For: NCIS-Ficathon, round 8
Written for: ncisvu_lj
Prompt used: Gibbs is Tony's bodyguard (in any capacity: privately hired bodyguard, cop protecting a witness, Tony shows up on Gibbs' ranch and Gibbs ends up protecting him, Tony's the president and Gibbs is his bodyguard…whatever you dream up)
Genre: Pre-slash, AU
Notes about the AU: Tony and Gibbs have never met. Takes place Season 11, in the spring of 2014.

Category: hurt/comfort
Rating: T
Spoilers: none
Warnings: none
Length: 20,000 words, 6 chapters (finished version over at AO3)

Beta: firesign10, without whose help this would be a mess. I cannot thank her enough for her insightful comments and above-and-beyond beta work.

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KELLY BROOK FARM

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CHAPTER 1

The meteorologist had predicted that a string of dangerous thunderstorms would hit Prince George's County, Maryland, around five that evening. He was right on the mark. By mid-afternoon the April skies had grown dark, and a deluge of rain, accompanied by high winds, let loose at dinnertime, battering the old farmhouse and barn on Brook Farm Road.

"Damn it!" Gibbs swore, as he ran from the barn to the back porch and straight into the mudroom. Once inside, he had to fight to close the back door against the wind and driving rain. The windows rattled in the wind and the roof creaked as Gibbs hung his dripping slicker on a peg, but he wasn't overly concerned. The house, which had been buffeted by far worse storms over its long lifetime was – as Abby had pointed out when she'd first seen it – stoic.

After toeing off his mucky barn boots, Gibbs put them aside in a boot tray for a later cleanup, and headed into the kitchen for a long-overdue cup of coffee. He could relax a bit now that the horses were safely bedded down for the night – all six of them, including the newest addition, a small bay named Chevron due to the white V on his forehead. The 13-year-old horse had arrived a week ago, malnourished and skittish, and while he was in need of a gentle hand, he was already showing signs of improvement.

Gibbs had bought the property at a foreclosure auction nine months ago, but not on a whim. He'd thought about taking this step for some time, and when the house and land had come on the market, he had driven over with Abby to check it out. The old place hadn't been a working farm for years, and it had been badly neglected. Gibbs had immediately felt at home when he entered the rambling brick-fronted house with its columned front porch, but the thing that sold him was the spacious barn with its wide-plank floors and hand-hewn oak beams. It came with a garage, carriage house, and a machinery shed with an old cider press bolted to the 150-year-old floor.

Abby had been excited from the moment she'd first seen the old house, and she'd started throwing out ideas. "Gibbs, Gibbs! Just think of all the possibilities with this huge house! With six bedrooms, you can turn the house into a B&B! Set up riding trails, and have a special camp week for kids where they can learn all about taking care of horses and–"

"Hang on there, Abby!" Was she completely out of her mind?

"But it would be fun! We'd all help out, me and Tim and Jimmy and Breena and Dwayne and–."

"Whoa, Abs!"

Ah, what was it to have rose-colored glasses, seeing the best in everyone and everything? Gibbs wouldn't know. He couldn't entirely blame the job for making him a cynic, nor his several failed marriages. As his dad had told him more than once, he'd been born grouchy. "You nearly bit off your mother's finger when she woke you from a nap once," Jackson had said. Gibbs' nature was to be suspicious and wary, but he usually had good reason. He assessed strangers, weighed them up and decided if they were dangerous or victims, and he acted accordingly: lock them up or help them out. He had no interest in anyone that fell in between.

A year ago, as he was approaching the mandatory retirement age for field agents, Gibbs had started to think about what he'd do if they tried to put him out to pasture. SecNav had already hinted that he would be willing to give Gibbs some leeway, so long as his closure rate remained high. At the time, Gibbs was healthy, the members of his team were in good shape and worked well together, so he'd expected that, with any luck, he'd be able to remain the agent in charge of Major Crimes for a few more years.

Unfortunately, Gibbs' luck had run out far sooner than anyone expected.

~ • ~ ~ • ~ ~ • ~

An investigation into a counterfeiting ring had led them to a warehouse, and they'd surprised a dozen men moving heavy weapons, stolen from the Navy, onto a truck. The shootout that followed was long and furious. Brent Langer, who had been Gibbs' Senior Field Agent for the past ten years, was the first to go down. He took two bullets to the chest as soon as they went in the door, the .44 hollow points plowing right through his body armor. He never had a chance. Gibbs, while laying down fire and going to Langer's aid, was hit high in his left arm, but he still managed to take out two of the shooters. By some miracle, Ziva, McGee, and Dorneget came out of the firefight with minor injuries, and by the time the shooting had ended, the weapons dealers were either rounded up or dead.

