Special Agent Harris, NCIS
Fojee
Chapter Two: A Series of Interrogations
Slight changes in the dialogue of "Minimum Security" 1x08
"Why'd you pick D.C. anyhow?" Kate asked him one morning, trying to be subtle. "California's a long way."
"That was kinda the point," Xander said, wry smile in place. "The farthest I could get away from home without jumping the pond, or is that jumping ship?" He frowned, trying to think of other jumping phrases.
"So you were running from something?" Tony asked.
Xander laughed, but it was not a happy one. "Just bad memories. Plus my friend Willow moved to Cleveland, and D.C.'s only seven hours away," he finished with a shrug.
"Girlfriend?" Tony asked, leaning forward.
Xander smiled. "With her girlfriend, yes. Don't you guys have work to do?"
"Whoa, her girlfriend?" Tony's eyes lit up like car beams.
Gibbs headslapped him. "Gear up. We got a body down Bainbridge. Dead petty officer in a car, almost run down some bikers. Not you, Harris. Stay."
Xander felt like whining, watching Tony and Kate leave with backpacks, sigs and badges. He looked at the badge in his drawer. Still didn't feel like his.
---
"We're going to Cuba?" Tony asked excitedly.
Xander perked up. He'd been doing background checks on Petty Officer Second Class Kahlil Sa'id whose body—sans the emeralds he had swallowed—was down in autopsy. "Does the 'we' include the 'me'?" He blurted out.
Kate looked at him disbelievingly, but he merely shrugged. So he still had a tendency to mangle the English the language. They should be thankful he didn't code switch into Fyarl or the other demon languages he knew.
Gibbs had turned back. "You will be riding that desk until you're thirty, Harris, so don't even think about it."
Xander's face fell, though he quickly recovered and saluted Gibbs mockingly. "Aye, aye, cap'n."
Tony shared a look with Kate, wordlessly communicating with a raised eyebrow and a tilted head. Kate nodded, so they both followed Gibbs into the elevator.
Gibbs looked at them askance, before he closed the doors and flipped the emergency switch, so that the elevator stopped in between floors. "Is there something you want to say?"
"Boss," Tony started, "why don't you let the kid come with us." At Gibbs' narrowed eyes, he continued hastily. "I mean, do you really trust him by himself? If he's in Cuba, you get to keep an eye on him, right, Kate?" Tony looked at the other agent for support.
"And if you really want me to profile him, I'll need to see him in action," Kate added.
"Profile?" Tony asked incredulously.
Gibbs sighed. "Alright, but he'll be on a tight leash."
"So I'll book a flight for four?" Tony asked with a grin.
"Don't bother. I'll see about getting us priority rides."
"Boss!" Tony whined. "I hate priority rides!"
---
"I love priority rides! Boss, this is the best!"
Tony looked like a kid who's been given exactly what he wanted for Christmas, pointing out the cool features on the Navy Gulfstream. Xander couldn't help grinning back. It wasn't until he had entered the plane that he really believed Gibbs was letting him come with them to Cuba.
And for once, the man wasn't glaring at him. "Can we get back to work, DiNozzo?"
"Sure thing, boss. Just, check this out." And Tony pressed another button and Xander looked at Kate, trying not to burst out laughing.
---
NCIS Special Agent Paula Cassidy looked tough and hot, and Tony was immediately interested.
Of course he's interested; he is Tony after all, Xander thought with fondness, then surprise at how fond he was. He nudged Kate, who rolled her eyes at him, and he grinned like a fool. Gibbs still looked like he might kill Xander if he made a wrong move, but maybe this whole team thing wouldn't be so bad.
At the house they were staying at, he let Kate and Tony fight over the bedrooms, knowing he'd be stuck at the worst of them. Instead, he sat down across from Gibbs and tried to work up his nerve. "Thanks for letting me come, Agent Gibbs, uh, I mean boss."
"Wasn't my idea," Gibbs muttered, tilting his head in the direction of his two other agents.
