Title: A Piece of Blue Sky

Pairing: Tony DiNozzo/Jethro Gibbs

Warnings: Some naughty language, adult themes, supernatural themes and screwed up situations. Also this story is slash –though nothing hardcore. I mean, Leroy's seven for most of it people and I don't write chan.

Spoilers: None really. Just the show in general. And if you don't watch NCIS then why are you reading this?

Disclaimer: Unless you live under a rock, you should know this isn't mine. And for those who do live under a rock... how'd you get access to a power point, let alone a computer? Poem is mine –a haiku!

Summary: When Tony is shot in action, he's surprised to find himself stuck somewhere between life and death. Which would be cause for concern even without a seven year old Leroy Jethro Gibbs for company. As Tony is plagued by questions of his own existence, Leroy finds himself in desperate need for help. Can Tony get them home safely?

Authors Note: The last chapter. Sorry it isn't longer but every time I tried to add to it... it just felt forced. I'm afraid this is how the story wanted to go. Who am I to argue with my muse?

In which my whole world
Is so changed that it is never
The same world again

The ground shakes so hard
That the foundations, so firm,
Need to be rebuilt

And my heart, it knows
That nothing here will ever
Be the same again.

Chapter Four: Paradigm Shift

Tony was in a hospital room.

Beside him, monitoring his heart rate, a machine beeped steadily away. Tony blinked slowly and looked down at his hands. The left was exposed and hooked up to a drip. The right was wrapped around another.

Tony followed the hand to a wrist, the wrist to an arm, the arm to a body. Beside him, sleeping uncomfortably in a chair, was Gibbs: looking utterly worm but keeping a constant vigil by Tony's bedside, not releasing his hand even as he slept.

For a long time, Tony just stared at him.

What the hell had happened?

"Gibbs?" Tony called, a little hysterically, "Gibbs!"

"Wa –Tony?" Gibbs all but shot up in his seat. He stared at Tony for a moment, brimming with relief. Which turned abruptly into anger. "What the hell were you thinking? Were you even thinking? If you didn't have a concussion, I'd head slap you so hard you –"

"Did you know me before we met?"

"What?" Gibbs managed gruffly, tired, angry and interrupted. A position Tony knew from experience that he didn't appreciate.

"Before we met," Tony clarified, "In Baltimore. Did you know me?"

Gibbs eyed him with something close to concern.

"How could I have known you before we met?"

"Did you meet me before I met you?" Tony tried again, "When you saw me at Baltimore, did you know who I was? Did you remember me?"

"Remember you?" Gibbs echoed, looking genuinely worried now, "Tony, you're not making any sense. I'm gonna get the doctor."

Gibbs was gone before Tony could press further, leaving him more confused than ever.

One moment, he'd been sitting by Leroy's bedside and the next he was in one himself, finding Gibbs sitting beside his. A switch that Tony wasn't altogether too pleased about.

Had the whole thing been a dream?

"Bit confused are we?" the doctor asked as he walked in, Gibbs hot on his heels, "That's normal. I'm doctor Anderson, by the way."

"Did I die?" Tony wondered as the doctor checked his stats.

"You're going to be just fine," Anderson assured, "Punctured a lung, broke three ribs, major concussion not to mention gained quite the assortment of bruises and scrapes, but you'll recover. Hurt like hell during the process, but recover nonetheless."

"That's not what I asked," Tony corrected, flinching as the doc shone a light into his eyes, "I mean... when I was first brought in. When the bullet first hit me. Did I die at all?"

Anderson frowned, moving away to check his chart.

"You stopped breathing for a moment," he replied at last, "But your heart never faltered. Do you remember who the president is?"

"Obama," Tony answered promptly, "And my name is Anthony Dominic DiNozzo. I work for the Naval Criminal Investigative Services under Leroy Jethro second-b-for-bastard Gibbs."

"Coherence intact then," Anderson allowed with a grin.

"How long have I been out?" Tony pressed.

"Just over two days now," Gibbs supplied, still watching Tony carefully.

Tony frowned, unsettled.

"How are you feeling?" Anderson asked intently, back to checking Tony over.

"I ache all over," Tony admitted, "My chest feels tight and my head hurts. I also fear for my sanity."

"How so?" Anderson inquired, ignoring Tony's wry tone.

"I... I think I... I missed... I had a very odd dream," Tony concluded at last.

"You were on some pretty hard medications," Anderson pointed out.

"But it wasn't crazy," Tony protested, "It was completely logical. I dreamt in sequence and I dreamt of places I've never been before... but maybe don't actually exist."

