So just in case any of you reading this DON'T know...the Reverse Bang happens over on Livejournal. Someone supplies a graphic and a prompt and an author writes the story to fit the artwork and the request.

In this case, I was given artwork which featured Surfer!Gibbs and the prompt that Tony discovers Gibbs knows how to surf and also that he has strong spiritual ties to the ocean. I was fortunate enough to spend some time in Hawaii and California earlier this year to observe surfers and the culture that surrounds them, so I hope this helps the story out. I was also at Pearl Harbor so I was able to add a bit more realism to the scenes there.

I am using little pieces of the Hawaiian language in Kai's dialogue. Kai calls Gibbs "Brother" and "Friend" in the last chapter and this one. To Tony he uses the word for "surfer" and "native" to describe Gibbs which are both big compliments. Haole simply means "Non-native" and can be used derisively or not depending on the circumstances. I found it was very common in Hawaii for natives to use Hawaiian words for certain things mixed in with English so I've tried to give that authenticity to Kai's speech.

This particular chapter was a really emotional on for me to write and I'll tell you I had tears in my eyes at certain points. I do love me some angst.

After Kai fed them enough sweet pork, grilled tuna, and tropical fruit to sate even Tony's robust appetite, the silence, which had previously been filled by the sounds of fervent feasting, became somewhat awkward. It was clear the two other men in the room had things to say to one another which would not be said in his presence, so Tony excused himself, claiming the need to unpack before his Armani shirts became so wrinkled he'd need to find a dry cleaner.

Back in the guest house he forced his mind into action and away from whatever conversation was taking place in the main house by diving head first into the files they had obtained from Cabbot.

Though he did unpack first.

Tony guessed it was close to an hour later when Gibbs finally joined him. He looked up as the older man hesitated in front of where he had spread multiple folders out on a table in the small living room. Gibbs' face looked somewhat less drawn than it had earlier, though his eyes were heavy and perhaps more red around the edges than mere fatigue could account for. Something squeezed inside his chest but when he opened his mouth to speak, Gibbs was there first.

"What do you have?" The demand came more gently than it usually did in the bullpen.

"Whole lot of nothing," Tony gestured to the larger pile of files on the floor beside the table, "and a little bit of maybe."

Gibbs nodded, glanced at the list of notes Tony had taken, and then pulled a file from his stack of maybes, settling into a linen-covered armchair and kicking up his feet on an ottoman.

There were a million questions Tony wanted to ask and each one took turns trying to push its way to the front. They buzzed on the tip of his tongue so that he pressed it to the roof of his mouth to keep silent, finally settling for something that would test the waters.

"Kai seems like a good friend," Tony mused, seemingly absently, rubbing eyes which had begun to cross after examining far too many cryptic communiques. "You two must have been close once. Close for you, anyway."

"What exactly are you asking, Tony?" Gibbs didn't even bother looking up.

"Not asking. And I assume you're not telling." It was a bold leap but there was something between the two men and he was trying to make the pieces fit.

Gibbs finally did look up at this. "He wasn't my lover, Tony. If that's what you're not asking." He almost sounded amused.

Why was there a part of him that felt relieved by this? He tried to shrug it off. "Wouldn't matter if he was." Tony looked down at his notes to hide the lie.

"Wouldn't it?"

Tony didn't bother to reply. He knew that Gibbs knew the answer to the question already.

"He likes you. Asked me if he could haul you out on a board tomorrow." Gibbs smiled at this but it slowly faded. "Thinks you're good for me. Thinks I don't know it." He appeared to be still puzzling this over himself. "Thinks I was idiot to run off to Mexico."

There was a lump just below Tony's throat which felt suspiciously like his heart. "Guess he really does know you pretty well." The silence beat between them like a living thing for too long.

"You call McGee and Ziva on Fayed yet?" Gibbs skillfully changed the subject.

