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Tony couldn’t help the feeling of shock coursing through his system. His partner, Danny, was dirty. Honestly, he probably should have expected it. This wasn’t the first time that his partner had turned out to be dirty.
He’d gone through three police departments and so many partners that it wasn’t funny. Most of the time the partners left due to personality conflicts. However, there was one that was actually dirty at each police department.
It seemed to be a pattern that within two years a dirty cop would become his partner and DiNozzo would be forced to expose them and then leave the police department before his betrayal of the cop brotherhood resulted in his death. First Peoria, then Philly, and finally Baltimore, would it ever end? It was different this time, he had an offer from a federal agency that he could take instead of going to another police department.
Still despite the benignant appearance of the director of NCIS, Tony didn’t trust that NCIS would be any different than the police departments had been. It didn’t matter that he was going to be working under one Leroy Jethro Gibbs who had helped expose his dirty partner. Tony just didn’t trust the guy not to be dirty himself. He took the job, however. It had to be better than another police department, right?
Tony worked for Gibbs for two years, keeping him at arm’s length. Well not really, Tony tried to immerse himself into every part of Gibbs’ life. He wanted to know everything there was to know about his new partner.
He needed to know if he was dirty. He found out about the guy’s fourth wife and couldn’t help wondering if the fact that Gibbs hadn’t told him meant the guy really was dirty. He tried to pry and get information on Shannon and their daughter Kelly, but Gibbs wouldn’t talk about it.
He shut down the conversation anytime Tony tried to bring it up. It didn’t sit right with Tony. Still he could never find any evidence that Gibbs was actually dirty.
They’d been working together for two years and Gibbs lived up to his reputation. He was a bastard through and through, but Tony found he liked it. There were no games with Gibbs.
He expected you to do your job and nothing less. He didn’t like it when Gibbs hired Caitlin Todd from the Secret Service, but he couldn’t do anything to stop it. He had to admit, he wasn’t looking forward to a profiler on the team, but the chances of Gibbs hiding his being dirty grew slimmer with her on the team.
When they encountered a computer geek, Tim McGee, on a case, Tony encouraged Gibbs to hire him. They could use skills like that. Tony couldn’t describe what he felt when Gibbs listened to him and did as he suggested.
Now, he had two allies of sorts to help confirm whether Gibbs was dirty or not. Kate wasn’t much of an ally, more like a pesky sister who loved pointing out your faults, but he knew if she thought something was off with Gibbs that she would report it. He fully planned to make one of the Probie’s tasks for his first day be to hack Gibbs’ life and see what he could find.
He didn’t think that Gibbs’ first wife should be a secret in the first place and he didn’t care if it came out. All he needed to know was if Gibbs was dirty or not. McGee nodded a little confused by the request, but doing as Tony ordered. Nothing came back.
Tony was forced to face the fact that Gibbs might actually not be dirty. It felt like a burden had been lifted off his shoulders and at the same time he felt dirty himself. He’d gone to such lengths to dig into Gibbs’ life just because he’d been burned too many times and now he didn’t know how to make up for it.
He felt like he had to come clean to Gibbs. He headed over to Gibbs’ house, walking down to the basement as he knew that was where Gibbs would be. He just sat on the lower steps and watched Gibbs work on his boat.
“I’m sorry.”
“Never say you’re sorry it’s a sign of weakness.”
“I know, but I did something horrible to you.”
“I know.”
Tony blinked his planned apology shooting out of his head. “You do? How?”
“You don’t really think that I can’t tell when someone is looking into my life, do you?”
Tony looked sheepish and scratched the back of his head. “I guess I hadn’t thought about it that way.”
Gibbs shook his head with a smile. “Did you find what you needed?”
“Yeah, I think I did. You’re not going to fire me?”
“Nah. You’re still the best investigator I’ve worked with.”
Tony nodded leaning back against the steps finally feeling at peace and like he’d found a place he belonged. Things wouldn’t be perfect. They never were, but at least he’d finally found a job where he didn’t have to worry about corruption from his partner.