"Don't know what to tell you," Anderson shrugged easily, "You were highly medicated and more than a little out of it. Strange visions are normal. No white lights or long tunnels?"

"No," Tony huffed, feeling patronised.

"No worries then," Anderson grinned, "I'll be back to check on you later."

"I've completely lost it," Tony bemoaned, leaning back and frowning.

"It was a dream, DiNozzo," Gibbs retorted, "Was it really that bad?"

"It wasn't bad at all," Tony negated, "You were in it."

Gibbs raised a brow and, realizing how that could sound, Tony found himself blushing.

"Not like that!" he spluttered, "You were seven, for crying out loud!"

"Seven?" Gibbs repeated, dubiously.

"Yeah," Tony agreed, thoughtful, "Some jerk –Harley –had taken you to a Bloomsburg hotel. I helped you get home –hell of a job too. We had to take three different trains and a bus just to get back to Stillwater and by the time we got there you were so sick you couldn't even stand."

Gibbs watched Tony searchingly, brow furrowed. He looked about to speak when the door was wrenched open and the whirlwind that was Abby blew in.

"Tony!" she cried, launching herself at the bed, "I missed you! Are you alright? Never do that to me again!"

Tony laughed, drawing Abby into an enormous hug and promptly demanding she catch him up with everything he'd missed –something Abby did happily.

Leroy, for the moment, banished to the back of his mind.

Three days later Tony was sick of the hospital and convinced he'd dreamed the whole escapade with Leroy up.

In the light of day (or, rather, the muted light of the hospital room) it all seemed too crazy to be real. He remembered being shot on one end of the Leroy Incident and woke up in a hospital room on the other. Didn't take a genius to deduce that everything in-between had been nonsense.

"When can I leave?" Tony begged Anderson shamelessly.

"Tomorrow," Anderson promised, "Have you anyone to stay with? You're still not in the best condition."

"I'll be fine," Tony dismissed, "I survived the plague."

"Which is why a collapsed lung is so serious for you," Anderson argued firmly.

"He'll be staying with me," Gibbs put in calmly.

"Excellent," Anderson cried happily, barrelling right past Tony's protestations, "Just be sure he doesn't develop a fever. No long runs, make sure he dresses warmly and wraps his chest tightly."

"How long will I be on desk duty?" Tony asked plaintively.

"Until Ducky clears you," Gibbs returned and Tony sulked, knowing exactly how pedantic Ducky was.

"Rats."

Abruptly, Gibbs grinned.

"Don't worry," he quipped lightly, running his hand lightly against the back of Tony's head, a mock head slap, "I promise to take real good care of ya."

Tony was doomed.

Secretly, Tony adored staying at Gibbs' place.

The man was a functional mute but when Tony was recovering from his latest escapade, he made himself so clearly understood that words were meaningless anyway.

Tony would find cream in the fridge, even though Gibbs hated cream. He'd find towels in the bathroom that were high in thread count. He'd find meals carefully prepared and his wounds delicately dressed even as Gibbs bitched and grouched and generally lived up to his second b.

This time, however, things seemed different.

It took Tony a day and a half to figure out what it was. Gibbs was still surly, still a grump, still boat obsessed and gruff. But now, he spent half his time finding reasons to touch him.

A hand on his shoulder. Fingers touching his. Thighs brushing in stairwells. Feet pressing together fleetingly under tables.

Tony couldn't figure it out and it was driving him mad.

Worse, highly medicated as he was he was having quite a bit of trouble hiding his rather... er... positive reactions... to those touches. Which was completely unfair, because said medications should have made said reactions impossible –or at least less overt.

It all came to a crux the third day of Tony's stay. It was a day like any other really, except for one small (but crucial) difference: it was a Monday.

And Gibbs wasn't at work.

"Don't you have work today Boss?" Tony inquired as Gibbs wrapped his chest that morning, "I can take care of myself for a day."

"Why did you become a cop?"

Tony blinked but answered reflexively.

"The guns and the babes."

The headslap came right on cue, accompanied with a gently scolding look.

"DiNozzo."

Tony knew better to mess with that tone. And the bottom line was that he trusted Gibbs with everything he was and, more precious still, with everything he could be. So he did what came hardest to him –he told the truth.

"When I was in primary school," he began, looking fixedly at Gibbs' fingers as they wove around his chest and away from his eyes, "I had a friend. His name was Sam. He was two years older than me and managed to be cool without even trying. One of those guys everyone gravitated to –everyone loved. A total jock.