"Not yet." He looked at his watch. "Just going on 0500 in DC. Thought I'd give them another hour and see if we came up with a side dish for them."

Gibbs nodded and dug into the file in his lap, ending anything further on other, more dangerous topics. With a resigned sigh, Tony did the same.

Jethro had known Tony less than a day when he'd figured out how to tell that the younger man was onto something, even if he didn't yet know what to make of it. He saw DiNozzo's shoulders come up from across the room and watched as he began to shift piles of paper back and forth with purpose rather than with the seeming aimlessness of the last hour. He had also learned early on that Tony's process was best left uninterrupted until he had fully formulated his own thoughts.

His mind went back to his conversation with Kai earlier. The man had always been able to read him like a book and even after several years he'd tuned into the important parts immediately. Kai had seen him at his worst, known him in the moments when he hadn't even had the strength to keep the walls up, had seen him broken and bleeding. He didn't know how to hide from him so he didn't bother to try.

He hadn't lied to Tony about their relationship. Kai had never been his lover, though they shared a different kind of intimacy, the kind which allowed the other man to see through his bullshit with surprising accuracy. He'd been off-center on a few points about Tony but had still hit far too close to the mark for comfort.

"You have to tell him." Kai's voice was gentle but firm.

"He won't understand. He's still too pissed at me for leaving in the first place."

"Make him understand. Make him understand or you will lose him too, kaikua'ana."

"Found something." Tony's voice interrupted his memories. "Not sure exactly what." Clearly the younger man was still puzzling out his discovery. He pulled out three reports from different files and laid them on the end table in front of Gibbs.

"Three different sources and all of them have this same odd passage. 'The vultures circle unnoticed above the desert's graveyard at the invitation of the sleeping eagle.' It's a translation and each one of these varies just slightly, so part of it might be getting lost, but every one of these communications points back to a group calling themselves the Sword of Mohammed."

"Anything else?"

"Not yet. Might be enough to get a running start with though," Tony said hopefully, finishing just in time to cover a jaw-cracking yawn.

"Call it in to McGee and Ziva. Get them on it. We're done for the night." He closed the file he'd been going over, the one he'd been pretending to concentrate on for the last fifteen minutes. In truth, he was exhausted, weary right down to his bones, and he suspected it had to do with more than just the hour back on the East coast.

When Gibbs emerged from the cottage's small bathroom, he found Tony perched on one of the twin beds in the room they would be sharing for the duration of their stay. The younger man had stripped to his boxers and the shock of bare skin tripped the switch of the projector in Jethro's brain which bombarded him with sense-memories so dizzyingly strong he dug his fingernails painfully into the wood of the doorjamb to stay upright.

"You okay?" Tony's voice sounded concerned.

Gibbs realized how his face must have looked to the younger man. "Headache. Just tired."

He quickly busied himself with turning down the bed, eventually shedding his polo and khakis and laying them out on a chair next to Tony's own clothing. He'd thought about taking the couch, knew it would probably be easier on both of them, but in truth, he found that a part of him was craving the younger man's closeness, the remembered sound of his breathing as he slept. The island and the time with Kai had already brought things closer to the surface, feelings and memories which slashed at him like razors from just beneath his skin.

Tony brushed past him and paused on his way back into the living room. The touch seemed accidental but there was something hiding behind the younger man's eyes as he watched him. "You want some water? Aspirin?"

"I'm good." Gibbs cursed his cock as it thickened against his thigh from the brief contact. He forced himself to turn away from watching the way Tony's muscles bunched and shifted with each small movement after letting his eyes trail one more time down the younger man's impossibly long legs.

By the time Tony returned to the room he had already climbed between the sheets, turning onto his side to hide the evidence of his arousal. He felt Tony's eyes on him, the other man's hesitation at the foot of his bed, but he remained silent with his eyes closed. Eventually Tony flipped off the light went to his own bed.

It was some time later when Gibbs heard his name said quietly from across the room.