The impact of the bullet shattered Gibbs' arm. It took two operations to get the fracture set properly, with screws and pins holding the bones together. He endured infection and nerve damage, and there were a couple of times when Gibbs was afraid he'd lose his arm. For once in his life, he followed the doctors' orders. Recovery was painful, and the arm didn't heal as well as everyone hoped.

Langer's death hit Gibbs hard. Witnessing his friend and colleague of many years bleed to death on that warehouse floor sapped the spirit right out of Gibbs. He'd seen a lot of bad shit during his career – in the Marines and as an NCIS special agent – but it was heart-wrenching to witness the fear in Langer's eyes as he choked on his own blood. He clung desperately to Gibbs, looking at Gibbs as if he could somehow save him, but within minutes Langer's eyes glazed over, and he lost the final battle.

"No more field work," Vance had said, actually looking unhappy. Gibbs knew it was coming, but even so, hearing the director say it aloud was difficult to listen to, much less accept. The choice was laid out before him: desk or retire.

There really was no choice; in the end, Gibbs walked away.

~ • ~ ~ • ~ ~ • ~

The day Gibbs signed the papers and took possession of the farm, he'd said wryly to Ducky, "I've bought the farm. Literally."

"And yet here you are, still alive to talk about it." Ducky had chuckled in amusement.

Gibbs' left arm still bothered him a year after the shootout. It got stiff if he overdid heavy work like shoveling, and acted up when it got damp, but he knew he was fortunate to have survived for so long in such a dangerous job.

Retirement – God, how he hated that word – had done nothing to ease his hardened heart, but he had found a kind of peace in this rural patch of land. Here, Gibbs felt close to his girls, and he even saw them smiling at the small successes he had with the horses. This was all he needed, he told himself, and if he lived out the rest of his days working with, and easing the pain, of these sensitive, beautiful animals who needed his hands-on care, then that was about as close to happiness as he ever hoped to achieve.

It not only took a lot of guts for him to commit to bringing new life to the farm, but to start a horse rescue. Gibbs had no doubt that he had made the right choice. Now he was fulfilling his late wife and daughter's dream by running a safe haven where injured and abused horses could rest up before moving on to their forever home. He was the middleman in a large network of people who spent enormous amounts of time, effort and money on rescuing and rehabilitating animals suffering from neglect and abuse. Abby called him a foster dad, but actually Gibbs' farm was a small shelter where the horses he took in were cared for while they were assessed for the next stage in their journey.

It had been a huge step for him, putting his family home in Alexandria up for sale, but he'd known in his heart that if he'd remained there, he'd have nothing but regrets. With equally mixed feelings of trepidation and anticipation, Gibbs had accepted a surprisingly good offer on the house he'd once made a home with Shannon and Kelly, and he'd then turned around and placed a down payment on the farm.

The first night he spent there, lying in bed listening to the tree frogs peeping in chorus, Gibbs thought about his wife and daughter and how they would have loved this place. Just as he drifted off to sleep, Gibbs decided that he was going to name his new home Kelly Brook Farm.

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Gibbs blamed the whole thing on Moira VanGarten. She was a redhead, or had been before her hair had turned white; there was still a hint of auburn when she stood in the sunlight. At sixty-four, having outlived three husbands and countless lovers, Moira was still a powerhouse. She was a mover and shaker in local politics, a leader in ecological improvements and the expansion of small specialty farms. She was also a tireless advocate for abused animals, and was an avid horsewoman who rode every day.

He'd met her at physical therapy, where Moira was recovering from cracked ribs and a broken arm as a result of an encounter with a frightened horse. "Got squashed against the fence like a bug," she'd told Gibbs with a twinkle in her pale blue eyes. "You'd think I'd have learned, after all these years…"

It was Moira who had planted the seed of the horse rescue idea in Gibbs' mind, and then nurtured it and offered supportive stakes to encourage its growth. It was she who had made Gibbs see the possibilities of working with horses, had encouraged him, starting him off on the road leading to the next phase of his life. As a result, he'd spent a few weeks at her large horse farm, learning the ropes from the expert, had talked to people in animal control and leaders of humane societies, had interned at the Equine Welfare's large teaching facility. Gibbs had ridden before, had even worked on a ranch out in Montana one summer as a teen, but understanding horses, instinctively knowing their wants and needs – that wasn't something that could be easily learned.

"You're good with them, Jethro," Ducky had said, when he'd accompanied Gibbs to Moira's expansive horse farm, and had seen him working with a shy horse out in a paddock.

"And they don't talk back," Gibbs had replied with a smile. The truth as, he felt closer to his girls when he was working with the horses; he could hear Kelly softly laughing, and see Shannon's eyes alight as she smiled with approval.

Moira had convinced him that he had quite a talent with the horses, probably from after all those years of reading humans. "You have a good sense of people, an instinct, Jethro Gibbs," she'd said. "I can see you can speak to these animals. You're too uptight though. Just relax and let what they're telling you come to you."

