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McGee blinked as he watched Tony and Gibbs face off in hand to hand combat. “When did Tony become Gibbs’ equal?”
“I’m pretty sure they’ve been evenly matched for years.” Bishop pointed out gently, “They know each other too well to be anything other than equals.”
McGee shook his head, still struggling to wrap his brain around that concept. Tony had always been better than him with physical skills, but it had been Gibbs that McGee looked up to and he’d rather forgotten how good Tony was over the years. It was like a punch to the gut to realize that Tony really did deserve that SFA position.
The sparring match drew to a close and Tony and Gibbs hit the showers while McGee and Bishop returned to the bullpen having finished their sparring first and just stayed to watch Tony and Gibbs and pick up any pointers they could. They’d already caught a case before Tony and Gibbs even made it back upstairs, one sending them to Norfolk.
Apparently, a dead sailor washed ashore and they had to figure out why. Of course by the time they arrived, the scene was utter chaos. Not only did they have a few NCIS agents milling around, but what seemed like the entire crew from the dead sailor's ship had joined the melee too.
An orderly crime scene, it was not. The only saving grace was that the actual crime scene was in the water. Still the NCIS agents especially would get a talking to about how to secure a crime scene and not mess up the evidence.
Gibbs growled a lot, his blue eyes sparking with anger at the way the crime scene was handled. Frustrated beyond belief, Gibbs took Bishop and left to setup what they needed to check out the underwater scene; leaving Tony and McGee in charge of the scene on the shore.
“Isn’t it great that Gibbs trusts us with a contaminated crime scene, McGeek?” Tony asked with a flippant wave at the scene.
“It could be worse, Tony.” Tim offered, “We could have been the ones to contaminate the crime scene.”
“Aw, McGeek. Don’t say that. You’ve just jinxed us.”
“What?”
“Be extra careful, McGee. We don’t want to be the ones that mess up this case and you just increased our chances of screwing something up.”
“Don’t be superstitious, Tony. We’ll be fine.”
“Probie, stop talking. You’re making it worse.” Tony barked. He’d be relieved if they made it through this day without a complete disaster at this point.
McGee shot Tony a dark look, but he did shut up. Tony deserved that much from him. Tony had taken charge of questioning the witnesses, leaving McGee to bag and tag the evidence.
Of course, the witnesses were more interested in Tony and his older blue-eyed companion. Apparently, Gibbs had made an impression on them already. Still Tony steered the conversations back to the dead sailor each time, so that he could finish collecting statements.
Everything was going smoothly. Tony was just starting to believe that they would get through the day without an incident when he heard “Uh oh” from McGee. He turned around and shook his head. “Gibbs is going to kill you.”
“Just help me out before he returns.”
Tony chuckled and lended McGee a hand out of the quicksand. “You better hope you didn’t lose any crucial pieces of evidence or Gibbs really will have your head.”
McGee shook his head. “Everything was already bagged and tagged that I could see. I was just doing a final check when…” McGee trailed off and pointed to the ground.
Tony shook his head and they quickly finished up with the crime scene. Unfortunately, all of the evidence pointed to the sailor committing suicide. Unless Gibbs and Ellie found something suspicious at the underwater scene, Tony was pretty sure this one would be ruled a suicide and closed.
McGee seemed rather introspective after they returned and Tony wasn’t sure if it was the sailor and his apparent decision that the world was better off without him or something else. Tony quickly typed up his notes and did as much on his reports as he could without Gibbs’ and Bishop’s info before switching to one of the games on his computer while he waited. He looked up as someone came and stood at his desk, pausing the game as he realized it was McGee. “Something on your mind, Probie?”
“I’m sorry, Tony.”
“Sorry for what?”
“For not giving you the respect you deserve all these years.”
“What brought this on?”
“Just something Bishop said made me start thinking and I realized that I really hadn’t appreciated all that you do for the team. I thought I could do your job better than you could because you always seemed to be goofing off, but I was wrong.”
“You given up on being SFA, Probie?”
“No. I just don’t want to do it to the detriment of you anymore and I’d love it if you start teaching me, so that I could take it over some day.”
“No problem, Probie. I’ll make sure to add that to your development plan.”
McGee glared. He hated those things.
Tony waved him off. “Don’t worry about it, Probie. Gibbs and I will work something out. Glad you’re finally ready to step up, Probie. I’ve been waiting for this for a long time. Gibbs was starting to doubt, but I knew you'd come through eventually.”