HOME TRUTHS

One

It had been a long time since Tony had been on a stake out, and even longer since he had been alone on one. Still, some things were so familiar that he fell into the old patterns almost without thinking. Pulling the rental up to the curb slowly, just out of the nearest streetlight's pool of light, close enough to watch for his target but far enough back that he should not be too obvious. Still, it was a quiet, established neighborhood; any car would be out of place and, to his subject, enough to raise his curiosity. He knew he should not stay long or he would draw concern, if not from his target, then, possibly, his neighbors.

Face it, a tiny internal voice, somewhere back in his more rational thoughts, prodded him. That's really what you want, isn't it? To be made? Proof that some things don't change? That they never changed?

As stakeouts went, especially for December, he'd been in luck. It could have been freezing and windy and he'd have been left shivering as he watched and waited, since the exhaust from a car left running would have given away the fact someone was inside the parked vehicle, and had it been cold enough, his body heat and breath after time would have drawn frost on the inside of the windows, also giving him away. But it was on the warm side this evening, the air moist, and the light fog bouncing off the streetlight's glare helped him blend into the night.

Out of habit, he glanced over to the passenger side for binoculars, immediately catching himself before moving – he hadn't brought any. He hadn't brought a camera so had no telephoto lens to use in a pinch.

Not exactly that kind of stake out, DiNozzo, he chided himself.

At the slip, his responsible side was again roused to wonder what he was doing – with everything: what he was doing in the car on that street, at that moment; what he was doing here at all; what he was doing with his life. He didn't often have the luxury of self-doubt or self-pity these days, but when he could stop, and breathe, his thoughts were more bleak than those of the old Tony DoNozzo. He was chronically sleep deprived; too much had changed, too much was still new, too much still up in the air to let him sleep without waking every couple hours. Usually in the daytime he had to focus on what was at hand, take things one step at a time. Bigger picture stuff was pushed out of the way. But at night, when it was quiet and his mind's guard let down, memories – and questions – intruded.

So here he sat. After one spur of the moment choice led to another, then another, then another, this 'stakeout' became something he was compelled to do. He honestly wasn't sure what he hoped might happen, or what he wanted to hear. But this moment had irrationally become for him the one thing he needed to restore his faith in everything he had believed for so long.

He needed Leroy Jethro Gibbs to be the all-knowing, all-seeing larger than life force everyone believed him to be.

Suddenly acutely aware of the chill, and the quiet around him, and recognizing his actions for what they were, Tony felt his eyes sting with the loss and hurt that had slammed him full force not so many months ago, a dramatic final chapter to resolve the growing sense of being shut out from his team, and the distance and hopelessness that had begun seeping into his head over the past several years. He felt another wave of loss, recognizing that at that moment he was mourning less those people important to him who had actually died, and more the loss of the friendships and relationships he'd come to cherish, and the loss of that support and trust...

This was a bad idea.

Tony recognized the childishness of his wish to return to the time things had been as good as he remembered. It wasn't a new feeling for him by a long shot, and not the first "family" in his life he'd wanted to see back intact. He had worked to hide it from others in years past; he couldn't let his weaknesses show. But this year – at this time of year – it had all hit him so hard. Those early years after Ziva joined the team were not perfect by any stretch, but they'd all hit a rhythm and started to work as a team, which led to even better results and a more satisfied Boss. Even when rushed they could relax into the assurance that they had each other's back and their trust and support and respect, and that led them into being a family of sorts, with bonds tighter than most could know if connected only by blood ...

Tony knew he looked back to that time with selective amnesia, preferring to remember the best and to forgive the worst. He now knew, deep down, that there were secrets even then. Things wouldn't have unraveled as they had if the team's relationships among them had been as pure and strong as he'd liked to remember. But given his history, Tony knew that, at core, the mutual trust and respect he'd felt with each member of his team was absolute fact, and that counted more highly than anything in his book. He stubbornly gave them all benefit of the doubt, because he wanted to believe in the past as he chose to remember it.

And now ... it had all brought him back here to a quiet street in Alexandria at Christmas time. Waiting for a Christmas miracle, he derided himself. He needed just a small moment of normalcy and familiarity that, admittedly, had been missing for several years now, but he craved it this year so intensely it had brought him back from Paris to sit here, in the chill of the December evening. For the last eighteen Christmases, he had been with at least some of the team on Christmas Eve, even, occasionally, for all of Christmas day. Gibbs was always a part of that. So with all the Christmas carols and markets and messages of being with loved ones, and Tony's defenses lower than they had been in so long, he made his way back home to the District and this street and a time when things were making as much sense as they ever did and he felt he was living his life, not that he was just hanging on as it hurdled him forward into the unknown.

A sudden sound at the passenger side of the car had him instinctively reaching to the dash, where he would normally have his gun on stakeout – back when he carried a gun. The door he didn't remember leaving unlocked opened quietly, and, soundlessly, a man slipped into the passenger seat beside him.

He'd been made. And it meant that the universe was alright after all, didn't it? The Gut was still all knowing, all seeing.

Tony stared at the man he'd known for nearly two decades now, a man who, despite it all, he had admired more than he had anyone else close to him. And now that Gibbs was here, appearing in Tony's rental right on cue, for that first moment Tony felt the overwhelming relief he had felt all those times, back when his Boss was there to get his back, and he knew he could trust things to work out alright. In the next moment, it occurred to Tony that he had not thought beyond this very moment, so had no clue as to how things should go. He had no idea what what to do or say. And having been caught sitting there, on Gibbs' house, it dawned on him that things could sour even further between them so very quickly ...

Gulping down all the uncertainty and emotion of the moment, Tony managed a grin and said quickly, "hey Boss."

A/N: This started as a one shot, and as a one shot it's complete. However, in editing to post, it has spilled over a bit and became a Christmas season story along the way, so has been broken into parts to be posted over the holiday. This premise has been nagging me for a while now and as the holiday has allowed me some time to myself it got written. It's a completely selfish, ongoing effort to resolve for myself what happened slowly to damage the Gibbs-DiNozzo friendship over time. I still don't think I have resolved it in a way that satisfies me, but I keep trying.

For those waiting for me to update my WsIP, my apologies, and my thanks to those who keep sending reviews or notes asking me to get back to them. I have some chapters in progress to which I have been adding, but not enough yet to have a post-able chapter. If I could get a better handle on the team's unraveling and how to fix it things would go faster in those stories.