A/N: Hey, guys, I know it's been awhile and I don't have much business starting a new story when I haven't updated any of my other ones in so long. I understand if you resent me for it. I will defend myself, however, by saying that I found my creative juice when my father bought the entire first season of an `80s show entitled Wiseguy, with Ken Wahl and Ray Sharkey. I've fallen in love with the plot. I immediately thought Tony would make an incredible wiseguy, because he's already got the personality for it. I just needed a way to get him there.

A word to the wise, this story lightly ships Tony and Ziva, because it's fairly obvious what the writers of NCIS are doing with this whole shebang now. I figured I'd err on the side of caution and all that grand stuff and just put them together, in a way that it's not all in your face. What will be in your face, though, is what will come later on, that won't include Ziva whatsoever. Keep your eyes peeled.

Ciao,

Kat

Stepping through the elevator that morning, Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo didn't expect anything to be different. Ziva on one side, and McGee on the other, he foresaw a perfectly normal day filled with perfectly normal—if not boring—cases. He had started telling his coworkers about a fight he'd seen one time as a kid when his father had taken him to a baseball game and then dinner in Brooklyn. Everything seemed fine.

"…it was just like in Wiseguy when Vinny and Sonny—" Tony stopped short as he neared the bullpen. A short, slender blonde was standing with her back to the group, talking to Gibbs. For a split second, he wondered if it was EJ, back from her sabbatical in New York, but was soon proven wrong when she turned around. She was just as pretty as Barrett had been, with a charming smile and slightly upturned nose, but her eyes were green, not blue. Her hair, too, was slightly different, the hairline forming the shallowest widow's peak and falling in well-managed layers around her face.

Gibbs glanced between them and smirked. "Eileen O'Shea, meet my team." Gesturing toward McGee first, he murmured, "Special Agent Timothy McGee shares responsibility with Abby, who you met earlier, over intelligence and computers." Tim smiled and stuck out his hand for her to shake, but she declined with a polite smile. "Next, Special Agent Ziva Davíd. She is our newest official agent, but was a Mossad Liaison Officer for five years, a Mossad Officer in Israel for much longer." Ziva smiled, but said nothing.

Tony wasn't interested in the conversation anymore by the time Gibbs introduced him simply as "Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo." No 'Senior Field Agent' or 'Witty Movie Aficionado.' Just "Special Agent." He called B.S. on that one until Gibbs clapped him on the back and told him to meet Eileen O'Shea, Director Vance, and himself in Upstairs Conference Room Fourteen in half an hour.

Tony stared in bewilderment at their retreating forms. "What was that about, huh? I only just met her…"

"Maybe," Tim began, crossing the bullpen to his desk, "they want something from you?" Tony translated this as, Maybe she wants you. And that was obvious, because what woman didn't want him?

He felt Ziva's shoulder (he knew her energy) brush against his and looked down at her mischievous eyes. "Or maybe Gibbs wants to make it clear this one is off limits." Tony was silent, but Ziva had more to say. "I saw you cashing her out. You think she is attractive, no?" She smirked, a low chuckle escaping her.

Tony didn't defend himself, nor did he correct her mistaken idiom. Sure, maybe he had given her the old once-over. But he wouldn't say he found her attractive. No, she was just…intriguing. But that wasn't anyone's business.

"Anyway, like I was saying," the senior field agent continued, "this kid, Monty, had another guy, Sid, in a headlock, but he was simultaneously ramming his knee into Sid's stomach while Sid did the ol' one-two on Monty's kidneys." Pausing to laugh, Tony reminisced. "It was genius, really. Pure comedy. We were kind of stuck, Dad and I, because we'd have to somehow walk around 'em to get to our car."

Ziva held up a hand. "Did you not hear a word—"

"Nah," Tony said with a smile, cutting her off, "they weren't saying anything. They actually kind of sounded like cavemen with the—" He grunted and beat his chest. "You know. But we waited until the cops showed up and took control over the scene."

Tim snorted. "I take it that's how you found out you wanted to be a police officer?" He typed something into his computer. "Nice."

"No, McSnobby, it wasn't." Tony readjusted his tie and smoothed his hair. "Although, it did influence the decision a little." He stood, grabbing a pen and notepad from the top drawer of his desk. "Now that I feel sufficiently underappreciated, I'm going to go figure out what I've done wrong in Boss's eyes. If you'll excuse me…"

As he climbed the stairs of NCIS Headquarters, he didn't realize it would be the last time for a while that he'd feel as appreciated as he did just then.

