LEFT PATH
By
Ashleigh Anpilova
There are times in Ducky's life when other people would have said he should have turned right, when in fact he turned left.
An established relationship story.
Written: May 2009. Word count: 1,000.
If one equates decisions one makes in life with taking the right path or the left, the former being the correct choice, the latter incorrect, then there have been times in my life when many people would say I should have taken the right path, whereas I chose to take the left.
It began at a young age with my sexuality. I am gay and always have been. I knew early on I was different from my male playmates. At the time I wasn't quite certain what that 'difference' was; I just knew I was different. And as the years went on I became aware my interest in the fairer sex differed vastly from that of my peers. It was at Eton when I discovered what I'd had inkling about for some time: I liked my own sex.
English public schools are both as some books and films portray and not like that at all. Not every boy who goes through them experiences a homosexual encounter, but some do. At the age of seventeen, I myself did, and it set up the rest of my life as far as sexual involvement went. At the age of seventeen I made a conscious choice: I took the left path and not the right. But in truth that choice had been made many years before that first night.
The second major 'turning left rather than right' was the first night I took my beloved into my bed. Before that night I had kept to my personal credo: never to have any kind of non-platonic relationship with a man who was not at the very least bisexual.
I never thought the day would come when I would break my rule. But it did. In my defense I did not make the first move. Nor did I succumb without a fight; but in the end succumb I did. And with a degree of trepidation I did take Leroy Jethro Gibbs into my bed and make love to him. Sometimes, even after all the years we have been together, especially when he is away from me, I find myself feeling guilty that I broke my own rule; that again I chose the left path.
But those feelings are fleeting and extremely rare. My life would not be anywhere near as fulfilled as it is, had I not given in to a pair of dark blue eyes that penetrated all my defenses and looked at me as if I were the only person in the world.
I think for many, indeed even for me, my third 'left turn' was the worst of all. It still shames me even now to admit to it, and I do have regrets. However, I also know that as wrong as the left path choice was, if I could go back in time, I would still make the same choice. I would still choose to go left rather than right. That too shames me, but not enough to be anything other than honest.
The choice was to remain Jethro's lover even during his marriages and whilst he was dating his various women. The first time it happened I tried to make excuses, I put it down to the devastating case we had been working on. A case involving children always gets inside Jethro in a way no other case does, and that particular one had been one of the worst, even to this day, I have ever known.
It was extremely late when finally Jethro had broken the bastard and got him to confess to the horrors he had inflicted. I had stayed at NCIS, stayed watching through the glass of the interrogation room because a small part of me feared for the first time ever my beloved would forget just how far his badge permitted him to go. Of course I had no need to worry, but I stayed.
It is the only time I have ever known Jethro to leave the paperwork until the following day. We walked to the garage together and that was when I discovered the Morgan's battery to be flat; she did not respond to Jethro's attempts to jump start her.
Jethro offered to drive me home and when we reached Reston House it was the most natural thing in the world for me to invite him in for a drink. He downed the first one in two swallows and I poured him a second. Even to this day I do not know if my decision to pour him a third, knowing that by then there was no chance he could drive home, was a conscious one or not.
Nor do I know whether, when he put down the glass and looked at me with the look I had known so well, my going into his arms, putting my mouth on his and then leading him to my bed where we found a way to forget the horrors of the case, had been a conscious choice or not.
But conscious or not, the decision had been made, and once one opens Pandora's Box there is no way of shutting it. From then on we didn't look back; I was his 'mistress' for want of a better term. More than once I tried to turn away, tried to say 'no', tried to behave honorably, tried to take the right path. But it never worked. I was his lover throughout all his relationships except one.
And now I am his only lover. Now he made the choice to commit to me and me alone. He moved into my house and in effect told the world that he too had chosen the left path. For five years I have had him all to myself and God permitting and good health I will have him for many years to come.
Yes, to many I chose to turn left when I should have turned right. However, there is not one decision I made that I would change, even if I could.
Feedback is always appreciated
Go to NCIS Gibbs/Ducky Fiction Page