"Jethro, I know you aren't sleeping." It was louder than a whisper but was designed not to carry too far.

He didn't respond but focused on keeping his breathing light and even. He couldn't do this tonight. Not yet. Soon, but not yet.

"When you fall asleep you make this little noise with your lips when you breathe. It's kind of this *poof* sound and I used to think it was cute when you'd sleep on the couch during baseball and do it and then…" He stopped himself from going further off track. "Anyway, I know you can hear me." He waited a moment. "You have to tell me what happened in the plane earlier, Jethro. You have to tell me what that was about. Because I look like I'm okay and sometimes I am, but most of the time…most of the time, Jethro, I think it might have been easier if you'd just stayed away. That it might have hurt less if you had just forgotten me forever in that explosion." There was a sad desperation to Tony's words which could only have come under the cover of darkness. "But then today there was the plane and you did the thing and…I see the way you look at me sometimes and it didn't make sense until now. So you have to tell me. Because I'm really not okay, Jethro. I'm really not, and I need to know."

Gibbs' whole chest felt tight and his hands fisted in anger at himself for being the cause of Tony's agony. He knew that the younger man was hurting and confused. He saw it every day despite the well-devised mask, and he lost sleep over it every damn night. In that moment he made a resolution, a decision he'd been putting off for far too long.

He listened as Tony quieted and eventually began to snore very softly across the room.

Soon

The next morning

Tony came awake to an unfamiliar combination of sounds and it took him a moment to orient to his surroundings. A noise like distant thunder hummed in his ears beneath the exotic calls of tropical birds, and the sound of a gentle rain pattered on the awning outside his open window. Stretching lazily and completely unaware of the time, he rolled over to find the bed across the room already vacant and made up with tight hospital corners, its extra blankets neatly folded at the end.

Slipping into a pair of board shorts and a light blue, linen shirt-only slightly wrinkled after careful folding in his duffel- Tony padded out into the main room of the guest house, sniffing the air and following his nose to the half-full coffee pot. He smiled at the mound of sugar packets on the counter and proceeded to make up his morning cup to his liking.

The files they had pored over the previous evening and their respective notes were still scattered over the small breakfast bar. Tony gave them a quick glance but a piece of paper sticking out of from between the entry door and its frame caught his attention. The sheet was empty save for a few lines scrawled in Gibbs' hand.

Out the front gate. 300 yards to your right.

He squinted down at the paper and then set it on the counter. Putting on a pair of the sandals Kai had given them both the night before, Tony took his coffee in hand, noticed that the sound of rain had already stopped, and headed out the front door.

The rain had indeed come to an end but a fine mist still hung in the air which was already thick and heavy with the scent of flowers. The main house was dark and the cars still in the driveway so neither Kai nor Gibbs could be far. In the yard, the distant thunderous roar was clearer, and as Tony unlatched the heavy wooden gate and let it swing open, his mind finally clicked into gear as his jaw dropped.

Across the two lane highway, not one hundred yards from where he was standing, a line of dark rock marked the edge of a short, steep slope which descended to a stony shore where monstrous waves rolled in and crashed, and a blue-green ocean churned and roiled beneath the slowly lifting sky. The view was so extraordinarily striking that it stole his breath for a moment.

Tony was roused from his awe by a pickup truck passing a scarce foot and a half away and realized he had wandered very close to the edge of the road, seemingly drawn by the incredible tableau before him. Shutting the gate carefully, he quickly jogged across the road and onto a narrow path which followed the edge of the ocean in the direction Gibbs' note had instructed him to take.

It wasn't difficult to spot his destination, though he didn't immediately comprehend why he had been sent there. Approximately three hundred yards up the shore, a wide sandy beach opened up between the rocks. It was largely empty. Tony's watch said it was barely 6am, and the sky was just lightening up after the morning rain. As he came closer he could see that the waves were less chaotic and rolled to the shore in predictable ebbs and flows after breaking a few hundred yards out. The azure waters came to white-tipped peaks and then rolled over to form beautiful, barrel shaped waves which raced toward the beach.