"You want me to do what?" Tony sat, jaw as slack as the rest of his body was tense, at the Director's words. "I have a job!"

Gibbs eyed him, nonverbal warnings swimming in his clear blues even as he said, "Yeah, DiNozzo, we know. But this is relevant to our case." Tony still shook his head, both unsure and noncommittal. "You've been an excellent agent for nearly ten years, Tony. Loyal, observant, logical, level-headed. They're the traits we look for in an agent, and you've given them by a hundredfold."

Eileen jumped in. "Those traits are also what we look for in a role like this, Special Agent DiNozzo." If Tony could have run from the room when she spoke, he would have. Eileen's voice was low and smooth, while still being acutely feminine, in a way that made his pulse race. "We need someone who's sincere enough to win this guy over, but someone smart enough to pull this heist off."

"And we are positive that person is me?" Tony murmured shakily, a nervous grin plastered on his face. "Guys, come on, I've done my fair share of undercover work in my day, but this … this might be the one that breaks the camel's back."

Gibbs shook his head and Vance spoke, his syllables well-timed and deliberate. "You've been on the inside before, Special Agent DiNozzo." Tony cursed the Director's subtle reminder of Jeanne Benoit. "You know how the work goes. You win his trust, do his bidding, and stay in contact with us."

"I've done this once," Tony said through his teeth, fiddling with a scrap of paper hanging off the edge of his notebook. "It didn't end well…" He directed his gaze at Gibbs. "…for anyone involved."

Vance sighed. "We can't make you take the assignment, but if you do turn it down, we may reconsider the next time an opportunity arises." It was a clear but simple way of saying, 'Take it or leave it,' but it impacted Tony's thought process. "I was thinking Special Agent Gray would be just as good of a candidate for the job."

"I don't know what you're trying to pull," Eileen snapped, standing, "but I've looked at both agents' files. I don't want Gray. I want DiNozzo. If I can't have DiNozzo, I'll do the job myself. No offense, but I don't like what that would entail." Her green eyes turned nearly black, pupils dilated with the adrenaline pulsing within her veins from agitation. Facing Tony, she said, "Special Agent DiNozzo, Ricky 'The Rocket' Roccisano shot a Marine's brains out, and you're just going to sit there and cry the blues about some past incident?" She received no response, which only seemed to fuel her. "What was it, a girl? Did a girl get her heart broken?"

Tony blinked, but said nothing. How could he? He had no argument about that. In the grander scheme, there wasn't anything he could say. She was right. He had to let go of the past. Especially when he was so close to having the future he'd dreamt of.

O'Shea leaned over the table. Tony didn't particularly feel the urge to look down her shirt, because he felt that if he did, he'd be missing something important. Like maybe his death, what with the stare-down she was giving him. "Special Agent DiNozzo, I know I'm FBI, but I don't give a damn about the hierarchy of the federal system. All I care about right now is the OCB, and where they're leading us is exactly where that case file you're sitting in front of is: The Rocket."

"Tony," Gibbs murmured, his voice raspy, "justice gets ugly sometimes." Tony nodded. "But what's uglier is letting some scum-of-the-earth mob boss take control of a population just because they think they're better than everyone else. Half of these guys come from squalor, and they climb the ladder to wealth by killing off the small guy." His blue eye's showed the intensity he held inside. "You can help everyone stop it. We're all on the same team here. We've all got your back."

Tony took a deep breath and let it out slowly, looking first at Gibbs, then Vance, then Eileen, and finally down at the folder that sat in front of him. "So, you've all got my back?" Each of them nodded. Eileen grinned triumphantly at him, knowing she had won. "Where do I sign?"

"You're going where?" Ziva rolled over and wrapped an arm around Tony's bare waist. "Why?" She settled into his chest; he could feel her eyelashes tickle his collarbone.

