Levity

Tony stopped dead in his tracks as he entered autopsy and heard Gibbs and Jimmy laughing together. “Was this a sign of the apocalypse?” He couldn’t help wondering to himself.

He’d originally been looking for Ducky to check out something that had been bothering him that he didn’t want to admit to Gibbs, but couldn’t do that with Gibbs and Jimmy around, so he went to see what they were up to. Since they seemed to be experiencing a levity together that was practically unheard of for Gibbs.

Using his best agent skills he tried to sneak up on them. Of course, no one sneaks up on Gibbs.

“DiNozzo! Stop lurking.” Gibbs barked.

“Hey Black lung. Gibbs” Tony waved sheepishly to Jimmy and nodded his head to Gibbs.

“Tony.” Jimmy greeted back. He was still a little nervous as this would be the first test of his rapprochement with Gibbs.

Gibbs glared at DiNozzo. “What do you want?”

“Oh nothing, boss. Just wanted to know what was so funny.” Tony couldn’t help poking his nose into anything and everything after all. Even when he knew it would get him trouble.

Gibbs commanded. “Get back to work.”

Before Tony left to follow his boss’ orders, he caught a glimpse of what was on Jimmy’s screen. “Wha?” He mumbled as he realized they had a picture of him dressed in drag. “Where did you guys get that?”

“DiNozzo!” Gibbs growled warning him to get back to work. Truthfully Gibbs didn’t want to get into the conversation as to why him and Jimmy were looking at a picture of DiNozzo. Not only was it majorly embarrassing, but he knew it would take more explaining than they had time for or Tony would take it the wrong way.

Tony looked between Gibbs and Jimmy and his shoulders slumped. He thought the two of them were the only ones who didn’t see him as a joke. He slunk off sadly to return to work leaving Jimmy and Gibbs to stare at each other at how quiet Tony had become.

“That’s not good.” Jimmy muttered. He knew how much Tony hated being seen as a joke and had a bad feeling that they’d just made him feel that way. Truthfully, Jimmy had been surprised when Gibbs approached him as he thought Gibbs hated him, but then he discovered Gibbs was just jealous of the rapport he shared with DiNozzo. They’d made a rapprochement then and there once they realized they both cared about DiNozzo too much. They’d agreed not to fight over him and to let him choose one of them or both of them as he so chose and they’d respect his decision.

This rapprochement had formed a bond between them as they realized they now had someone to talk about what they loved about Tony that would actually understand. That’s what they’d been doing when Tony heard them laughing. They weren’t laughing at him, but at each other really as they had a lot more in common than they’d ever thought.

Gibbs nodded in agreement to Jimmy’s statement and headed after DiNozzo. “I’ll get it sorted out. Dinner, my place tonight?”

“Sure. Bring Tony maybe we can explain.” Jimmy suggested.

Gibbs grunted. He had already planned on doing that.