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In a way, it was how he got the job.
But once he was a fully-fledged NCIS agent, Gibbs had to say he found Tony’s habit of talking about nothing incredibly irritating. Yes, it got the job done—people would always tell idiots more than they would intelligent cops—but it seemed like he never stopped talking about nothing.
Worse: he encouraged the habit in Ducky. If allowed, Tony would sit in autopsy half the day, twirling around on Ducky’s chair and listening to the good doctor wax lyrical on pretty much any subject. At crime scenes, he would ask questions – probe for more details on Ducky’s stories. What was really irritating was that it didn’t seem to interrupt his work any. The two of them could process an entire crime scene—alone—while seeming to have an indepth discussion on Italian cuisine.
Now that had been the start of a truly frustrating case. And Tony had been particularly annoying throughout all of it – cracking bad jokes and making personal comments, right up to the point that Gibbs had really begun to contemplate strangling him.
Now, though, the case was over, and Tony seemed to have finally shut up. He was quietly slinging his jacket over his shoulders when Gibbs rounded the bullpen, intent on marking everything up for the Director’s signature. “Going home, DiNozzo?”
“’Less you need me here,” he said, and Gibbs paused at the resignation he could hear. He glanced over his shoulder, inwardly frowning at the weariness evident on his newest agent’s face. He didn’t answer for a moment, just watching as the silence stretched, and Tony slowly began to draw himself up. His shoulders rolled back, pulling him up to his full height, and he settled his head more squarely. A smile began spreading its way across his face, until Gibbs shook his head, keeping eye-contact.
“If I wanted you here, I woulda said so.”
The air seemed to go out of Tony, but his smile was far more reassuring than the one he’d been about to pull. He lifted a hand in farewell. “Case like this deserves a cold one and a warm body. You should think about getting one or both of them for yourself, Special Agent Gibbs, NCIS.”
Gibbs rolled his eyes theatrically, and Tony nodded before heading off to the elevator. He disappeared fairly quickly, and Gibbs continued on to his desk, frowning to himself. He hadn’t thought Tony had even noticed how tough this case had been.
“‘The time has come,’ the Walrus said, ‘To talk of many things,’” a soft voice quoted, and Gibbs looked up as Ducky leaned over the partition behind his desk, watching the elevator with a knowing eye.
“Lewis Carroll, Ducky?”
“Agent DiNozzo does so inspire the child in all of us,” he replied with a smile. “I’ve said it before, Jethro, but that is an interesting young man you’ve brought us.”
“How so?”
“When a man speaks of nothing, he thinks of nothing, which begs the question of what it is he would otherwise be thinking,” he pointed out, then took a sharp breath and pushed away from the partition. “Or perhaps I’m overthinking things. There’s always the possibility he is the fool he appears.”
“I’m starting to think so,” Gibbs muttered. “I’m starting to think the reason he moved around so much is because his captains realised he’s not playing the idiot.”
“Or the opposite, perhaps.”
Gibbs glanced at him again, and Ducky shrugged philosophically.
“Most men find it frustrating when their perceptions are proven incorrect. As I’m sure you’re finding now that you suspect Agent DiNozzo to be not quite as responsible as you hoped he would be.”
“But…?” he prompted.
“But, I think…” He hesitated, then tilted his head, a small smirk playing on his lips. “I think you have brought us a very interesting young man, Jethro.”
“When I was a kid, I wasn’t allowed to watch a lotta TV,” Tony said absently, and Gibbs frowned at him, only to wince as the movement aggravated his bruises.
All week, Tony had been pissing him off. He’d been taking long lunches, making those personal comments of his, finding excuses to wander around, playing video games, and just generally being a smartass. So when they finally caught a case and got a real lead, he wasn’t about to trust Tony to work autonomously. So he’d left Parsons at the office tracking down phone numbers and dragged Tony along to their witness interview.