"I'm being let go, Zeev," Tony said with a sigh. "You know I'd love to stay in the Navy Yard, but sometimes things come up. So, I'm going to do a little traveling." He smoothed her hair. "Besides, this might be better than you think." He tried to act as solemn as possible. After staging a fit earlier in the office, after stomping around the bullpen and berating McGee's intelligence, Tony thought it was time for him to calm down and to accept the fact he'd just been fired from his favorite job ever. To his team, it still seemed like he'd lost his job—and Ziva was far from finished apologizing for screwing it up, Tony knew, even though she hadn't had a thing to do with it—so he was fine with it.

She frowned. "And what makes you think that?" With the lights off and the way Ziva was squinting to glare at him, Tony had a difficult time seeing her brown eyes.

"Well, my dear," he began, "you and I won't be in such close quarters anymore. That means we'll be distant, and you know the saying, don't you?"

"You'll be within calling distance?" she guessed and entwined her ankles with his.

Tony shook his head. "Well, yeah, of course I will…sometimes. But no. Try again." Their game of footsie continued for a few moments while the former Mossad officer drew the correct idiom from the depths of her memory.

"You'll be…keeping your distance?" Ziva traced Tony's mouth with her fingertip. His lower lip twitched, sensitive to her touch.

He purred. "Getting closer. Oh, so closer…Third time's a charm, Zeev."

Ziva let out a huff. "No. I give up." Pouting, she rolled away from him, taking most of the covers on her bed with her. Tony chased her and pulled her back into his chest.

Planting kisses in her hair, he whispered, "Distance makes the heart grow fonder."

"Ay, Dih-Noht-zo," Tobias Fornell greeted softly from in front of Tony's desk. "I hear we're going to be working closely soon."

Tony groaned, willing a black hole to appear in the floor. As witty as the FBI agent could be sometimes, there were far too many experiences in Agent DiNozzo's past where Fornell was accusing him of something. His being around just made everything more difficult.

Cringing, Tony answered, "Yeah, Agent Fornell, I guess so."

"Here's everything you need to know," the older agent said, plopping a sealed, "confidential"-stamped envelope on the younger's desk. "Codes, names, addresses, numbers. You start tomorrow." Fornell turned and started for the elevator, perching a fedora on his head. Pausing mid-stride, he turned back around. "You'll do well, Tony. Anything you're nervous about?"

Tony nodded. "A few things, yeah."

Fornell laughed. "One word, Tony."

"What's that?"

Tobias spun on his heel and continued to the elevator. Before the doors swept shut, he called, "Fugeddaboutit."

Tony smiled and repeated the word under his breath a few times. Yeah, DiNozzo. Fugeddaboutit. You've got this. You're Italian! You can pull this off. He practiced his Brooklyn accent in his head and then decided that doing so was a good idea, rather than speaking it out loud. Ziva slipped into her seat across from him and stared.

"What are you mouthing?" she asked, pressing keys on her keyboard.

"It's something from…a movie." While it was only Ziva, who wouldn't have told anyone about his assignment, Tony was hesitant to explain in too much detail. The mafia was pretty cutthroat, at times, and he wouldn't want the one woman he was finally serious about to fall prey to their methods of extracting information. "You know, all those gangster movies. You wouldn't know it."

"Gangster?" Ziva thought for a moment, her lips pursed. "You mean 'ay, ay, ay, diggety dog'?" Tony blinked, unsure of what he had just witnessed, and then burst into laughter. "What is so funny?"

As Special Agent, he had seen countless things that brought him to tears—sometimes out of grief, but mostly out of laughter. Kate Todd had a sharp tongue that rivaled her wit. Ducky's wandering stories were always a comfort. Gibbs' comments usually held an underlying joke, although occasionally it was a bit difficult to find. Abby was always a fun time and McGee was just fun to laugh at. But once Ziva Davíd had joined the team, Tony found himself laughing much more often. She seemed to do things that struck him speechless, things that he had never seen nor heard. The woman was a surprise within herself.

"Perhaps," Tony spluttered, "I'm just surprised you spoke gangs-ta at me…" Ziva's lips made an 'O' of understanding. "A gangster is not a gangsta. Gangsters are classy." And I, I am a gangster.

A/N: That wasn't so painful to sit through, was it? =] I want to just throw a shout-out to my amazing beta, surferdude8225. She hasn't beta'd this one yet, but she's under a lot of stress with schoolwork right now so I said it was okay. Let's all give lots of virtual hugs and kisses to her, okay! And maybe cookies. Cookies make everything better.