Tony squinted into the slight mist, his eyes catching a few darker shapes which bobbed in the calmer waters just past the break. Just as his mind registered what it was seeing, one of the shapes began to move as the ocean swelled beneath it. A moment later, a tall man in a wet suit popped up and dropped down the face of the massive white-capped wave, the peak of which towered at least eight feet above him. Tony watched in awe as the surfer rode the quick-closing pipe expertly, seeming to defy both the laws of motion and gravity, until the swell dissolved into churning white foam.

Just as the first man finished and began to swim for shore, a second surfer crested the top of a colossal wave, easily fifteen feet in height. Where the first man had been precise, had been skilled, the second was fluid, fluid as the water was fluid, instinctively skimming the surface in perfect balance and harmony with the ever evolving wave as it bore him closer shore. As Tony watched, the sun suddenly emerged from behind thinning clouds, turning the sea to impossible jeweled greens and blues. He couldn't take his eyes off of the man moving toward him, borne on a shifting surge. Something about this man, about each one of his movements, was utterly magnetic and he stood on the shore transfixed, completely unaware that he was no longer alone.

"Natural born kanaka he'e nalu. First time I put him on a board I knew it. Feels the wave like it's a part of him. Leroy Jethro Gibbs may be a hardened man sometimes but the ocean is in his soul just as much as any kama'aina. Maybe more than most."

Tony pulled his eyes away from the ocean at the sound of Kai's voice speaking above the roar of the waves. The dark haired man was wearing a wet suit and his board sat a few feet away in the sand. With the water still beaded on his skin, Tony quickly realized that Kai had been the first surfer he'd watched. Eyes widening as the understanding of what he'd just been witness to hit him like a wave to the chest, his head snapped back front just in time to see the surfer he'd been enraptured by sink into roiling white foam as his ride finally collapsed beneath him. He looked back to Kai.

"I don't…when?" Tony's head was trying desperately to put pieces in place.

Kai shook his head gently. "Not my story to tell."

Gibbs was coming close to shore now, riding the dying swells on the way in.

"Going back up to the house. Unless things have changed, I know Jethro won't take much more than coffee but I'll leave breakfast out for you before I go." One large hand squeezed Tony's shoulder. "He has things he needs to tell you, things that won't be easy for him. You should listen." With that, Kai easily hefted his board beneath an arm and began walking in the direction of the trail Tony had just come down.

It took a few minutes for Gibbs to struggle to shore. After an hour in the ocean his limbs felt heavy but his soul felt light. He'd forgotten the power of the water here. California and even Mexico couldn't hold a candle to this kind of surf and he had been both challenged and invigorated by the pounding, turbulent sea.

When he finally managed to get his feet under him and swipe his dripping hair back from his forehead, Jethro paused with the surf swirling around his calves as he caught sight of Tony watching from several feet away. While he'd expected to find him here, the reality of it in his current state of mind was still jarring. He had built carefully constructed walls to contain his feelings for the younger man, even before his sudden return to NCIS. Already, in this place, after the events of the previous day, those walls were softer, more vulnerable. At this precise moment they were virtually non-existent, and Tony's long-legged stance, the billow of his half-open linen shirt in the warm morning breeze, the curious tilt of his neck, set up the unwanted ache in his chest that had been more and more difficult to ignore since the first day of his homecoming. It was the same one that had kept him up through most of the night last night.

Hefting the somehow comforting weight of his board like a shield, Gibbs made his way through the damp sand to where Tony stood, seemingly rooted at the foot of a graceful palm surrounded by a berm of short grass. Without a word, he carefully leaned the board against the tree and waited.

He didn't have long.

"So," Tony didn't turn to face him but rather stood gazing out at the ocean as he spoke, "I'm guessing that wasn't something you just picked up after a couple of quick lessons this morning."