But, of course, their witness had turned out to be their perpetrator. Gibbs had been fascinated by the way Tony had switched personalities as soon as the guy showed up – suddenly becoming quiet, focussed and cold. So of course, he hadn’t been paying as much attention as he should have and got clocked upside the head for his distraction.
Probie mistake, of course, but it had been just the right angle to make Gibbs see double, so he was a little fuzzy on the details of the fight. But he knew that Tony had been bent over a desk at one point, there had been at least three guys, that he had decked one, thrown one through the plate glass window, and that Tony’s odd comment about one of his lieutenants calling him a terrier may have actually related to his dirty fighting technique. Gibbs could swear there were teeth marks on some of the guys’ wrists.
Short fight made shorter story, they had won the fight, and were now waiting for backup and the paramedics. The bad guys were all either handcuffed, knocked out or had disappeared (again, he wasn’t completely sure how many bad guys there had been), Gibbs was probing his blossoming bruises and Tony was wavering where he sat. He probably should have expected Tony to start annoying him sooner.
“I mean, a lot of it had to do with the fact that on the rare occasion I was allowed to see a movie, my imagination would totally spaz out and I’d become convinced my parents were aliens or daywalkers or something—” He paused to give Gibbs a look. “At least two of my stepmothers were Stepford Wives, but I only figured that out in high school,” he confided, then turned forward again, back to his story. “—but most of it was because my parents liked pushing me into sports and other manly, active activities. Am I standing up?”
“No, DiNozzo.”
“Oh, good, because I can’t really feel my knees,” he said vaguely, then waved his hand with a boneless wrist. “Anyway. At Rhode Island, we were allowed to watch TV and movies and stuff and I discovered Magnum. Magnum PI, Magpie! So awesome. He used to be a marine too, y’know,” he added, pointing at Gibbs, who eyed Tony warily, finally recognising the concussion.
“How many of me can you see, DiNozzo?”
“I hate that question. It’s like the department shrinks asking,” He paused again to lay a hand on Gibbs’ shoulder, widening his eyes and lowering his voice, “‘And how does that make you feel…?’ You know they want the bad answer, but if you give them the bad answer then you won’t be able to go back to work and you’ll be stuck on desk duty and you really suck at paperwork. So you give them the lie because that means you’ll be able to go home and drink it off, like any good cop does—we’re all alcoholics in the making, y’know. Cops, I mean, not agents, because I am a cop, not an agent, even if I’ve got the prettier badge—and the psych report says ‘yeah, he’s gold’ when you’re not. So, Special Agent Gibbs, I am fine. It makes me feel bad, but not overly guilty, because I did what I did in the pursuit of justice, and isn’t that screwed up? Also, I see one of you. The other two are incomplete and so don’t count.”
Gibbs lifted an eyebrow, and Tony continued gazing at him blearily for a few moments, then nodded and sat back.
“Anyway. While Magnum was on the air, the Columbo movies were around, too. Columbo was so weird. The way he’d just wander around, asking ‘just one more thing’ to catch you off guard. S’ridiculous.” He mimed holding a cigar and gave the air in front of him a cock-eyed look. “Just one more thing, Mr. Cornberry – about that ring you’ve got on y’finger. How much it cost? It’s m’wife, y’see – coming up to our anniversary an’ she wants t’get me something special. Nice ring like that, boy, I could really see myself wearing somethin’ like that.”
Gibbs watched his impression, intrigued, then turned his head to look at their witness-turned-perpetrator. Sure enough, there was a thick silver ring on his finger. Possibly responsible for the gash above Tony’s eyebrow.
“But the thing is, Columbo’s crimes take like a week to solve, and yeah, he’s a lieutenant so he can take the time if he wants, but my freaking god, can you imagine a real cop having that kind of time? I mean, agents, yeah, this job’s downright slack,” He stopped himself a second after he’d said it, shooting Gibbs an apologetic look until he noticed the returning smirk. Then he took a quick breath and turned forward again. “But a homicide detective…? No freaking way. Detectives don’t have time for the whole subtle thing. You can’t be all cute and bumbling and a total waste of space.”