"Well I get the feeling that if you really didn't want to, nothing they said would've made a difference," Xander said, accepting the files Gibbs handed over. "Which is probably why you hate my guts in the first place. Look, I know I got into your team in some…" He bit his bottom lip, trying to think of a word.
"Hinky manner?" Gibbs finished for him.
"Exactly," Xander said with a tiny laugh. "And I'd be suspicious of me, too. So how about we make a deal? Give me six months to learn the ropes. Why ropes anyway?" He made a face at his own digression. "Never mind. If I still really suck at the NCI-ing, I'd either ask for a transfer to a different team, or I'll give you permission to kick me out, I guess depending on how much I suck. Deal?"
Gibbs tried not to let his surprise show, and looked Xander in the eyes for the first time since he started at NCIS. The kid held his gaze and didn't back down. He let a bit of his growing respect color his voice when he answered, "Deal."
---
After the call to D.C. to talk to Abby, Gibbs booted Tony and Kate out of the best bedroom. "Three rooms, Harris, so you get the couch. Hit the rack, people!"
Xander watched in amusement as Tony and Kate fought over the two other rooms. He picked up his own duffel bag, and placed it by the long couch. He stood, stretching the kinks in his back and looked out the window at the Cuban night.
He still worried about his decisions, still worried that Faith hadn't softened enough, or that Wesley hadn't hardened enough—and that was just a bad visual place—or that Angel would get a happy and wreak havoc on the Hellmouth again and he wasn't there.
He worried about Willow and Tara, who had moved to the other Hellmouth in Cleveland after they graduated. Not as bad as Sunnydale, but the two witches didn't have any other back-up but him, and he was seven hours away. He worried about Dawn and boys, Dawn in college, taking Linguistics and Occult Studies at Oxford, getting stalked by her favorite bleached vampire; she will probably end up a Watcher, though Giles might have something to say about that. And Giles.
Actually, he'd worry more about Giles but Dawn had been good for the older man. They still talked every week, not about Buffy, but about anything and everything else. They were moving on.
He reached for his wallet, and took out a worn picture of him with Willow and Buffy. Willow still had long hair, and Buffy still had chubby cheeks—though he had never told her that; he wasn't suicidal after all. It had been more than four years since she jumped, since his entire world had been shattered. Sometimes, it still felt like yesterday. "Buffy, you'll always be my hero," he whispered into the night. "Help me do good, kay?"
There was another picture in his wallet, but he rarely took it out. It was Anya's. He had tried to find her after she left Sunnydale, but she had disappeared so completely that she either changed her name, or became a demon again, or was dead. It didn't matter. He smiled wryly at his own reflection. He had moved on, too.
---
Xander woke up at Tony's scream and the first weapon he went for was the wooden stake under his pillow. He had carved it himself. (Dawn kept Mr. Pointy of course, though Xander had Buffy's sword hanging on his apartment wall.)
He was glad he had slept out in the living room, which made him the last to enter Tony's room, so while Gibbs and Kate were pointing their guns at the iguana, and gaping at Tony's state of undress, he had time to slip the stake in his pocket.
"Hey Tony," he said. "Your girlfriend's looking a little green."
Gibbs snorted and turned away just after Tony grabbed a chair to cover himself. Kate winked at the naked agent, and sashayed out, her legs barely covered by the jersey she was wearing. Xander let them pass, before slipping into the room.
"Get dressed, man. I'll just take care of your little visitor," he said, carefully scooping up the iguana and grinning at Tony, who just gaped at him. He took it outside, letting it go on the grass. "Sorry, sweetheart. I don't think you're his type," he muttered as he watched it scamper across the lawn.
"That doesn't freak you out?" Tony asked him from behind. He was in loose jogging pants, shirtless and barefoot. "Don't iguanas bite or something?"
"It's just a big lizard, Tony. Believe me, there are worse things. Now if you show me a big praying mantis, I'd be running for my life." Xander smiled like it was a joke.
