Gibbs sat in shocked silence. Tim was gone. They had taken him. A flurry of frantic voices and he had been pushed aside by latex gloved hands. After trying so hard to protect him he… Gibbs's eyes drifted down to his hands and Tim's dark dried blood which was smeared up to his elbows from where he had started CPR.
CRACK.
The gunshot sounded and there was a shout and Gibbs found himself winded as he was forced down onto the rough asphalt by a hard shove to the back. It took him a second to realize what had happened but it was too late. Gibbs quickly struggled up and rolled Tim off him and onto his back.
Gibbs gasped as the pain hit him again at the sight of Tim, already pale and sweating clutching his stomach with a shotgun sized hole in it.
"Gibbs?"
Tim had whispered frightened and he had looked up at him with those beautiful eyes as if the blood and pain was somehow a mistake and Gibbs would tell him it was simply a prank of Tony's that had gone terribly wrong.
It was too much. Leroy Jethro Gibbs was blank. He felt nothing. He could think and breathe and operate and move but he couldn't feel anything. He couldn't feel the hard hospital chairs numbing his ass or taste the bitter sludge that was supposed to be coffee. He couldn't feel the grit in his tired dried eyes as the hours ticked by while he breathed in the flat dry recycled air conditioned and heavily filtered air. He couldn't hear the slow tick of the waiting room clock or the crisp step of the white soled nurses as they strode down the hallway. He was empty and sitting alone on a deserted island of golden sand surrounded by an ocean of cold blue tiles.
On the distant horizon he could see it coming for him like a tsunami, growing ever wider and higher as the pain roared towards him threatening to destroy everything in its path, obliterating the last shreds of his remaining humanity.
So for now he sat silent and empty and waited.
He had tried. He had fought, he had yelled, he had compressed down even when Tim screamed in pain, he had sworn and finally he had prayed as the ambulance swallowed Tim up like some monstrous white whale.
To keep Tim safe he had tried to stay away. He had tried not to love him but he had failed there too. He was supposed to be the strong one. He should have broken it off but he had succumbed to the temptation over and over again and had spent too many nights curled around Tim as he softly stroked his silky hair.
Tim fought for him. In fact it seemed that Tim was still fighting for him and in that final moment he made his choice and laid everything on the line.
His life for Gibbs's
Gibbs shuddered as a tremor rippled through him and watched as water seemed to swirl around his boots, lapping gradually higher. It was coming. Soon he would be nothing as the giant wave of pain ripped him apart. Perhaps he would drown silently like so many, only to finally die years later, a husk of the man he once was.
It was better than feeling the fresh pain over and over as he looked at his shattered team and swam in the guilt of his survival. As he slept on pillows that smelt of Tim's sweet perspiration and longed for imagined arms to wrap around him. As he looked at that empty chair behind that empty desk, so close to his own.
Tim had, in that last instant said goodbye. His eyes had flickered shut and Gibbs has screamed at him in desperation as if sheer will could force him to survive. And then they had opened again. Just for a moment Tim stared deep into Gibbs's blue eyes. There weren't any words but those expressive eyes of his and the slight smile he wore through the pain said it all.
I love you.
Thank you.
Goodbye.
Gibbs felt the salt water on his cheeks sting his eyes as the wave of emotion approached and the water reached ever higher, starting to smother and choke his breathing.
Why hadn't he just told him he loved him? Why had he stayed away and hurt him over and over? He would leave only to come back and they never really talked about any of it.
And now it was too late.
Tim seemed happy to take whatever he offered but that wasn't fair. Tim deserved a full heart not one already broken and shattered too many times. He should have someone young and clever and funny who still looked at the world like it was shiny and new. That's why there were times when Gibbs stayed away even though he knew it was like a serrated knife blade driven deep between Tim's ribs. The painful stab of rejection from a man Tim admired and loved above all others, shining in his tear filled eyes as he watched Gibbs leave again.
Gibbs had hoped that perhaps Tim would forget about him and find someone else who could love him the way he deserved. Someone who could make him happy.
But still Tim wanted him. Loved him with open arms and a generous heart that called to Gibbs like a soothing balm against the violence and despair of the long days.
If only the great and mighty Leroy Jethro Gibbs hadn't been so afraid.
He had been so afraid of hurting Tim, a man he was pledged to protect he had instead caused him pain.
When people looked at them they thought that Tim was soft and that he was the hard assed Bastard. What they didn't know was that Tim was the fearless one. He wasn't afraid to love.
Gibbs saw the Doctor in the white coat approaching him with tired eyes and he heard the roaring in his ears as the destruction came closer.
"Agent Gibbs? Your Agent McGee…..he survived surgery. He has lost some of his small intestine and we had to reinflate his collapsed lung. It will be a difficult recovery and we will have to watch for infection but for now he is in the ICU. I will let you know when he will be able to have visitors."
The roaring in his ears reached a fever pitch and the salt water blurred his eyes as the wave swept up the hallway swallowing chairs and out dated magazines and safety posters as it came towards him in all its overwhelming destruction.
Gibbs hoped it would wash the blood away and leave only the familiar nothingness in its path.
Ducky looked down at him from somewhere far away and smiled kindly before grabbing his elbow with an iron grip and leading him away down the hallway.
"Come Jethro. I think it's about time you and I had a little talk"