“DiNozzo.”
“Yeah, Boss?”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
Tony frowned, his brow furrowing as real, honest disappointment flared in his eyes. That was a sign, to Gibbs, that he probably should have let Tony keep talking, but he was tired and cranky and they were both probably concussed. He didn’t have time for DiNozzo’s rambling.
“What I’m trying to say, here, Boss, is that I screwed up,” he said bluntly, only the slight slur to his words making him sound anything but alert. “I’m not used to this agent shtick. Back on the force, you took the guy into interrogation, got him to talk and moved on to the next case. This whole military nicety thing just… it’s still new to me. I know screwed up, and I’m sorry, and it won’t happen again.”
“Never apologise. Sign of weakness,” he said automatically, then frowned and tilted his head to meet Tony’s gaze. “I was supposed to get all that from some speech about Columbo?”
“Hey, it was all there if you listened.”
“You know, sometimes, DiNozzo, I have this real urge to slap you upside the head.”
“Be nice to me, I have a concussion.”
Over the months, Gibbs slowly got used to Tony’s round-the-bout way of talking about things that mattered. It annoyed him on occasion, but usually only when Tony was doing it with information about the case. Otherwise, he could understand. Hell, sometimes he wanted nothing more than to join in.
So, after the scene was handed off to the FBI and NSA and whoever else wanted in on the Terrorist-Op fallout, Gibbs finally shook off the paramedics and his senior field agent and actively went in search of Tony.
It took a few minutes, but he eventually found him sitting on one the crates out on the docks. According to the stamped lettering on the crates, he was actually sitting on a box of ammunition, and leaning back against one filled with sugar. With the bandaged knife wound on his arm and the gun cradled in his lap, he made an oddly amusing picture, and Gibbs paused for a moment, trying to figure out why it was funny.
But, Gibbs rarely managed to sneak up on Tony, and it wasn’t long before Tony’s eyes slid around to meet his, silently telling him to come up, speak, or go away. He abandoned his examination to instead climb up the crates to join him. Once he was up there and could sit down beside him, Gibbs could understand why Tony had come here, of all places. You could see the ocean here, reflecting the lights of the docks. After a day like theirs, it was an oddly comforting sight to see.
“War on Terror, huh, boss?” Tony asked without looking around, but he nodded anyway.
“Yup.”
“You have anything to do with nine-eleven?”
“Nope.”
“How about figuring out who did?”
Gibbs frowned, then caught what he was saying and turned his head to level a look. Tony grinned back at him cheekily, and Gibbs made the conscious decision not to hide his smile, knowing it wasn’t the joke it sounded like. “Bit soon to be crackin’ wise about that sort of thing, DiNozzo. Especially to an agent who deals with terrorism every day.”
“Well, I wasn’t gonna win any awards for sensitivity anyway,” he said philosophically, and Gibbs gave him another glance before turning back to the ocean.
“I was in Germany last year. Came back home September fourteenth. They figured I had better things to do a little closer to home.”
“Yeah…”
They sat in silence for a few minutes, before Gibbs elbowed him gently, far below the bandage. “Gonna fall off?”
Tony didn’t even react at first, but eventually took a breath, letting it out in a heavy sigh. “Not a big fan of tattoos… the whole needle thing, y’know? Just… nyghh. But body art as a concept…” He moved forward so he could show Gibbs a spot just above the bandage: an old scar from a bullet wound. Compared to that, the shallow knife wound was nothing but pain. “I figure that if I piss enough people off, eventually I’ll get a line of scars from my shoulder to my elbow. Very cool.”
Gibbs smirked. “Now that’s suffering for your art, DiNozzo.”