Tony raised an eyebrow. "You have a wild imagination, Special Agent Harris."
Xander just shook his head and laughed.
"By the way, Harris," Tony added, smirking at him, "is that a sig in your pocket or were you having a really nice dream?"
Xander hesitated, laughter gone in an instant, before flashing a bright grin and taking out his stake to wave it in Tony's face. "It's just wood, Tony. I whittle for fun."
Tony pursed his lips, before slinging an arm over Xander's shoulders. "You'll get along with Gibbs then. Did you know he's building a boat in his basement?"
"Really?" Xander asked, eyes brightening, as they walked towards the smell of coffee.
---
Bill Gamal, senior translator at Camp Delta, delivered Agent Cassidy's interrogation files, boxes and boxes of them. Xander groaned. It didn't matter where he was; he was still going to be stuck with the paperwork.
"Get to work, Harris," Gibbs said almost cheerfully. "DiNozzo, find everything on Agent Cassidy: who her friends are in Gitmo, how she spends her free time, where she hangs out and whether she involved with Sa'id or not. Kate, anything you can dig up on our late petty officer."
"On it, boss," Tony said with a grin. Oh, he was going to enjoy this assignment.
---
"I don't suppose you'll let me sit in with the interrogation?" Xander asked, even as he flipped through Paula Cassidy's transcripts.
"And why would I let you do that, Harris? You're not a profiler."
"I'll never learn a thing if I'm stuck with this crap," Xander argued, then backed off when he saw Gibbs' expression. "But if you don't want me there, I won't be."
"Maybe when you realize that this crap is eighty percent of our investigations, you'll have second thoughts about wanting to be a fed."
Xander smiled at him, a little sadly. "I already know the job's not all glamour and girls. Believe me, I do. And I know I'm not too up-to-date with procedures, but how do I develop Tony's instincts if I only read about the cases? I thought we had a deal?"
"The deal was six months in my team. That means you'll still play by my rules, Harris."
At Xander's disappointed frown, Gibbs relented. "Alright, as an observer."
Xander's whoop made his ears ring, and he almost changed his mind again.
---
"So how do you say good cop, bad cop in Arabic?" Gibbs asked on their way to interrogating Nasir.
Gamal said dryly, "I learned my Arabic at the defense Language Institute in Monterey. That phrase wasn't in the syllabus. Nasir should be here in about five minutes."
"Tayyib shorta, mosh bikair shorta," Xander muttered under his breath, and Gibbs whirled around when he caught it.
"You know Arabic, Harris?"
Kate's eyebrows shot up. "It's not in your resumé," she said, then almost covered her mouth when Gibbs shot her a dark look.
Xander shook his head. "Just picked up a phrase or two."
"This isn't over, Harris," Gibbs threatened him. "Kate, watch his body language. And make sure Harris here shuts up, alright?"
Xander made a zipping motion over his mouth, before Kate dragged him into the adjacent room.
---
It went as Kate expected, with Gibbs playing hardball with Nasir. She watched the prisoner carefully, standing at an angle to see his eyes, though she knew Gibbs would likely pick up more from direct eye contact. She noted the inflections of the other man, the way his mouth turned sullen and his eyes drilled into Gibbs' and his hands clenched while remaining shackled.
Xander spent more time watching Kate watch Nasir than Nasir himself, though he caught himself admiring Gibbs' technique. He'd never interrogated anyone. Willy didn't count, since the bar owner usually responded more to threats of Slayer than anything else. And everyone expected him to talk eventually.
After the prisoner was taken out, he stepped back and folded his arms. "So Agent Todd, how'd you get a copy of my resumé?"
Kate opened her mouth and could not say a thing.
---
"Sorry, Paula," Tony said, as he took the keys to check out her apartment. Kate took Sa'id's keys as well.
Xander leaned back against the counter, staying out of the way as Gibbs opened the letters they had found in Sa'id's suitcase.
"So why is Special Agent DiNozzo sorry?" Gibbs asked her.
