Tony waited, and soon the aroma of fresh coffee percolating filled the house, or at least, to his heightened senses it did. He had forgotten how bright the living room could get from the bay window behind where Gibbs had vetoed putting the television when he was staying there, and was thankful he wasn't particularly photosensitive like some vampires were. Sunlight had never made them burst into flames like old myths proclaimed, nor did they sparkle like modern stories said. Except for Nis, but that was because the man used more glitter than a stripper in order to attract the trashiest dates imaginable, before thinking it was necessary to give him dating advice. It was laughable really.
Pulling away from that tangent, Tony was thankful that he wasn't as photosensitive as Ami. The poor girl couldn't go out in strong sunlight for more than a few minutes without burning. In her human life she had been the youngest girl on an Irish farm and had been perpetually sunburned at sixteen, and sick of being seen as nothing but breeding stock and free labor. So she had run off and met a man that indulged her curiosity. The story didn't end well, but as sad as she was sometimes, her help had been invaluable to Tony over the years.
He heard Gibbs pouring the first cup of coffee and knew from experience that he'd stand there and drink it before pouring himself another and coming out to join him. He knew Gibbs knew that he preferred not to drink the pitch black brew, and so he wasn't surprised when Gibbs came back without a mug for him. What did surprise him was the dark bruise on his side. How that had gone without his notice when he had been watching Gibbs? 'Because you weren't looking at his side. You were looking at his ass, or how he moved.' His mind supplied traitorously, causing him to nearly flush, wondering if Gibbs had caught him staring.
Gibbs sat in one of the armchairs that flanked the couch, watching Tony look around nervously. The young man swallowed, before looking up at Gibbs with a worried expression.
"I know, rule twelve is a rule for a reason and I busted that wide open, but please, please don't kick me off the team and put me as an agent afloat!" Tony blurted just as Gibbs opened his mouth to speak. Gibbs raised his coffee mug to his lips, taking a drink to cover the smirk. It was really amusing to think of his agent on a boat somewhere, but it was still accompanied by a small pang of hurt. How could Tony think that he'd be removed just for wanting to be with him?
'Because,' his mind offered unhelpfully, 'when you brought Kate on, you told her that if she slept with a co-worker you'd have her fired.' The intent of that had been to keep her away from Tony and he was almost sure it worked. Whatever Tony and Kate had shared they certainly hadn't gone public, so Gibbs could only hope that it was just speculation.
Tony was now rambling about some movie where office romances went awry, trying to assure him that nothing of the sort would happen. Gibbs shook his head slightly, wondering where the man got all of this nervous energy after wearing himself out so badly the past few weeks.
"DiNozzo." Although quiet, the tone was still authoritative enough for Tony to shut his mouth with an audible click in the middle of his sentence. "First, I am not pushing you off the team. Secondly, putting agents into other positions is not my job, it's the Director's. Although a superior could make recommendations, I won't be."
He could see the questions forming in Tony's mind and Gibbs cut him off with a shake of the head when he opened his mouth to voice them. Again, the agent's mouth shut. They lapsed into silence as Gibbs formulated how he was going to explain this. "However, you shouldn't have run Tony. I wasn't mad." He watched as a full range of emotions came over his senior agent's face. First shock, presumably at the use of his first name. Then confusion as he processed what not being mad meant, before finally a wary sort of confusion.
Tony stood again, letting the shoes drop to the floor, and walked closer, hesitating when Gibbs narrowed his eyes slightly. Never breaking eye contact, Tony leaned down and pressed their lips together again, but softer this time. There was no urgency, no fear, panic, or sleep deprivation to cloud his judgment. Just the soft press of lips moving against lips, and the elation that filled him when one of those deliciously warm, calloused hands cupped his cheek and he felt Gibbs respond. They didn't take it past just the sweetest and simplest of kisses, but when Tony pulled back to sit on the edge of the couch again, he was completely and utterly breathless. The kiss itself had seemed like a time paradox to Tony, feeling like it had stretched over an eternity and a second all at once.
