Disclaimer: NCIS is not my creation or property- I own all the DVDs though.

Chapter 4

Tony could admit that the more time he spent with Jemma in the following months, the more he liked her. For the first time since Jeanne, he felt confident with a woman and hadn't made any of the horrible rookie mistakes he'd made in the months in the dating field since Jeanne had left his life for good.

And the fact that he wasn't working undercover and pretending to be someone else in this relationship was definitely a positive factor. No one at NCIS was any the wiser, Tony hadn't made any mention of Jemma to any of them, not even Abby. He knew that once they did know, Abby and Ziva would want details, and both Ziva and McGee would make fun of him.

And Tony didn't have a problem with that, he knew he could dish it out so he should be able to take it…. But it was a sign of how much he liked Jemma that he wasn't willing to mention it, lest he screw it up. Because he knew the teasing for that would be far worse than the teasing for merely dating someone like Jemma.

Jemma seemed to be thinking along the same lines. It didn't take her long to introduce him to Lucy, her best friend and former college roommate, who was a journalist in North Carolina, and like Jemma, a huge Wicked fan; but she had yet to introduce him to her brother who only lived in Virginia. She'd mentioned him of course, she'd had to before Elisa and James could after that night in October.

But she'd only referred to him as a friend, and hadn't told her rather protective big brother that she and Tony were dating.

In was a weekend in early December that Tony met Lucy in person for the first time and experienced the two girls' Wicked tradition. Because they lived so far apart, their frequent trips to the Gershwin theatre to see their favourite show was their way of seeing one another and Tony was lucky to merit an invitation.

Fortunately, it was a weekend the MCRT was not on call, so Tony was free to fly up to New York with Jemma. Lucy's flight landed half an hour before theirs did, and the bubbly blonde was waiting for them at the gate when they emerged.

Tony waited as the two girls hugged tightly as though they hadn't seen or heard from the other in years, before Jemma turned to him with a smile.

"Tony, this is Lucy. Lucy, Tony."

"Nice to finally meet you in person," Tony greeted her, having briefly talked to her on the phone once or twice after Lucy had demanded to meet him.

"You too," she smiled in reply.

"So, what's your tradition for these Wicked weekends?" he asked Jemma and she and Lucy exchanged grins.

Jemma and Lucy could admit that their traditions probably bordered beyond obsessive and closer towards stalker-ish fanatics, but they'd been doing this so regularly since they were twenty-three that it seemed almost wrong to stop now.

Once they'd checked into the hotel, they gathered in Jemma and Tony's room and watch The Wizard of Oz, "because it makes sense that way," Lucy explained. Neither girl would explain why they threw handfuls of popcorn at the screen whenever the Tin Man appeared or the Wizard, or why Jemma giggled excitedly when they first saw the Scarecrow.

"You'll see," Jemma said dismissively to a mystified Tony.

And then the two girls abandoned Tony for Lucy's room to get ready for dinner and the show. Tony settled down to watch TV as he waited, ignoring the distant sounds of the Wicked soundtrack he thought he could hear from across the hall.

Both personality-wise and appearance-wise, Jemma and Lucy had long since appointed themselves the roles of Elphaba and Glinda respectively. To that, Jemma always wore emerald green (conveniently her favourite colour, "but only," she'd told Tony sternly, "Because no one recognises 'Elphaba-green' as a colour"); and Lucy wore pink.

They went to dinner at a restaurant near the theatre and were there forty minutes before show time so they could buy their programs and look at souvenirs.

"I thought you said you have all the merchandise?" Tony asked Jemma as she looked at the jewellery on offer.

"I do," she sighed. "But I still want it."

Jemma didn't want Tony to think she was completely crazy, so she resisted the urge to squeal and jump up and down in her seat as they waited for the curtain to go up. But it was a natural instinct by this stage that as the orchestra struck up the overture, tears stung her eyes in anticipation of what was to come.

But she never loved Wicked more than she did when seeing it with someone who was watching it for the first time. A part of her couldn't help seeing it through fresh eyes and she was always trying to gauge Tony's reaction to the show.

Tony had never been a massive musical fan, but he too, had grown up in New York, although Long Island unlike Jemma's Brooklyn and his father had definitely never taken him to any Broadway shows. But he was a movie fan and the Wizard of Oz was a classic for any movie fan.

