To Jethro's relief, doctors completely expected Vance to make a full recovery. The man was getting stronger and stronger every day and with any luck, Jethro wouldn't have to be the acting director for very long.
Despite their rocky start when Vance had become director, the man had, especially in the past year, become a pretty solid friend in his own right.
Looking back at how they met now though, it was really quite ridiculous.
He'd still been working at the Pendleton Field Office under Mike Frank in 1999 and had been since August of '92. He hadn't yet transferred to the District yet, the move down to headquarters taking place in late 2001.
Being part of a small undercover unit, however, Jethro wasn't surprised when he was asked to make a trip to the San Diego field office to discuss some mission in Paris with Supervisory Special Agent Riley McCallister.
Jethro'd left the break room for a minute, returning with a fresh cup of coffee in hand to see a young black man losing his temper and hitting the table. Well, Jethro's lunch to be more specific. "Damn it, Riley!"
"Hey," Jethro said cheekily, pointing down at the food there on the table that had just been flattened in a rather spectacular fashion. "That's my Danish."
The young man gave him a look he couldn't quite read.
"What is your problem, man?" he pressed
"It's my bad," the young man said, patting down his pockets. The rather green agent was clearly trying to scrounge up some money to give Jethro. The man's pockets were also evidently empty. "I'll get you back for that." To the man's credit, the man did pay Jethro back just a few years later when they met again in D.C.
In a move that definitely wasn't one of Jethro's prouder moments, the combat veteran took a step forward and snarked at the green agent. In hindsight, Jethro had definitely earned the moniker of bastard over the years. For a long time though he didn't really care who he hurt, wrapped up in his own head. "Yeah, you will."
"Gibbs, Leon." Agent McCallister had obviously decided not to skip the social niceties, glancing between both men. "Leon, Gibbs."
He gave this Leon a measuring look.
"I'll remember," the young man stated.
"Me too," he said.
The young man waved his comment off, immediately leaving to break room.
In any case, any issues with the director had completely gone out the window when Vance had said, "I trust you, Gibbs." That was huge coming from the other man for a plethora of reasons, the last but not least being the fact that Jethro had been a huge jerk to him right off the bat for something so damn petty. Especially when it was pretty obvious the man had been having financial problems.
It was weird how things came around full circle though. They wouldn't have even met without all of McCallister's maneuvering and manipulating and had somehow ended up forming an odd friendship.
Unfortunately, everything that was going on meant that Jethro wasn't able to make the drive down to Stillwater that weekend as planned. He really did have to stay back in the District for work.
Jethro's team had also been given the weekend shift, relieving Stan Burley's this time around. They'd been given the detail two weekends in a row and deserved a bit of a reprieve from hotline duty.
That Sunday was a rather slow day, thankfully, which allowed Jethro to focus primarily on his acting director duties. While Jethro was doing that his team followed up on a couple of cold case leads and got caught up on their reports; little supervision required.
On the other hand, dealing with the paperwork from all the various units was driving Jethro crazy and it had only been a week since he'd became acting director.
By the time 1700 came around, he was more than done with the day. Quickly making sure that the office was squared away, Jethro got up from the table he'd been working at for the better part of the day. Unfortunately, it really didn't look like the huge stack of paperwork in front of him had gotten any smaller.
Shaking his head, he poured himself a fresh cup of coffee and started to make his way down to the squad room to dismiss his team before heading home himself.
He had to smile though when he heard his daughter's voice coming from the middle of the room, prattling away with his team about something or other that was far more up DiNozzo's alley than his.
"It's not a man purse," DiNozzo said, presumably quoting some movie or other as he was wont to do. "It's called a satchel. Indiana Jones wears one."
"You are literally too stupid to insult," Kelly fired back in jest. His daughter was clearly enjoying the banter with his Number Two.
DiNozzo smirked. "Thank you."
Ziva turned to DiNozzo with a grin. "You may have met your match, Tony."
The Italian movie buff turned to Ziva, visibly amused. "Never."
Kelly snickered and then spotted Jethro. "Dad!" she said with a big grin, pulling him in for a bear hug. "Happy birthday."
He gave his daughter a kiss on the cheek. "Thank you, Kel. Mom waiting?"
"Uh-huh," she said with a mischievous glint in her eyes. "You ready?"
"Yep," he said with a small smile. "Lead the way."
"Parked just out front," she said happily, walking towards the elevator Jethro following close behind his daughter.
He and Kelly had just got down to the main doors when his phone rang. With a rather irritated eye roll at his phone, Jethro answered the call. "Yeah, Gibbs."
He immediately realized it was Ducky calling. "Jethro, I need to talk to you about one of the profiles you asked me for."
He sighed. "Okay, I'll be there in a minute."
"Well," Ducky commented, "I went up to the office to look for you when you weren't in the squad room. The conference room is actually closer."
"Fine," he said. Jethro was slightly curious as to why the man hadn't simply called him in the first place and what he felt was so important. "I'll meet you there."
He eyed his daughter. "Kel, -"
His daughter gave him a look. "It's fine, Dad. I'll just bug Tony while you do whatever it is that you need to do."
He raised an eyebrow at that. "You can head out to the car if you want, Kellz."
"Nah," she said. "Let's let her continue listening to Neil Diamond for a while."
He gave a soft chuckle. "Alright. Come on then."
Making his way back up to the main floor, he was a little bit surprised to see his agents nowhere to be found. A couple of agents were busy working away at the Far East and Europe-Africa desks but the room was mostly empty.
Deciding that they'd probably just went down to Abby's lab or something, he headed up to the conference room, Kelly following close behind.
"I'm not sure you should really be in there when I talk to Ducky," he said. "Go grab a snack from the vending machine down there if you want."
She waved his comment off with a smirk and moved to open the door.
"Kelly, what-" And then it hit him. He'd been played. Standing inside the door was his wife, who was very clearly not outside, and by the looks of things, his entire team was in there as well.
He chuckled. "Well played you sneaky brat."
"I learned from the best," his daughter replied with a smirk.
"Surprised?" Shannon commented with a grin.
"Oh," he replied happily, "only a little more than a lot."
"Good." Shannon then pulled him in for a kiss, DiNozzo quickly earning himself a slap on the back of the head when he made a teasing remark.
"Let's get this party started," Abby said gleefully as she wrapped her arms around him.
"I concur!" Ducky said, clearly pleased that he'd been able to pull one over on Jethro.
Well, his birthday had certainly taken a turn for the better.