Gibbs stayed quiet for a few seconds, collecting himself, before looking Tony in the eyes again. Both men noticed that the pupils of the other were dilated, and that assuaged a lot of Tony's fear for the moment. "If we continue this, there will be some rules."
"I can honestly say I didn't expect anything involving you to come without rules Gibbs." Tony said with a slight chuckle. "Lay em on me."
"Rule one: This does not follow us into work. If our enemies find out they will not hesitate to use you against me or vice versa." He paused here, to let Tony issue any complaints, before continuing when it was clear he understood. "Rule Two: I do not share. There will be nobody else."
"That goes for you too Gibbs, no more redheads, or Maddie Tyler."
"What does she have to do with anything?"
"Ducky said you were...oh..." Tony fell silent when he realized what the Medical Examiner's words on the pier had truly meant.
"Out with it DiNozzo." Gibbs instructed, frowning when Tony shook his head.
"It's nothing, I just had misinterpreted something. No sharing, go on."
Giving him a wary look, Gibbs nodded some. "Three: We do this right. Four: we take it slow." he paused here again, knowing that if Tony were to protest now would be the time. The agent looked like he was going to open his mouth, but surprisingly enough he kept quiet. Gibbs wondered if he had something bigger he wanted to use his veto on. "Five: No big secrets." And there it was, that scared rabbit look DiNozzo got when he was hiding something important. He struggled with himself for a moment, debating whether or not to tell, or how much to tell.
"Boss I'll admit I have a huge secret, the biggest, and I've never told anyone. I want to tell you, trust me I do, but I can't right now. It's nothing dangerous to me or anyone else. I mean it's not a Bruce Banner or Peter Parker size secret, but it's up there. I just don't want to lose you and this is so weird it might happen, I just, I want to be sure that we're going to stay an us before I tell you, of course if something big comes up that you need to know for, I'll tell, but... Please Gibbs, just give it time?"
Gibbs nodded slightly, impressed that Tony had actually told him he was hiding something big. Setting a hand on the agent's head, he ran his fingers through the man's hair to calm him down. Observation had taught him that Tony was a very tactile person, and at the moment he just wanted to stop his boyfriend (maybe? Or we're they still something else?) from bolting due to nerves. He watched Tony relax slowly, eyes eventually closing as just the slightest tilt of his head applied pressure to Gibbs' hand, encouraging him to stay where he was.
Tony wanted to stay there forever, but knew he couldn't. Sure enough, Gibbs' work phone rang, but he was able to answer without removing the hand threaded through his hair. But Tony could tell by the tone of voice, that not only did they have a case, but the gentleness that Gibbs had been showing (yeah he was normally a bastard, but it was no surprise the man had been married several times if a person could look past it) was going to be gone. Sure enough, as soon as Gibbs called McGee and Ziva, the hand was gone and his hardass boss was back, dashing up the stairs to get ready for the day. Tony yawned and stretched, before pulling on his shoes, thankful that there was one crisis that got averted, even if he was starting to suspect Gibbs was suspicious.
There was no way he couldn't be. After all he was nearly certain Gibbs had figured out that wasn't lipstick by now. But Gibbs was content to not bring it up more than the pointed look when he had made Rule Five. He was so caught up in his thoughts that he hadn't noticed Gibbs come back down, waiting for him by the door. At least until a sharp whistle broke him out of his thoughts. He stood and grinned at Gibbs, finding himself unable to wipe the dorky look off of his face until they were in the car.
In fact it was only noticing that Gibbs had shifted a little to the left so the clip of the seat belt wasn't pressing his side that made Tony remember about the bruise. "Who was it boss?" He asked after a minute, eyes growing serious as he looked up to watch the older man's face.
"A Staff Sargent on leave."
"Not our dead guy. The one that left that nasty bruise on your side." Gibbs looked at him as they stopped at a light.