"No," he replied, dropping down onto the piece of grass which had been sheltered from the morning rain by the leafy fronds above.

"You looked…beautiful out there. You were beautiful, Jethro." Tony's voice was hushed.

"Tony…" He had no idea how to begin this.

"Exactly how many lives have you lived?" This time Tony rounded on him, though his tone was more awed than accusatory.

"Not a different life, Tony. Just a different time." He shook his head and stared at the shifting sand. A moment later he felt the break in the wind as Tony came to sit beside him.

"You're going to have to give me more than that this time, Jethro. Think I need to hear it."

The sound of crashing waves filled the silence. Tony was right, he did need to hear it. And more than that, Jethro realized he needed, maybe even wanted to tell him. It was time.

"Last night you asked me about the plane, about what that meant. If you want me to answer that, if you want to know why I brought you here, there are other things you need to know first."

"So tell me." Tony made it sound like the simplest thing in the world.

Jethro took a deep breath. "Came here after…after Shannon and Kelly." He let it hang there between them for a moment, surprised by the clarity of his voice against the stab of pain that hit his chest at their names. "Kai and I'd been at Pendleton together. He was always talking about the big waves he'd surfed back here and how he needed to get back on a board. One weekend he dragged a bunch of us down to the shore. Owed him a favor or I never would have even gone." He couldn't help the rueful smile at the memory. "We rented some boards, he taught us a few things. Most of the guys bit the sand pretty hard that first day and never came back."

"But you did?" Tony supplied.

He nodded. "I did. Oh, I ate my fair share of beach. Didn't make any sense to me, why I kept showing up every morning. Kai seemed to know something I didn't at the time."

"He called you a kanaka he'e nalu, or something like that." Tony offered.

Gibbs laughed. "It just means 'surfer', but to him it's a pretty big compliment. Especially for a haole like me."

"Grew up in the middle of coal country. Pennsylvania," Gibbs continued. He was pretty sure Tony already knew this part but he gave it anyway. "Ocean was something new to me but…somehow it feels like part of me when I'm on that board. Or I'm part of it. For those few minutes on that wave, nothing else in the entire world even exists."

"I don't understand. I thought you were happy when you were with Shannon. Why would you want to escape?"

He looked up and smiled at this. "Marriage is never easy, Tony, even when it's good." He was quiet for a minute. There were roads he wasn't sure he was ready to go down with the younger man yet. Old roads he hadn't travelled in a long time. "You think I became a sniper without some baggage to start with? I was…I am, angry, Tony. About a lot of things. Some of them I don't even remember any more. Shannon and Kelly, they made that better, made it not matter for a while, but even they didn't make it go away." He swallowed the lump he could feel in his throat.

"Jethro." The ache in Tony's voice mirrored his own.

He wanted to stop but he needed to keep going. This was it, this was the moment. Whatever else happened from here, Tony had earned this much from him and he was going to give it no matter the cost. "When they were gone," he took a deep shaky breath and stared out at the ocean, trying to touch the calm of it again. "When they were gone, the anger and the pain were the only things left. I was drowning in them. Almost let them pull me under."

Tony's hand moved closer to him on the grass but the younger man seemed to sense that he didn't want to be touched right now.

"Kai came when I was in the hospital. Before I came back. And he kept coming when everyone else stopped. His tour was up and he was heading back here on terminal leave after a stop at Pendleton. Kept at me to come stay with him. Wouldn't let up no matter how many times I kicked him out and pushed him away. Persistent to a fault." Jethro smiled. "Reminds me a little of someone else I know."

This time Tony's fingers brushed fleetingly against his shoulder and Jethro reached up and clasped them tightly in his own. "When I came here, I was lost. I wasn't looking for answers or a way back because I didn't want one. Not then. I couldn't even begin to think past all of it. Kai knew me better than I knew myself. Knew what I needed. He dragged me down to this beach every damn morning, practically threw me on my board and hauled me into the water."

