Kismet - Iron Marine Version

Leroy Jethro Gibbs of Gibbs Industries never expected that his ships would be wanted this much. Having the Navy insist on an exclusive contract shocked him. He especially never expected any of it to lead up to this day.

Being kidnapped while demonstrating a new weapon for the navy and being trapped in a cave, well Gibbs wouldn’t forget it for a very long time. Every single person that was part of keeping him captive in that cave went immediately onto his shit list. Many people had underestimated his shit list and thought that it wasn’t a big deal to be there.

Gibbs may not do much with his money demonstratively, but he knew how to get things done when he needed to. Just because he didn’t toss his money around like it meant nothing didn’t mean he was lacking in power or money. He hadn’t had to use his money as power in a very long time as most of his rivals had learned their lessons about going up against him directly.

In fact, the last person he remembered demonstrating his power to had been a couple of gun runners, the Reynosa Cartel, that had been trying to muscle their way into his business. Mike Franks had helped him show them what happened when you crossed the Gibbs’ family. Mike was an adoptive uncle of sorts that his father, Jackson, had hired when they’d had a falling out after his mother’s death.

Jackson had originally started the arms part of the business, but he’d turned everything over to Gibbs when he decided that it was more of a young man’s business. Jackson had retired to Stillwater, Pennsylvania to run his own general store. Gibbs thought Jackson was well in his own element.

He knew Jackson didn’t miss running Gibbs Industries. Franks had been in the business for a while and knew many of Gibbs’ and Jackson’s secrets, including where a number of the bodies were buried. The arms business was a dirty world, after all.

Still someone was going to pay for kidnapping him in Afghanistan. Don’t be fooled by his millions, Gibbs had always been a fighter at heart. He’d even served in the Marines for many years with boat building just a hobby.

Of course, that was before a Navy Admiral discovered his skills and demanded he give the Navy an exclusive contract. He’d never considered it, but when presented with the opportunity had felt that he could serve his country better by building the Navy ships, boats, weapons and some other trinkets, especially as he was getting a bit old to be on the front lines. He ended up building some of the smaller gunboats as well as some of the larger seafaring ships and even a few highly weaponized submarines that no one would ever see coming.

Supposedly, that’s what had brought his attention to the kidnappers. They wanted him to build them something. Heck, everyone did, but most people went through his legal team, which he still wanted to gouge his eyes out every time he thought about the fact that he had to employ multiple lawyers, or at the very least his assistant.

Apparently, not these kidnappers though, they may have thought they had the upper hand, but they never did. Gibbs was simply biding his time until he found out who the mastermind was behind the whole thing. Finding out his ex-flame, Jenny Shepard, had ordered his kidnapping pissed Gibbs off to no end.

He wanted to tear her and her position as VP of David Industries to pieces. David Industries had always been trying to rip off his ships, boats, weapons and anything else they could get their filthy paws on. They built ships and weapons with less expensive materials, cutting corners wherever they could to try and undercut him in the market.

When Gibbs and Jenny dated, she hadn’t been working for David Industries. In fact, Jenny had been his assistant when they started dating. She’d chosen her career over him though and not only dumped him, but left her job as his assistant for bigger and greater things at David Industries. Or at least that’s what she claimed, Gibbs didn’t buy it, but he was just glad that he’d never married her.

Eli had married her after she made it to the executive level and his previous wife died. Gibbs didn’t think either of them were happy, but they both wanted to be powerful despite the misery it brought. Gibbs was just glad not to be involved in any of it.

He wished that they would stop trying to knock off his stuff, though. It had gotten to the point where he had to be very careful what employees had access to which designs as it was hard to tell who was a David Industries’ spy as opposed to those who just wanted to keep learning and doing better because they loved their job. Still before he could do anything in retaliation to David Industries, he first had to get out of this cave.

With hatred fueling his creative fire even more than usual, he created something entirely new. Something not seen before. Blasting his way out of the cave in a suit of armor, Gibbs only had one thought as he plummeted to earth after using up the fuel, quite a distance from the cave. “It’s going to be a long way home in the Iron Marine, but it will be worth it to get back at David Industries.”

Fortunately, his best friend Ducky had been searching for him long and hard and the Iron Marine made enough noise that Ducky was able to find it easily before hostiles found Gibbs or Gibbs had to figure out how to make the suit fly back to America, with no tools and no fuel, from the sand dune it landed in in Afghanistan.

Ducky clucked disapprovingly as he surveyed the damage that Jethro had managed to do to himself. “You really should take better care of yourself, but first let’s get you home.”

Ushering Gibbs into a helicopter, they returned to the states. Gibbs immediately sequestered himself in his lab working on making the Iron Marine even better. He was torn as to whether he should offer the Iron Marine to the Navy.