"The bouncer. James." Tony winced at that. As much as it sucked being in a fight with Kay, he was unrefined, a brawler, he telegraphed his moves when you knew what to look for. Monique had spent years taking fighting classes for fun. And she practiced on her boyfriend every chance she got. Tony wanted to say that two out of every three arrests on her record were for domestic violence, but the guy, face a mess, came in and made them drop the charges. He had been working a case with Matt in Boston, on loan from Baltimore, when one such occurrence had happened. Tony admitted that their relationship looked like some low scale S&M lifestyle, not that he knew much about those to start with. She kept Derik on a short leash, and he had been publicly bitten on the jaw or shoved into some corner whenever anyone looked too closely at him. Tony had noticed that even though he had whined about it some, he still grinned at her and had nestled closer.
Whatever made them happy.
That didn't make Tony any less furious at the fact they she had left a mark on something that he had always, subconsciously, thought of as his. Just like Kate, Abby, Ziva and McGee were his. "I'll talk with her." He grumbled, knowing that the talking would probably devolve into fighting, because of the volatility of her hair trigger temper and his smart assery.
He noticed Gibbs shaking his head, but ignored it. If it was anyone else, Gibbs would have shot them in an instant, and Tony didn't see what put his boss' well being below the rest of the team's. Probably that same drive that was present in Tony. The one that got him shot at too many times, the one that got him infected with the plague, the one that got him nearly blown to pieces and stabbed.
His musings were cut off as they pulled into the parking garage and parked next to Tony's car. He got out and popped his trunk, quickly unbuttoning the rumpled shirt from the night before, and pulling out his 'emergency' shirt and a small backpack filled with toiletries before pulling on the shirt and shutting the trunk, buttoning it as he walked, Gibbs walking two paces behind him, almost as if he didn't trust Tony to follow after his recent shenanigans.
Tony pulled out a toothbrush after buttoning his shirt and put some toothpaste from a little travel tube before stuffing it into his mouth, scrubbing his teeth with one hand while he put the toothpaste back into his bag with the other, Gibbs reaching around him to push the elevator button, first the one on the outside, to call the elevator, then the one on the inside to take them to the bullpen. As Tony came up to his desk he spat into his trash before rinsing his mouth with a sip of water before spitting that into his trash as well.
"Ah nothing better than being minty fresh!" he exclaimed, wiping his mouth on a stray napkin from takeout a few days before, before grinning at the Mossad liaison. "Isn't that right Zi-vah" He segmented the name teasingly before grinning at her.
" You look like you just gave a... What is that word..." she paused here, looking over at McGee for assistance. "Suck...job?" McGee snickered some, at Tony, not the misuse of the word.
"Blow job Ziva." McGee corrected as he looked back at his computer.
"In my experience, you suck, you do not blow." She murmured, shrugging, but filing away the terminology, while Tony tried to fix his hair in his monitor's reflection after wiping off the remaining toothpaste.
"That's not important, what is important is how McVirgin knows about blowjobs."
"Everyone knows DiNozzo. They're all over the Internet. Gear up." Gibbs had walked right by him, but Tony was frozen to the spot momentarily. Had Gibbs just admitted to watching blow jobs in porn or had it just been banter? It had to have been banter. Yet, Tony's mouth still ran dry, pulse rushing, as he could almost feel Gibbs' dick in his mouth. Suddenly he had never wanted anything more at any particular moment than to see his boss in the throes of ecstasy, hand tangled in his hair...
'No!' he chided himself realizing that it would be impossible to hide a full on erection in the pants he was wearing, much less in the elevator with all of his coworkers. Already more than halfway there, he forced himself to recall all manner of grizzly crime scenes as he walked to the elevator. Slowly but surely, Tony's boner wilted, and he heaved a sigh of relief, continuing the montage long after the doors closed.
When the case ended, the director was standing on the stairwell, waiting for them. "Agent DiNozzo, I need to see you in my office." She stated. "It's urgent." Not waiting for the dismissal from Gibbs, he jogged up to where the director was standing, before following her into her office.