"He blew his chances of getting laid," she answered flippantly.
Xander opened his mouth to argue, but thought better of it. Tony wasn't there to take offense. "I'm sorry, too," he murmured to her. It must be frustrating to be viewed as the bad guy by people in your own agency. "If it makes you feel any better, Gibbs here is investigating me as well," he said.
"So what, he's just paranoid?" She asked sarcastically.
"I have good reason," Gibbs said, looking at both of them. "You'd do the same thing in my position and you know it, Cassidy."
"You have good reason for investigating him, too?" She asked, suddenly reevaluating the too-young man in Gibbs' team.
"Oh, very good reason," Xander assured her. "After all, he needs to be able to trust me to be in his team, right?"
"If you know the reason, then why don't you lay out a few facts for me, Harris?" Gibbs challenged him.
"Nothing I say will make you trust me, Agent Gibbs. Trust has to be earned, after all. And it goes both ways," Xander said softly, meeting Gibbs' gaze for a second, before catching Paula's eyes as well. "So it might be awhile before you trust that we are here to help, Agent Cassidy. Even Tony," he added with a smirk.
Paula had relaxed a little by then, nodding at him and smiling when Tony's name was mentioned. "In between flirting and dancing, you mean."
"Perks of the job." Xander laughed.
---
"You still want me to profile him?" Kate asked. "But he already knows—"
"So you shouldn't feel so damn guilty, Kate," Gibbs growled.
"Alright. On one condition," she countered.
"What?"
"I want Tony here, too. He seems to have made friends with Xander quickly, so he might be able to tell you more."
Gibbs gave his consent.
Tony didn't.
"He's not a criminal, Gibbs. Why don't we just trust our own judgment?" They were in one of the empty interrogation rooms at NCIS.
"He was involved in a classified op in his hometown," Kate announced, knowing it would catch Tony's attention. "No details given, but he has a letter of commendation from a high-ranking general, in the Army. And uh, according to his phone records, he has the SecNav's number on speed-dial."
For once, Tony was rendered speechless.
"Which number, one?" Gibbs asked calmly.
"Five," Kate answered. "One's a number in Cleveland, his best friend Willow Rosenberg; two's international, a Rupert Giles in London; three's also international, someone named Dawn Summers-Giles; and four's a number in Sunnydale, registered to someone named Cordelia Chase."
"And they're all more important than the SecNav?" Tony asked incredulously.
"No," Xander's voice emanated from the speakers. "They're family, Tony. Mind if I join in this conversation?"
Gibbs looked torn between anger and a touch of remorse. "Sure, come on in. But only if you're prepared to be interrogated, Harris."
"Well, I might pick up tips on your technique," Xander said, this time from the doorway. "I had the video and sound cut off, though. You understand, right Gibbs?"
"Perfectly," Gibbs answered then pulled out a chair. "Now sit down, Harris. You're on the hot seat."
Xander grinned at them, open and amused. He sat down, prepared for the grilling.
---
"I wasn't a Navy SEAL, Tony. But when I was young, I wanted to be. Even researched all the training and stuff, which is probably why I joined NCIS rather than FBI or some other law enforcement." Not for the first time, Xander cursed his slip of the tongue when Tony first interrogated him.
"Oh, yeah?" Tony said. "Prove it."
"Prove what?" Xander asked exasperatedly.
"Go one on one with Gibbs," Tony said smugly. "That way, we can see your skills, too. Which we'd need to know if we're out on the field, right boss?"
"I have all my results," Xander weakly protested, indicating the stack of paperwork in his file. "I went through the basic tests."
"Rule number three, don't believe what you're told. Always double-check," Gibbs said.
Xander frowned. "So how many rules are there, anyway?"
"Fifty thereabouts," Tony answered.
"Really? I only have one," Xander said.
"And what's that?" Kate asked.
"Don't die."
---
A/N: Longer than I thought it would be, and going in a completely unpredictable direction. And no, Xander will not be telling them about the supernatural. Not yet, anyway.