It was more of a defensive thing than offensive thing really. Plus, it would be many months before it was refined enough to even consider attempting mass production. He knew David Industries would come snooping around trying to steal it after the show he’d made in Afghanistan with it.

He planned to be ready for them when they came. He was going to make damn sure that David Industries did not get their grubby hands on the Iron Marine and that any of his weapons currently in their possession were removed from their clutches. It was time to take a stand and show David Industries that right would always win out over wrong.

Of course, his personal vendetta got placed on hold when a literal army invaded New York. The army was led by his new friend’s, Tim McGeeson aka Thor, half-brother Tony DiNozzoson aka Loki. Saving the world kind of took priority over his personal revenge on Jenny Shepard and the Davids, especially when the world security council was stupid enough to try and use a nuke on their own city to get rid of the aliens. He’d had to fly that sucker back through the portal and straight to the alien base to protect the planet.

He hadn’t expected to live, but when he woke to Leon Vance’s ugly mug he quickly realized what had been bothering him about the whole battle. It was Tony’s eyes. They were the blue color of everyone else that had been possessed by the cube.

He was glad to see that they’d turned a green color after the battle was over. Not one to just let people suffer for things that weren’t their fault, he immediately went to bat for Tony. Of course, it didn’t hurt that the man was attractive and Gibbs wouldn’t mind bedding him if Tony were interested back.

Needless to say that getting Tony freed of all charges had involved way more time spent with Gibbs’ less than favorite people, lawyers. At least, Franks had done most of the heavy lifting with some help from their new assistant Michelle Lee. Of course, Franks had given him a dirty look when Gibbs had decided to invite his new battle friends to live with him, mostly as an excuse to get Tony to live with him.

Gibbs ignored Franks’ complaints. There were some times that it was good to be a millionaire and have people give in to his wishes even if it was generally more of a pain than it was worth. After a month or so of living with him, Tim swept Gibbs aside and gave him a shovel talk about his brother.

Gibbs groaned. He hadn’t even had a chance to ask Tony out, yet. Not that Tony bothered to wait for Gibbs to ask him out.

Tony just swept Gibbs away from Tim when Gibbs’ eyes looked like they were about to bulge out of his skin. Gibbs didn’t even really know what was happening by that point in time. He’d never had someone threaten him aside from that one kidnapping attempt, usually they were trying to bribe him.

He would never admit it, but he loved having Tony and the guys living with him. It had been a long time since he’d had company of any sort really aside from employees who were essentially paid to be there and people who just wanted to try and sex him up for his money. Even Vance, aka Captain America, was an ok guy once you got to know him.

After the shovel talk, Gibbs did his best to avoid Tim. He wasn’t the leader, Vance was, so he didn’t have to play nice with everyone. What really made his day though were the pranks that Tony played on Tim and everyone else.

He tried not to show how amused they made him as he didn’t want anyone else to know, but he was pretty sure that Tony knew. He was the god of mischief, after all. Kate, aka the Black Widow tended to get pissed off anytime Tony pranked her and Gibbs was quite happy to stay out of that line of fire.

Strangely, despite spending most of his time in the lab and being relatively anti-social, Gibbs found that he’d somehow ended up being the heart of the team. Even though Vance was the one who technically led the team, Gibbs was the one that the team went to for advice. Gibbs was the one with all the rules, many of them adopted due to some shenanigan on David Industries’ part, and who always seemed to know the answer to whatever question anyone had.

He had to admit it was good to have friends that felt like family again. He’d missed family more than he realized ever since his father moved to Pennsylvania. He didn’t wear his heart on his sleeve, so few realized how lonely he had been or how much he enjoyed the company of his new friends.

In fact, it was only on the dates Tony insisted on that he tended to smile. Despite that, everyone on the team knew how much he cared. He showed it in other ways like the upgrades to Kate’s armor and the enhancements to the comms so that Tim could use them without frying them due to his electric nature.

No one on the team really understood Gibbs and Tony’s attraction to each other, but none of them could talk either Tony or Gibbs into breaking up. Vance hated it. Tony was the God of Mischief and having him on the same team as Gibbs just seemed wrong, but technically there were no rules against it as Tony gleefully pointed out and thus Vance’s hands were tied.

Meeting Tony that day felt like kismet to Gibbs. After all, he desperately needed someone to force him out of his shell like Tony did. He never would have admitted to that in the past, though, not even to Franks, who had decided to retire after one too many of Tony’s shenanigans.

With Tom Morrow as head of SHIELD, the Avengers had plenty to keep them occupied and if they didn’t have missions, Vance insisted on them running team building exercises instead. Sometimes it felt like he and Tony never had any alone time, but the truth is that neither of them would trade it for anything else in the world. They’d finally found a place where they both belonged not only together, but with family and they both knew just how rare that could be. Nothing would tear them from their family, now.