Nocturnal
Gibbs: He does his best work at night.
Abby: So he tells us. ("SWAK")
He knows he should be at home, in his bed, asleep.
Abby is sleeping, and Ziva is sleeping, and the Probie is sleeping, and if Gibbs isn't sleeping then he's at least working on his boat. Tony, however, is very much awake and miles from his bed, even though it is… he stretches and looks at the glow of his watch… 1:27 a.m.
He has a very comfortable bed. King-sized, with expensive bedding. 600 thread count sheets and a dozen or so pillows. It's the most perfect place he has ever slept, which is unfortunate, because all of that luxury is going to waste right now. Tony is miles from his bed, sitting in a parked car in front of Petty Officer Michaels' apartment, killing off the remnants of the evening's pizza.
They have shadowed the petty officer for three days, hoping he would lead them to his secret stash of drugs. Of course, that was the problem: three days. Tony could tell from the first interview that Petty Officer Michaels was a night waker like himself. He'd recognized the pattern, not to mention the fact that the petty officer had seven pillows on a twin sized bed. Which is precisely why Tony is on a self appointed stakeout on a chilly November night.
It started when he was five, and his mother bought that ridiculous canopy bed. Looking back now, he realizes that Mom's sense of reality was blurred, that she didn't mean anything by it, just like she didn't mean anything with the sailor suits. To a five-year-old, however, the terror was all too real. He's not sure why a vampire became his bete noire but it makes about as much sense as any other irrational fear.
He had to gain control somehow, and the best mechanism he came up with was refusing to sleep. Young Tony would force himself to stay awake for as long as he could, counting to a thousand or higher, so that when he finally succumbed, his sleep was dreamless. In some small way, he had power, which satisfied his five-year-old pride. The downside was that it became a habit, long after the fear of vampires had subsided.
When he was older, he discovered movies as an alternative to counting . One night he caught From Russia With Love on the late night movie channel, and he was hooked for life. As it turned out, DiNozzo Sr. didn't trust his son's strange habits. Tony was shipped off to military school at the age of fourteen, where he drove three roommates crazy in the firsts semester alone.
It came in handy when he was a rookie cop. Tony actually liked working the night shift. He liked the crazies who only came out at night, and he liked the slightly surreal feeling of cruising the streets of Peoria at 3 a.m. Of course, NCIS is different. It's a federal agency, and its agents are expected to sleep at night. At home. In their own beds. But when the movies don't cut it, which these days is about one night in three, Tony is back at his desk at NCIS. Gibbs knows, and Tony knows that he knows. He is Gibbs' secret weapon, the reason they clear so many cases despite the sheer volume of desk work they face.
Any shrink would tell him that his dead mother factors into the situation, which is why Tony avoids shrinks like… well, like the plague doesn't really apply in Tony's case, does it?
Not to mention the fact that when he sleeps, he inevitably dreams, and that's almost never a good thing.
1:39, and his hunch is right. Petty Officer Michaels emerges from the building. Gotcha. Tony lets him get halfway down the block, then turns the engine on.
It's not too late. He can still get a few hours of sleep before it's time for work.