First of all, in case I don't get a chance to put anything up until after the new year, to those who will celebrate Christmas, Merry Christmas! To those who celebrated Hanukkah, I hope that it was wonderful and to everyone I hope you have a wonderful new year.

Spoilers: 1x06 'High Seas', 5x01 'bury Your Dead', 7x03 'The Inside Man', 7x05 'Code of Conduct'

"Why are you teeth blue?"

"Still? I thought I got it all," Tony replied grabbing a CD that was lying on top of some papers and flipping it over to examine his teeth. Yes, Jimmy was right, some of them still held a pale blue tinge. Ziva was going to pay for that prank.

"You still haven't answered my question," Jimmy reminded him.

"Ziva," he replied.

"Ah," the younger man replied as he nodded his understanding. Pulling pranks on one another had been a common occurrence between the two partners in the past and Jimmy thought that it was a favorite pastime of the two; next to teaming up to torment McGee or pushing the unseen but understood boundaries of their complicated partnership. He wondered if this new development meant that things might finally start to return to normal from whatever passed for normal between Tony and Ziva nowadays to normal from a year ago.

"I heard that Gibbs gave you your first head slap today," Tony said conversationally.

"Um yeah," replied Jimmy as he caught up with the sudden shift in the conversation, "and then Abby offered me a sip of her Calf-Pow."

"Way to go, Palmer," Tony said with a smile.

"I don't follow."

"It's Gibbs' way of officially saying you're part of the team."

"But I've been working here since I was a sophomore in college!"

"Gibbs takes a while to warm up to people," Tony replied with a shrug. "It took him four years before he finally got Stan Burley's name right."

"Who?"

"Agent Stan Burley worked for Gibbs for five years, currently in Japan, he was in Bahrain before and before that he was an Agent Afloat. Kate and I met him back when he was still an Agent Afloat, helped him with a case, and then I briefly saw him again back when I went to Iraq the first time."

"Nice guy?"

"Yeah and pretty damn stubborn or some kind of masochist since he worked for Gibbs for five years."

"Tony, you've been working for Gibbs for nearly eight years now."

"Yeah, your point?" asked Tony unfazed.

"Never mind, forget I said anything," Jimmy replied shaking his head slightly and smiling wryly.

Tony shrugged and rooted around in the top right hand drawer to find the case for the CD. Jimmy glanced at his watch and saw that he had been upstairs for almost fifteen minutes now, any longer and Dr. Mallard would start looking for him, but before he turned to go he spied a yellow sticky note with the name Megan and a hastily scribbled phone number.

"Is that Detective Hanley's number?"

"What?" asked Tony distractedly, he had found the missing CD case but it was wedged in the back.

"That number," Jimmy said pointing to the sticky note stuck to the space key on his keyboard.

"Oh yeah, that's hers."

"Are you going to call her?"

Tony shrugged, metro Detective Hanley was nice, smart, and pretty but he wasn't sure if he was going to call her. He didn't want her to get hurt and she would inevitably get hurt if she was with him, he didn't have the best track record when it came to relationships after all.

"You should."

"Why?"

"Because it's just one date or just coffee," 'and you shouldn't be afraid of it turning into more just because of what happened with Jeanne' but that part was left unsaid. "I'll see you later, Tony," he said before turning the elevator.

"See ya, Jimmy."