"He wanted to be a cop when he was older. Told me that he wanted to make a difference, that he wanted to protect others that couldn't protect themselves. He always noticed when I turned up to school covered in bruises no matter how carefully I hid them under my uniform. He used to tell me that I had to protect myself, if no one else would. That I'd only have a future if I believed I did."

"What happened to him?"

Tony grinned with black humour, because even Tim would have been able to tell that a story that began with the words 'when I was in primary school' didn't end well.

"Dove into a creek without checking the water level," Tony answered, "Broke his neck. They say he died instantly. It was only later, at the autopsy, that they uncovered the abuse he'd gone through. His mother served life for it. And I remembered what he'd said –that I had to protect myself if no one else would. So I told my father that if he ever touched me again, I'd take photos and report him. He responded by sending me off to boarding school and disowning me."

"I knew I didn't like your father for a reason," Gibbs managed darkly, securing the bandage, "So you wanted to be a cop then?"

"It was always there, at the back of my mind," Tony admitted, "And when I couldn't go pro in football, I knew it was what I wanted to do."

"That easy, huh?" Gibbs huffed, amusedly, "Gonna return the favour?"

"Alright, I'll bite," Tony agreed, perking up, "Why'd you become a Marine?"

Gibbs paused for a moment, eyes suddenly very intense.

"When I was young," he began, "I knew a man who inspired me to be everything I could be. Have ya ever met anyone like that, Tony? Someone that you trust with everything you are? As a boy, I thought him perfect. He was brave, strong, determined –he saved my life, in fact. Sacrificed everything to do so. I became a Marine because I wanted to be everything he was. I wanted to make him proud and I knew he'd like that."

"Was he a Marine then?" Tony asked attentively, very aware that this was the most that Gibbs had ever divulged about his past. Half of him wanted to ask what gives but the other half cautioned him not to look a gift horse in the mouth.

"Nah," Gibbs dismissed easily, grinning that half smile of his, "Worked for some agency. I was seven. Forgot it the second he said it. Only now do I realize it was NCIS."

"Franks?" Tony guessed, "I didn't realize you knew him that young."

Gibbs gave him a very pointed look.

"I didn't."

It took Tony a very long moment to cotton on.

"What?" he managed blankly, brain freezing, "I mean... that is... I... what?"

Gibbs snorted and delivered a soft head slap, which cleared Tony's thoughts up nicely.

"I still have the jacket, ya know," he informed him, "Holed at somewhere at Stillwater."

"Oh... my... god..." Tony breathed, feeling a breath away from panicking, "What the hell? What the hell? It was real? What the hell?"

He jerked to his feet, pacing so unevenly that he almost stumbled twice.

"DiNozzo," Gibbs ordered, "Calm down."

"Calm down?" Tony echoed franticly, "You seriously telling me to calm down? You just told me that it was real, that I wasn't hopped up on pain killers –that I really did spend a day in the past with your seven year old self! And you want me to calm down?"

"Yep."

"Fuck," Tony swore, "This is crazy. This is absolutely crazy. This isn't a Charles Dickens novel, Gibbs! People don't just randomly travel back through time! What the fuck happened?"

"Some things can't be explained," Gibbs returned, shrugging.

"Can't be explained?" Tony repeated, "That's all you've got? Some things can't be explained? How are you taking this so calmly? Don't you want to know how this happened?"

"Glad it did," Gibbs asserted passively, "You saved my life, remember? As for calm –I freaked over it plenty when you were still in the hospital. Right after you woke up and started babbling about Bloomsburg. Trust me, I met my quota. It's your turn now."

"Goodie," Tony snapped, still frazzled but struggling to get himself under control "What the hell kind of bullet was I hit with anyway? Cause I gotta say, I've been shot before and this has never happened."

"We'll probably never know," Gibbs observed, getting to his feet at last, "You about done?"

Tony snorted, eyeing him wryly.

"Give me a moment."

Gibbs, surprisingly, did. Tony, forcefully taking some deep breaths, found that his curiosity was starting to overtake his confusion.

"What happened between us was thirty years ago, for you," Tony noted, "How well do you remember it?"

"It was a pretty major event," Gibbs allowed, "So very."

"How come you didn't recognise me then?" Tony wondered, "When we met at Baltimore?"

"You left right after the drugs had worn off," Gibbs explained, "By the time I was twelve, I was sure I'd imagined you or at least the part about you being incorporeal. It certainly didn't occur to me to connect you to a fabrication that might have not been a fabrication almost thirty years later. Though, in hindsight, it does explain the instant reaction I had towards you. I knew I could trust you the moment I saw you –knew I had to have you on my six because you'd give the job everything you had. Even for me, that was a quick assessment."

