You have reached the number Of Timothy McGee. Please clearly state your name, leave a message and I will return your call as soon as I am available. Thank you.

Gibbs watched Tony as he left yet another message on McGee's cell. It had been three days since whatever Tony had done to piss McGee off. Three days of McGee ignoring Tony. Three days of McGee specifically bringing only three cups of coffee into work in the morning. Three days of no nicknames, no flying balls of paper, no tricks and no laughter. Three days of sad eyed, quiet hurt that had reduced Tony to a blithering, apologizing, interrupting, frantic mess.

But this was different.

McGee was an hour and a half late for work and no one had seen or heard from him since the previous day. McGee was never late, not like this. This was no break down on the Beltway. Even if it was McGee would have called. Something. Gibbs watched as Tony's eyes slid across to his team mate's empty desk, yet again.

"DiNozzo!"

'Yeah Boss?"

"Get over to McGee's. He's probably been up all night online gaming or whatever it is he does and just slept in. Get him and bring him back to work. I don't care if you have to break into his apartment and throw him over your shoulder but you get him into work. See if you can work out this mess you've got yourself into while you at it."

"Yes Boss"

Tony with a grateful grin scooped up his bag and headed to the elevator at a jog. It felt good to be doing something. Something other than….You have reached the number of….

Gibbs waited until Tony was swallowed up in the elevator then he turned to Abby who was nervously chewing on one of her pigtails and leaning against Ziva's desk.

"Ziva…. I want you to put a BOLO on McGee's car, Abby…… I want you to start calling around the hospitals……"

Abby's eyes grew worried and she bit her lip "Do you really think……?"

"It's just a precaution Abby…just being thorough. I'm sure Tony will have him back here in an hour"

Abby nodded. Being thorough. Yes that was important.

Ziva threw Gibbs a quick look and Gibbs didn't need to say anything for her to know that something felt wrong. Something in his gut.

Tony pounded on the door to Tim's apartment.

"Come on McGee I know you're in there! Let me in! You are crazy late for work and Gibbs told me to come and get you. So let me in! McGee! If you're asleep in there I'm going to kill you myself…and then Gibbs will…and then Abby for making us worry."

Tony swung his bag down and pulled out his lock pick tools

"McGee I'm going to break in…..now don't be mad…or well madder than you already are at me but Gibbs told me to. So yell at him…but I'm coming in anyway so you might as well let me in!"

When there was no response Tony quickly picked the lock and with a nervous breath pushed the door open.

Tony stood in the middle of McGee's tiny apartment and felt the silence that indicated it was empty. As a precaution he called out anyway "McGee?"

Silence.

Where the hell could he be?

Tony frowned and started to have a look around. Maybe there was something here to say where he went?

Tony instinctively turned and walked over to the typewriter where it sat on Tim's writing desk. It had once seemed so strange to Tony that he chose to write on a typewriter rather than using the computer at which he was so skilled. Now that Tony had gotten to know the man underneath the Federal Agent Geek façade he could imagine him no other way, than slightly hunched over his ancient typewriter banging away fiercely as his thoughts became reality on the blank pages.

There was a page already in the typewriter, a letter incomplete. Tony peered over and quickly wound the page out when he saw who it was addressed to at the top.

Dear Tony,

It seems we cannot simply speak freely to each other….at least about the things that really matter to us. Too much stands between us and honesty, including ourselves.

And so I attempt to write this letter while I sit calmly in the quiet darkness and hope that I can say clearly what I cannot say when I stand in front of you.

I hope you will forgive me my cowardice but I do not wish to turn the divide between us into a canyon…because whatever happens in the future you were a good and true friend. And there are few enough of those in the world to simply toss one away.

I love you

That is a truth that I cannot deny, like gravity or the strength of Gibbs' coffee.

I love you.

There is a freedom, a weight lifted from my shoulders that once I give you this letter that at least this once I have told you. What you do with that knowledge is your own challenge.

I can see you struggling and I would like to help but as it is me against whom you are struggling it seems hopeless. This is all a surprise to me as well but perhaps I am less concerned because I have less to loose and more to gain than you?

Because I can see so much to gain from being able to truly love you Anthony DiNozzo and I would like to show you the truth of a real relationship as no one else has taken the time to.

I would hope that you would consider loving me in return. But if it causes you such despair and anguish that you must resort to anger then please allow me to quietly leave the team and hopefully one day we can return to each other in friendship.

You said that you wanted to be a man, nothing more. A normal man. Well Tony a man can be a mighty thing and a man is more than who they chose to have sex with. A man is about standing up for what they know is right even when it is painful, a man is about telling the truth, standing up for his friends, protecting his family, doing what is right and not just when that is easy.

There is so much I don't know how to say to you and I just wish

The letter ended there unfinished.

Tony stood with the letter clutched in his hand, reading and re reading. Even though it was addressed to him it was as if he had reached inside Tim's private thoughts and laid them bare. Not Federal Agent computer genius McGee, but these were the private thoughts of passionate and tender late night poet Timothy. A man Tony had rarely met except in brief dazzling glances.

Tony was swallowed in a riot of emotions as he paced back and forth across the tiny open space.

Where was Tim? Why hadn't he finished the letter? Was he still planning on giving it to him or would the letter be burnt and its tender declarations destroyed? What if Tim found him with the unfinished letter and felt that Tony had once again pushed him too far?

Timothy McGee loved him.

Tony stood stock still in rapture of the realization. Not just liked, or was keen on, or thought was attractive, or would do for now. This was an honest to goodness declaration of intent.

Tony DiNozzo was loved. Loved for his faults as much for his strengths. Loved by someone who knew him well enough to know when he was lying, when he was in pain, when he was trying to push them away.

Tony felt tears prickling at his eyes and he blinked them away as he gloried in the sensation of someone good, kind, honest and true risking everything they had to tell him he was loved.

Tony suddenly jumped in alarm as his phone rang shattering the silence and he crushed the precious letter into his fist.

"Abby? I'm at McGee's apartment…..and he's not here. I don't know…"

"Tony!"

Tony's heart plunged from its dangerous soaring giddy heights at the tears in Abby voice.

"What's wrong?"

"We think we found McGee…he's been stabbed."

(

(Oh do please review and let me know what you think. Thanks for reading Precious)