"You can't be angry out there. The ocean…it forces you to find balance. Chews you up if you don't." He squeezed Tony's fingers. "One morning I came down and the waves were just tearing up the shore. Must have been twenty, twenty five feet. Biggest sets I ever saw. A few guys were going out, coming in beat to hell more often than not." He paused. This next part was something he hadn't thought about in a long time, hadn't wanted to. "I knew better but that didn't stop me. I fought my way out past the break, arms burning, chest feelin' like it was gonna split open. Don't even remember how long I sat out there waiting."

"When my wave finally came I knew it immediately. Felt it swell up beneath me like it just…like it wanted me to ride it. When I dropped in, it was like staring down the side of a three story building, and for just a minute I had it." He closed his eyes, realizing that in this place he could almost touch the memory of that moment. "It was like nothing else in the world. Every single thing inside me just disappeared. The barrel closed over me and it was like seeing everything in focus for the first time."

"And then there was a flash. Just a split second where the pain found me again and I lost it. I went down hard, got rolled over and over, clipped the side of the reef with my shoulder. When I tried to come up, another wave just pushed me back under again, and again. I'd get a quick breath and go right back down." His voice trailed off. "Eventually I just stopped fighting. There was peace under the water, no more struggling, and I didn't really want to keep going in a world where the only thing left of my family was pain, so I just…I just gave up."

"Doesn't sound like the Leroy Jethro Gibbs I know," Tony said gently.

"Maybe it wasn't, I don't know anymore. Think maybe part of who I was got left right out there, at the bottom of all that water." He pointed out to the churning sea.

"But you're here now," Tony prompted.

"I am. But not by choice. At least not the choice I made that day," he admitted. "Just before I passed out I felt someone grab me by the back of my wetsuit. Two guys on a jet ski pulled me out, dragged me back into shore, and pumped the water out of my lungs." He turned to face Tony now. "I didn't choose to live that day, Tony." Jethro desperately needed him to understand.

"Maybe not. But you chose every day after that. You chose today." Tony said simply, as if this thing that Gibbs had struggled for years to explain to himself was the easiest thing in the world for him.

He nodded.

"What else?"

"The explosion. Mexico."

"Wondered when we were gonna get around to that part." He almost sounded nervous.

"When that happened it was like being right back at square one again, at least in the beginning. The only thing that felt familiar was the pain. And then Franks…" He finally let go of Tony's hand. "I found the ocean again when I was in Mexico. Pretty good surf down there. I started to remember things. Like something inside me was gradually opening at the same time the hurt was closing itself off again. And the things I remembered about you…they didn't make any sense at first."

"How long? How long since you remembered? How long did you wait?" The hurt in Tony's voice was palpable and it was clear he was sitting on a pile of anger and pain.

"All I had were pieces, Tony. Just…flashes. Took some time to begin to put them together. To make things make sense." He didn't have an excuse or an apology big enough for this and he knew it.

"I spent months, months, trying to figure out how to forget you, how to forget the way you looked through me when you walked away from NCIS, walked away from what we… You didn't just walk away from a job, you walked away from me, Jethro. And I get that you were in pain, and knowing that an explosion knocked you on your ass and fucked with your head? That almost made it possible for me to forgive my boss for the way he treated his team. Almost. But I was in hell too, Jethro. I was in fucking hell." Tony's voice was an angry, throbbing thing, thick with unspent emotion. "So what I'd like to know is, how long were you gonna leave me there after you remembered that we were…whatever the hell we were to each other?"

"Until I figured out how to stop loving you." The words were out before he could swalow them and far louder than he intended them to be.

Tony blinked back at him, the fire of his anger suddenly quenched. The younger man looked as shocked by the admission as he was and it took Tony a moment to recover. "And did you?" He asked quietly, the words almost drowned by the sound of the surf.