"You were awfully persistent," Tony remembered with a grin.

"Been stuck in the past a lot these last few days," Gibbs continued, "I still remember the rain. How cold it was. How sick I felt. I remember the bus, the trains... the hospital."

Something about the way Gibbs said that made Tony pause.

"What about the hospital?" he asked cautiously.

"I told you that you were the best person I'd ever met," Gibbs recalled, "And that I loved you. Remember what you said back?"

Feeling a dawning sense of horror, Tony looked away awkwardly and tried not to flinch under Gibbs' eyes.

"You said," Gibbs continued, as though Tony had actually answered him, "That you loved me –the man that I was as a seven year old and the man I am today."

Tony spoke then, couldn't stand not to.

"It won't change anything," he said without thinking, looking up to Gibbs anxiously, "It hasn't changed anything. It's not like I fell in love with you on purpose, you know. It just happened –so slowly that I didn't realize it until it already was. I know... I know nothing will ever come of it. You don't have to do anything."

"No," Gibbs muttered, softly, "You didn't want anything from me. You didn't ever ask. That's why you always had it."

The words sounded familiar but Tony was too preoccupied staring at Gibbs vacantly to figure out where he'd heard them. Gibbs, seeing this, grinned suddenly and took a step forward, putting himself directly in front of Tony.

"I knew when Kate died," Gibbs informed him, rather mater-of-factly, "Was torn in two she was dead but thanking every power I could name that it wasn't you."'

Gibbs was standing so close and Tony finally understood all the things he wasn't saying. Boldly, Tony closed the distance between them and pressed their lips together chastely. Gibbs, approvingly, wrapped both his arms around him and deepened the kiss at once, so that Tony was drowning in it. When they finally parted, the both of them were pleasantly dazed.

"Was furious when you took that bullet for me," Gibbs admitted, "It would kill me if you died Tony. It almost killed me the first time I lost someone I loved –I won't survive it again."

"We have a dangerous job, Gibbs," Tony pointed out tentatively, "There are no guarantees."

"I know that," Gibbs returned gruffly, "I'd just sleep easier if you wouldn't throw yourself in front of bullets."

"I'll take care to avoid them," Tony promised ironically, "But you can't say you wouldn't do the same for me."

Gibbs made a face, conceding the point.

"We'll just have to do our best," Tony observed, "Nothing more we can do. Can we get back to the kissing now?"

Gibbs huffed but obligingly pulled Tony back into a kiss. Tony sank into it happily, giving as good as he got and leaning into Gibbs' solid frame. This kiss, far from chaste, turned heated in minutes. Gibbs, letting out a growl that went right to Tony's cock, wrapped an arm firmly around Tony's middle.

And Tony broke their kiss with a sharp gasp of pain.

"Shit," Gibbs swore apologetically, "You're ribs."

"Screw my ribs," Tony dismissed furiously, "We've gone through enough angst –this is the part where we get to have hot gay sex, damn it."

Gibbs grinned, even as certain parts of his anatomy showed Tony just how much he approved of that idea.

"Tempting," Gibbs agreed, eyeing Tony in a way that made him feel warm all over, "But I won't hurt you."

"So we'll be careful," Tony stipulated, pressing against Gibbs teasingly.

"No."

"Rats."

Gibbs smiled and kissed away Tony's pout.

"It'll keep," he promised, "In the meantime, tell me everything you remember."

Reluctantly, Tony snuggled into Gibbs on the bed, and they spent the afternoon trying to figure out the strange phenomenon that they'd both experienced –albeit thirty years apart.

In Tony's mind it wasn't much of an ending. But then, with Gibbs stoking his back gently and pressing the stay kiss against his temple, Tony couldn't bring himself to mind. Sex was such an easy thing for him that maybe it would do him some good to not rush right into it. So yeah, the heat simmering between them hadn't a chance to spark but that was okay. Endings were overrated anyway.

Beginnings were so much better.

*~*~*~*~*
The End
*~*~*~*~*

Note: A lot of questions weren't answered and, yes, this was intentional and not just my being lazy. Sometimes life is a mystery and I can't imagine Gibbs and Tony will ever understand what happened to them.

Thanks again to everyone who showed support for this story -it turned it from a disaster waiting to something I really enjoyed. Hopefully it provided a piece of clear blue sky for all of you as well. ^^