So Gibbs had taken a leap of faith. He had believed Moira for reasons he'd never understand, and he'd agreed to take in some horses, so long as he could start small. Moira would send over six horses maximum, and she would visit at regular intervals to make sure he wasn't messing up. The rescue was a business, not a do-good hobby, and there was a huge amount of paperwork to wade through before the first four-hoofed creature arrived at Kelly Brook Farm. Licenses, inspections, setting up the finances, filing with local and government agencies, learning how the network of rescue organizations worked, these aspects all had to be dealt with. It was difficult, and there were several times that Gibbs had stopped and asked himself if he'd gotten in way over his head. But in the end, when all the pieces fell into place, and the first horse arrived and had gingerly accepted a carrot from his hand, he knew he'd be okay – that he'd done the right thing.

~ • ~ ~ • ~ ~ • ~

Now the dream was a reality, and the reality was that the 70-acre property came with a boatload of hard work and responsibility.

For starters, the house had been falling down, and it still needed a huge amount of work. Gibbs felt fortunate that he'd been able to re-shingle the roof with the help of a small army of volunteers rounded up by an enthusiastic Abby.

Getting the ten-stall barn patched up had been the next order of business. Luckily, the roof was holding its own and only required minor repairs. The flooring needed some nails to bring it up to par, though it would be forever uneven due to age. Gibbs liked it that way. The big barn doors had to be re-hung, which took four men and a set of pulleys. The three-car garage, once a shelter for small farm animals, didn't need anything done to it, and the best thing was there was a large workshop space at the back, complete with workbenches and quite a few old tools, most of which were so rusty they were tossed out.

Only a couple of weeks into the renovations, Gibbs admitted that he'd have to delegate some of the jobs. He started by hiring a couple of local men to mend the fences. The first priority was to get the ones closest to the house and barn secure. The fence extended from the gate at the end of the driveway to the barn, and then it swept in a large circle and back to the far side of the house. If a horse got loose by chance, it couldn't get very far. The fencing that made up the paddocks behind the barn were in pretty good shape, but every post and bar was checked to make sure everything was secure. Gibbs had heard horror stories about horses getting loose, crashing through fences, and ending up galloping southbound on the nearby highway.

There were several outbuildings on Kelly Brook Farm, including some sheds not worth saving. He planned to pull them down – one more project to add to the growing list of 'things do later on.' There was, however, a small yet sturdy carriage house hidden behind a stand of trees, on the other side of the barn, and Gibbs had ideas about getting it in shape so he could rent it out. It hadn't been used for carriages for a hundred years and a previous owner had cleaned it out and put up some drywall. There was already running water, a simple sink and toilet, so it had potential.

Another thing Gibbs did right away, on the advice of the Hutters, his neighbors to the east, was to lease out two twenty-acre parcels to farmers. That income alone would help put a dent in the property taxes. The extra money from renting the carriage house cottage would come in handy too, as his savings and retirement accounts covered the maintenance of the property and his personal expenses, but he would be relying upon donations to help with the horses.

Gibbs had a feeling it would be a long time before he got to do anything about the bedrooms upstairs, but it didn't really matter. He'd been living in three rooms on the ground floor, and they more than met his needs. The bedroom had only needed a paint job, and the previous owners had updated the bathroom a few years ago; that was one less project to think about.

The rest of the ground floor rooms were also going to have to wait. There were several once-elegant rooms that he had no use for; a game room, a tile-floored conservatory, a summer kitchen, storage areas, a washroom with brass fixtures that dated from 1900, several parlors and rooms that had no apparent purpose. Some of the rooms were sparsely furnished, like a sitting room in the back of the house that had an upright piano and a couch inhabited by a large family of mice. They all needed some kind of work.

There was a large foyer with a beautifully tiled floor, whose massive teak front door appeared to be from the Civil War-era, but the front porch, with its tall white columns, was in such disrepair that Gibbs had immediately roped it off. The supports could do with some shoring up, but the floor outside the front door had extensive rot, and was going to be a big job. It would have to wait, like so many of the other repairs. Meanwhile, everyone used the door off the kitchen and mudroom. That was fine with him, as he didn't need any more space than the country-style living room, kitchen and ground floor bedroom provided.

As Gibbs moved around the kitchen, starting a fresh pot of coffee and heating some soup in a saucepan, he looked at his home with satisfaction. The kitchen was in pretty good condition, and came with a large gas stove, whitewashed cabinets, and wide pine-plank floor. He'd refinished the wood floor in the living room himself. Gibbs had brought along his furniture from his previous home in Alexandria, but had given in and bought a new, comfortable couch, upholstered in a dark green plaid fabric, when his old one had sprung one too many springs. The floor-to-ceiling bookcases took up most of one wall, and his small TV fit neatly into the corner. Plus there was a huge brick fireplace that was made for cooking cowboy-style steaks. What more did a man need?

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