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Gibbs hadn’t meant to snoop, but he had let Tony live with him. Tony was currently staying in Gibbs’ guest bedroom and as Tony was gone for the night on a date or something, Gibbs hadn’t been able to resist peeking in. He would have just poked his head in, if he hadn’t spotted the seashell.
It seemed such an odd thing to be on Tony’s dresser. Gibbs knew the man loved the beach and bringing a seashell home wasn’t out of the realm of possibility, but Gibbs figured there was more to the story than that. After all, it was in a prominent position on Tony’s dresser. It had to have some significance.
He’d felt a pull to investigate further and had stepped into Tony’s room, staring at the seashell in fascination. Gibbs didn’t touch it, despite wanting to feel how smooth it was. The shell reminded him of a spiral staircase with convex whorls and gentle porcelain like sculpture formed around a rounded aperture. Gibbs had no idea what kind of seashell it was, but he couldn’t deny that it had a majestic look to it.
Hearing the door open, Gibbs quickly left Tony’s room, but his curiosity was beyond intrigued now. He didn’t know why, but he knew he needed to find out more about the seashell and why it was in Tony’s room. Tomorrow he’d find time to swing by the library and pick up a book on shells.
He wandered down the stairs as if he’d been in his room. “Tony,” Gibbs grunted.
“Hey Gibbs.” Tony flashed him a smile.
“You’re home early?” Gibbs prodded, wondering how the date went. Tony was smiling, so it couldn’t have been completely horrible, but one didn’t come home early if it was going great.
“Yeah. He got called into work.”
Gibbs blinked at the pronoun. He’d always suspected Tony was bi, but that confirmed it. He had no idea what to do with that information or how to respond though, so he murmured, “Boat,” and left the room.
In the privacy of his basement, Gibbs considered the fact that Tony was interested in men. That meant that the feelings he had for Tony weren’t completely doomed, however, that didn’t mean that Tony actually returned them. After contemplating the merits of wooing Tony for a good hour or two, Gibbs’ mind finally turned back to the seashell.
He really needed to find out more information on the seashell. He felt like there was a story there, but he wasn’t sure if it was one Tony would share the truth of. He finally fell asleep under the boat, still thinking about the damn seashell.
In the morning, Gibbs was up and out the door before Tony even poked his head out of his bedroom. This wasn’t an uncommon occurrence, especially when Gibbs had early morning meetings in MTAC. Fortunately, MTAC was not the reason this morning and instead Gibbs was just leaving early, so that he could swing by the library during one of his coffee breaks for the day.
He should have known better than to make any plans, however, as he wasn’t even in the door at HQ when his phone went off with dispatching telling him about a new case. He called DiNozzo and gave him the crime scene address, ordering Tony to call Ziva and McGee as well. Gibbs arrived at the crime scene first, of course.
His eyebrows rose as he discovered the dead body. Well if it could be called that. It had clearly been there a long time as there was very little left except bones. That didn’t seem to stop the crab and cat? from fighting over the bones.
Gibbs had never seen a crab and cat fight over bones before. It was very strange. The cat scrabbled at the crab in an attempt to chase it away while it tried to drag the bones off with its teeth.
This was not going to make for an easy crime scene, but at least with them at the beach maybe Tony would let something slip about the seashell while they were there. Gibbs could only hope since it looked like his trip to the library wasn’t going to happen. If it didn’t go against his moral code, Gibbs would go look for a shell similar to the one he’d seen on Tony’s dresser and place it in the scene in an attempt to get Tony to talk about it.
About ten minutes later, Tony finally showed up with McGee and Ziva pulling in quickly behind him. Gibbs had managed to get the cat contained, though not before it had done even more damage to their scene. “I need an evidence bag for the crab and cat.”
Tony had started to jog over to the crime scene, but he stopped and turned around to grab gloves and evidence bags. “Uh, boss?” Tony blinked in surprise when he realized both the cat and the crab were still alive. “I don’t think an evidence bag will contain either of them.”
“Figure it out, DiNozzo,” Gibbs growled.
“Probie and Probette…” Tony started.
“Nuh uh. No way, Tony.” McGee interrupted, “You’re on your own on this one.”
Tony frowned. “Take the cat, at least. They hate me.”
”Sorry, Tony. You’re on your own.”
“Ziva?” Tony turned pleading eyes on their newest team member.
“You are out of karma.”
Everyone shot confused looks at Ziva for that one. “I think you mean, out of luck.”
“Luck, karma, they’re basically the same thing, aren’t they?”
Tony opened his mouth and then closed it, shaking his head.
“They’re really not,” McGee pointed out.
Ziva shrugged and returned to her duties. Tony continued to stare at the cat before deciding the crab would be easier to deal with and going through the equipment they had with them for something it could be trapped in. He finally settled on the first aid kit, taking all the actual first aid supplies out and piling them directly into the bag the first aid kit had originally been in.
With container in hand, Tony approached the crab. He set the first aid kit down in front of the crab with it open, in hopes that the crab would just climb inside. Of course, that didn’t work.