And to his genuine surprise, he loved the show. Beforehand, he couldn't help notice the audience was mostly girls and women of all ages and had been slightly apprehensive, but it was magic- just as Jemma had described it. And best of all, when he looked over at Jemma during the intermission as the lights came back on and he saw the stars in her eyes, he felt a solid punch in his gut that told him Jemma Fitzwilliam was something special.

And if his years with Gibbs had taught him anything, it was to always trust his gut.

"I'm going to warn you, because you may not want to see me again after this," Jemma warned him towards the end of intermission. "After I see Wicked, I kind of go on a high. Like a big puddle of Wicked goo… and I act more like eight than twenty-eight."

"And then we come crashing down at some stage tomorrow, and can't bear to even listen to the soundtrack because it just depresses us that we can't see it again," Lucy chimed in.

Tony nodded solemnly. "Consider me warned," he assured her and Jemma beamed at him before turning back to face the stage.

Tony smiled bemusedly to himself as she turned away, thinking she was exaggerating. He was soon to discover, she was not.

Further keeping with tradition, once the casts had done their curtain calls, Lucy and Jemma, pulling Tony behind them, pushed through the crowd out of the theatre and around to the stage door when they joined those waiting for the cast members to exit the theatre.

This was Jemma's first time seeing Marcie Dodd in the role of Elphaba, in fact most of the cast were new to her on the Broadway stage since she'd last seen the show; and she and Lucy chatted with the people around them as they waited for the cast to emerge.

"Do you always strike up conversations with strangers?" Tony asked her when they finally began heading back to the hotel once they had met the cast, and gotten their programs signed and photos taken.

"Only Wicked fans," Jemma laughed. "Or Harry Potter fans. There's something about the fandoms…. Friendships tend to form instantly. And besides, that's kind of how we met, isn't it?"

Tony had to give her that.

They stopped for coffee in a café near the hotel and Lucy and Jemma spent the whole time discussing the cast and just where they sat in regards to their performance. Marcie Dodd had been Elphaba and Alli Gauzey portrayed Glinda. Lucy had a huge crush on Andrew Kern, who had been Fiyero which Jemma couldn't help but tease her friend about.

"This from the girl who had a total Boq moment when she met Norbert Leo Butz," Lucy retorted and Tony frowned.

"A Boq moment?"

Jemma rolled her eyes as she explained. "Yeah. You know that line when Galinda touches Boq and he's all "you're touching me?" That's a Boq moment. And yeah, I was totally star-struck," she admitted.

"I got my photo taken with Norbert and he put his arm around my shoulders and I almost died."

Tony grinned at the image and Lucy smirked.

"Not a bad way to go, hey Jem?"

Jemma threw her napkin at her friend.

"This will probably be the last show for a while," Lucy said sadly once they were in the elevator.

"Why? Don't you go into withdrawal if you go more than a month without seeing it?" Tony teased.

"Yes," Jemma replied immediately, with a giggle. "But between Christmas and saving up for our trip to Australia… we can't really afford it at the moment."

"It's alright," Lucy said with a sigh. "It just means when we see it in Australia, it'll be more exciting. It's like not having sex until your wedding night."

Jemma rolled her eyes at her best friend, and Tony laughed.

As soon as they were in their room, she turned to him solemnly. "So, did you like it? And tell me honestly, but just remember if you didn't like it, I'll probably never talk to you again."

Tony was sorely tempted to tell her he'd hated it, just to see her reaction, but didn't.

"It was great," he said honestly and Jemma's face lit up.

"I knew you'd love it!"

"Although I see now why you're always saying that you can't watch The Wizard of Oz in the same way," he commented.

She grinned and then stepped forward into his arms.

"Thank you for coming this weekend…. Meeting Lucy and seeing the show. It really means a lot to me," she said quietly and Tony kissed her softly.

"You're welcome."

Jemma smiled and turned away, then turned back thoughtfully. "Did you like it enough to see it again?"

AN. Jemma's Wicked routine is my Wicked routine. Except I've only seen it 4 times, and only got to go to the stage door and meet the cast once. And I've never gone with the same person repeatedly, because no one I know is as obsessed as I am ;)

And I had my "Boq moment" when I met David Harris (current Australian Fiyero) and he put his arm around me for our photo.