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It had been a long time since Tony had allowed himself to have an expectation of someone. To his detriment, he’d found that unless the law enforced it no one ever lived up to his expectations. He hadn’t thought that his expectations were all that difficult, but he’d been proven wrong time and time again.
All he’d wanted was for his father to love him, but Senior never saw him as more than a show boy. He’d thought when he was shipped off to boarding school that he could find a friend, someone who would like him as he was, but that idea was quickly shot down. It wasn’t until college that somebody actually exceeded his expectations.
That was probably why he was so close with his frat brothers who had actually been willing to suffer through cheap ass food for a month to pitch in so that he could continue to afford the college tuition when his dad was being his usual jackass self. After college, things had gradually gotten better culminating in his time at NCIS which had to be his favorite job of all the ones he’d had.
His boss actually pissed off more people than him in general. He’d never have expected what would happen after Gibbs retired, however. Somehow his boss had slowly come to mean something more to him than that, so when Gibbs moved to a riparian villa and invited Tony to join him, he’d just had to say yes.
He had no expectations of what would happen after that, but Gibbs was one of the few people who rarely let him down and he was quite happy to point to the last 5 years of their life for proof of just how well Gibbs exceeded his expectations.