It would have been easy. The lie was right there, perched on the edge of his lips. But Tony could read him better than anyone he'd known with the exception of at least one wife, and he was just so fucking tired of half-truths. "Not for one second." Jethro felt the honesty of those four words like a bullet to the chest as he pulled Tony into a desperate kiss.

Tony barely had time to take a breath before Jethro's palm was at his neck, thumb was at his jaw, mouth was crashing into his. The taste of those lips was saltwater and familiarity, the tongue pulsing gently between his lips to sweep against his own, a bittersweet reunion. He wanted to push Gibbs away and pull him closer all at once, but the desperate fingers clinging to his nape made him moan sweetly and lean into the kiss, lean into the pain and the fear that had almost undone him a few months ago.

When it was over, Jethro didn't pull away, just bowed into him like his life depended on the touch. "I never stopped loving you for one second."

The words, throat-worn and desperate, caressed his lips and made him tremble, but before he could digest them, Tony was released. The needy weight of Gibbs' palm became the slow trail of fingertips across his jaw and then it was over. He contemplated Jethro warily across the short distance, unsure about the almost unrecognizable calm that seemed to have settled over the other man.

"You can't do that." Tony raised the back of his hand to his mouth. "You can't tell me that you love me and kiss me like that and then take it back and go away again, Jethro. You can't."

"Not goin' anywhere, Tony. Doesn't mean I know what the answers are yet," Gibbs said gently.

Relaxing only slightly, Tony let his hand fall back to his lap. "Was coming here part of finding those answers?

"Thought it might be a start, yeah," he answered honestly. "But we still have a job to do."

"Tell me again. Tell me why you really came back from Mexico." Tony pinned him in place with eyes which were softer than they had been a moment before but no less intense.

"I didn't lie to you about my reasons, Tony."

"You have to say it, Jethro. You have to say it so I can decide whether or not I believe you, whether or not I can ever trust it."

"I came back because I had to finish what I started." He was avoiding, he knew it.

Tony shook his head. "Not good enough."

"It's the truth. I don't know what else you want from me." Except that he did. And the words were right there, practically ready to leap off of his tongue if he would only quit swallowing them down.

"I need more than that, Jethro. If you want me to even think about it, there has to be more." Tony was calm now, maddeningly so.

"God damn it, Tony, I came back for you. Is that what you need to hear?"

Tony was silent for a moment. "Okay," he said quietly.

"Tony…"He wanted to tell him that he couldn't make promises, that he was still putting pieces together, but the look in the younger man's eyes as he suddenly stood stopped him flat.

"I said 'okay'." With a shake of his head, Tony cut off whatever Gibbs had intended to follow with. "But I won't let you break me like that again, Jethro. I won't let you walk away. You wanna figure this out? Fine. Let's figure it out. But if you leave again? If you walk out on me or my team? I will tear the world apart to hunt you down, and I will drag you back to face them, do you understand me? And then I will leave you. And you will never find me, no matter how long or how far you go to look for me."

Jethro shuddered at the flat vehemence of Tony's voice. He'd thought about this. He'd thought about it hard. And Gibbs had no doubt that every word he spoke was absolute truth. He rose slowly, held the younger man's eyes deliberately. "Won't walk out again. Can't promise I can make this work, Tony, but I can promise you that." His thumb grazed Tony's cheek and his chest tightened at the way the other man flinched slightly from his touch. Cold fingers wrapped around his own and forced his hand down and away but did not let go.

"Then let's do the job we came here for and everything else…everything else we'll figure out as we go." His shoulders had come down an inch or two but Tony was still clearly a little edgy.

"Okay."

"Okay."

Tony's fingers slowly unwound from around his own and Jethro turned to grab his board before they walked back up the beach toward the house.

"But really, surfing?" Tony looked at him somewhat incredulously as they walked.

"Really," Jethro laughed, glad to hear the lighter tone in the younger man's voice.

Thank you for reading! I'd love to hear what you think.