tony had made when he first walked into the bathroom. All twisted like a pretzel in the bottom of the tub, with one of those frou-frou pillow things suctioned to the tub surround. Just a night-light was plugged into the outlet for light and a glass of wine on the floor. Another grin crossed Gibbs face as he ran through the scene in his mind – it was a Scooby Doo nightlight.

Gibbs smile faltered somewhat as his thoughts focused on Tony lying in the bathtub. He was such a handsome man. As Tony had pointed out earlier, they were both used to seeing other men naked in locker rooms and showers, but this was different. In locker rooms you never really looked. Maybe snuck a quick glance out of the corner of your eye, but you never actually looked. And there Tony had been, splayed out naked on the bottom of the tub. Olive skin wrapped around firm muscles. A nice amount hair covering a broad chest. The muscular, powerful thighs of an athlete. A groin with skin barely lighter in color than arms and legs. And centered in that groin, lying nestled in a lush bush of coarse, dark hair was his soft penis, curiously un-cut, and a set of heavy lightly furred balls. Jethro was glad the bush of hair was natural. Tony was so meticulous in his grooming and with his hair maintenance that Jethro had wondered if he was one of those men he'd heard about who trimmed or shaved or whatnot down there.

He thought that - woah, back up. He'd thought about this? When? What? What was he doing having thoughts like this about Tony. DiNozzo. Think of him as DiNozzo. Better that way.

He'd accepted long ago that he wasn't exactly a zero on the Kinsey scale. He'd looked at men a lot over the years, had a couple very minor flirtations when he was young, and, between Diane and Stephanie, had one approaching-serious affair with a high school history teacher named Rob, that ended when Rob moved back to Oklahoma to be near his rapidly aging parents.

But Tony? When had he started thinking this way about Tony? Sure, he'd always thought of the other man as attractive. He admired his skills as an agent and appreciated his athletic abilities and physical fitness. Although it drove him crazy most days, he did have a grudging respect for Tony's ability to diffuse tough situations with humor. Tony's street smarts were almost legendary, yet what attracted Jethro the most were the traits Tony kept hidden - a keen intellect, a charitable heart, and his vulnerable core.

Not many people knew about Tony's Masters Degree in Criminology, he only ever mentioned his Bachelors in PhysEd. Abby had let it slip once a couple of months ago that she and Tony were in school again (again? Had they done this before?). They were enrolled together in a Film Studies course and were working their way though the online classes. Gibbs wondered how many other courses the closet academic had completed over the years, and what various topics he had studied.

He also knew that Tony wasn't quite the prolific ladies man he made himself out to be. Many of Tony's weeknight 'dates' were dinners with the various elderly widow ladies that lived in Tony's apartment building, and free Saturday mornings could often find him with grey-haired ladies in his car on the way to the closest Super-Saver grocery store so the ladies wouldn't have to deal with cabs and lugging grocery bags up to their apartments afterwards.

Jethro saw this side of Tony, and he liked it. He liked it a lot. He liked Tony a lot. Well, there you had it. He was attracted to Tony, and had been for a while. It was time to stop lying that what he felt was only friendship and the admiration of a co-worker. The question was what would he do about it?