They both chuckled silently, facing forwards again. Gibbs never had any idea what Tony was thinking, but he found himself thinking over the past thirty hours. It was hard to believe that it hadn’t been days since he’d gotten that midnight call from dispatch. He’d been working on the boat, of course, and Decartes had been asleep. If the female shriek he’d heard in the background was any indication, Tony had been wide awake and fairly busy when Gibbs called. It said a lot that Tony hadn’t wasted any time in getting to the scene when he’d been engaged in that particular activity.
They’d figured out the terrorist connection about four hours ago. By that point, Tony had given up his smartass persona in favour of DiNozzo the Cynical Cop, Decartes was talking an octave higher than normal and Gibbs was demanding short, bullet-point sentences from Ducky. The terrorist connection had been the last straw – none of them had really spoken to one another since. Because of all that, he didn’t really have a clue what Tony’s mood was, but he had a feeling it was at least tinged by physical shock. Explosions weren’t fun for anyone.
“Never dealt with a terrorist before,” Tony said suddenly. “Drug Lords, Mafia bosses, Child Pornography rings, really possessive ex-boyfriends… Makes me wonder what classifies a ‘terrorist’.”
Gibbs’s eyebrows lowered in slight annoyance. This wasn’t what he came here for. “DiNo-”
“Most cops I know? Never had to fire their weapon at a suspect. Never gotten the crap beaten out of them. Sure as hell never got blown up,” he added irritably. “You know how many times that stuff’s happened to me?”
Gibbs felt his irritation fade. “You’ve been blown up before?” He did know that, of course – it was in Tony’s file. But this was the kind of information you didn’t know until you were told. It was a kind of professional courtesy.
“Twice. Once when I was just a uni – got me my promotion to detective, actually. Bad guy wanted to get rid of a bunch of evidence, and I just happened to walk into the room as it went up. Once in Philedelphia. My first Undercover Op there. Mafia. Really shoulda seen it coming.” He fell silent for a few seconds. “A lot of bad guys terrorise me.”
Gibbs slowly nodded, looking first down at DiNozzo’s upper thigh, then up at his face, before his eyes dropped to the kid’s chest, instead. He was starting to figure out the topic of conversation. He could definitely empathise.
“I figured that since these were actually ‘terrorists’, I’d feel different after taking them down.”
“Maybe something like Captain America?” he asked, but Tony didn’t smile.
“Little less like Bruce Wayne, maybe.”
Gibbs had given up comic books back when he was a kid, but even he knew there was a very real difference between Batman and Bruce Wayne. The difference only grew when you started comparing Bruce Wayne to characters like Captain America. Without even really thinking about it, he could pick out reasons why Tony would relate to Bruce Wayne. Poor little rich idiot kid that he was…
“You know, back in the early forties,” Gibbs paused to make sure his tone was light and absent-minded. “Batman carried a gun.”
Tony frowned, his head twitching but not turning toward him. “I thought Batman was the one that hated guns.”
“Times change, DiNozzo.”
“Yeah?”
He nodded, glancing sideways again. DiNozzo was watching him from the corner of his eye, so he kept nodding, shifting his gaze back to the horizon. “You ever see the movie Speed?”
“Never been a big fan of movies, boss.”
“Now that,” he said, shifting to look at him properly. “That surprises me, DiNozzo.”
“I’ve been told I’m full of them.” He hesitated, then rolled onto his bad shoulder, his jaw clenching and words coming out between gritted teeth as he asked, “So, this movie? Keanu Reeves, right? Sandra Bullock? The bus one.”
“Didn’t have a goddamn thing to do with Allah.”
DiNozzo smiled, a brief flash of teeth. “How about a terrorist?”
“Six years ago, it was a terrorist operation. You wanna know what it’s about now?”
“I dunno, boss. Typical day on public transport?”
Gibbs laughed, and DiNozzo grinned, rolling back against the wall with a sigh.
“S’a good point, Boss. You make a good point.”