Tony tried to pick it up and put it into the first aid kit, but the crab clacked it’s claws menacingly. Tony decided that a stick would be safer and tried to use the stick to corral the crab into the first aid kit. He could hear Ziva and McGee snickering behind him as they sketched and took photos of the crime scene, however, he did finally get the crab into the first aid kit and the kit closed.
That just left the cat. Tony really had no idea how he was going to capture the cat without potentially ruining evidence or making a mess. Gibbs had managed to contain it through his sheer dominant persona as far as Tony could tell.
The cat wasn’t inclined to do anything Tony told it to, but a glare from Gibbs and it settled right down. It was freaky. That didn’t really help with getting the cat back to headquarters in the slightest, though.
Tony was still having a disagreement with the cat when everything else had been completed. He knew everyone was waiting on him, but he still hadn’t figured out how to capture the cat.
“DiNozzo, grab a go bag and empty it,” Gibbs ordered.
Tony nodded, moving before Gibbs had finished commanding him. He quickly emptied his go bag into his trunk and brought it back to Gibbs. Gibbs pointed at the cat and then at the bag.
Tony watched the cat slink into the bag in shock. He’d never seen animals behave this day. Sure he jumped when his boss told him too, but he’d never seen other creatures behave that way.
Gibbs zipped up the bag with the cat in it and carried it to his car. The team headed back to NCIS with the evidence they’d gathered. Ducky and Jimmy had already taken the body back to autopsy and would hopefully have some results for them soon.
Tony had a suspicion that this was going to be one of those cases that went cold. The body was so old that there was no flesh which meant very little in the way of DNA. They would be lucky if they could identify the body.
“Why were we called in? With no identification, how did NCIS get involved?”
“CGIS has been swamped lately and asked if we had someone who could take this one.”
Tony nodded in understanding. He was just about to try and pull some magic out of the internet before they had anything to go on when Abby rushed into the bullpen.
“Gibbs! Gibbs! Gibbs!”
“What is it, Abbs?”
”One of the bones isn’t a bone. It’s a wentletrap.”
“A what now?” Gibbs asked.
Abby held up the spiral staircase seashell. Gibbs realized it was the same kind of seashell that was on Tony’s dresser.
“How is the wentletrap important, Abbs?”
Abby stopped in her tracks. “Oh. I don’t know. I just thought it was cool.”
“Back to the rest of the evidence, then, Abbs,” Gibbs ordered.
Abby saluted and headed back downstairs. Tony had grown thoughtful and turned to his computer. Typing on the keyboard, Tony appeared to be focusing on whatever he was looking at.
It wasn’t long before Abby was back up in the bullpen. “It’s not a wentletrap.”
“Huh?” Tony looked at Abby in confusion.
“It’s actually a fake made by the chinese from rice-paste.”
Tony’s eyes lit up at this news. “Thanks, Abbs!”
“You know something, Tony?”
“Rice-paste wentletraps are rare, Gibbs, and almost impossible to find. Only a few people would have the ability to traffic in something like this.”
Gibbs couldn’t help asking, “How do you know this?” Maybe it would give him some clue into the shell on Tony’s dresser.
Tony shrugged. “Seashells are a hobby of mine.”
Gibbs glanced at Tony and knew he would have to accept that answer even though it was obvious there was far more to the story than what Tony had said. Maybe he could get more out of Tony at home. That combined with the identity of their victim turned out to be what they needed to crack the case wide open.
Even though they hadn’t known it when they started this case, the skeleton actually belonged to a sailor. He’d found a rice-paste wentletrap on one of his deployments and not realizing how valuable it was took it in to be appraised. The collector hadn’t been the one to kill him, but they’d managed to trace the transaction back to him.
Apparently he didn’t have a good source of rice-paste wentletrap and his greed got to him. He regretted it, but not until many years had passed. The sailor had died a good twenty years ago and wouldn’t have been found for another twenty if the collector hadn’t been so remorseful and let what was left of the sailor’s body be dumped into the ocean with the fake wentletrap.
With the confession, they managed to wrap up the case and head for home. Gibbs watched Tony enter his room and look at the wentletrap on his dresser.
“Is it tainted now?”
Tony shook his head. “Nah. I never cared about its worth.”
“Then what’s the significance?”
“The spiral staircase aspect of their shells always reminded me of the song stairway to heaven. I bring it out to remind me of those I lost.”
“Did you lose someone recently?”
“Not in the traditional sense.”
“Oh?”
“The day I came home early… I wasn’t meeting my boyfriend. He’d broken up with me previously. Apparently, there was some pretty female nurse who caught his attention. I just wasn’t ready to admit to you that we’d broken up, so I went out to dinner alone.”
“Oh, Tony.” Gibbs stepped into the room behind Tony wrapping him in his arms. “I may be a bastard, but I’m not going to judge you for who you date.”
“What about who I want to date?” Tony turned around in Gibbs’ arms to look at him.
“Are you serious?”
Tony nodded. “I think you want this too.”
Gibbs wasn’t sure which of them moved first, but then they were kissing. It wasn’t the story he was expecting to be behind the wentletrap, but he couldn’t deny that he ended up getting the ending he wanted anyway.