Thanks to everyone who took the time to message/review and to those I couldn't reply to; it is much appreciated.
Sorry this took a little longer to get out than I had originally planned. Real life has a way of kicking you down when you least feel up to dealing with it. Had a very sad week; had to take my dog to the vet and make that awful decision to have her put down, so I didn't feel much like writing after that.
About two hours after I posted the first chapter, there was a blackout; it only lasted about two seconds, but apparently that was enough to stop the new router from working. I could not see the funny side! However, it is now all fixed (touch wood) and this time BT has given me everything I need, so there should be no more problems with uploading.
Tony and Gibbs work a cold case and Gibbs needs a swift lecture from Ducky to help him understand his latest acquisition. He lays down another of his rules. No action in this chapter, but lots of introspection; they're both still trying to understand each other.
Tony had woken up early; he was excited that for the first time since starting his new job, he would finally have a day without the long drive to FLETC and, better yet, without any seminars.
Gibbs had said that he wanted to see how Tony worked a case that was completely new to him…Tony's first NCIS case. He may not have received his Special Agent status yet, but if a cold case got him out of class and into the field…well, that was fine with him.
He had never much liked working cold cases; they evoked a special kind of depression. It was rare to work a cold case and find a new and successful lead; knowing that someone out there had gotten away with murder, sometimes quite literally, never sat well with a man who believed in justice for all.
He had been so busy with seminars and assessments and readings that he had not managed to find any free time for himself; if ever he did have a couple of hours to spare, he was in the hospital receiving his final few sessions of physiotherapy.
All that meant he still had not found the time to go apartment hunting.
He promised himself that at the weekend he would make time; he couldn't stay in his boss' spare room for the rest of his time at NCIS, no matter how short or long that time may be.
Gibbs had been a good and gracious host, making sure Tony was comfortable without making a big deal about it all. However, it was clear the man liked his solitary moments. The man had often disappeared down into the basement and could spend hours down there working away on his boat before resurfacing.
Tony had yet to feel as comfortable or as brave as he had that first day to try and intrude on that particular sanctuary.
"Are you off apartment hunting with Abby this weekend?" Gibbs asked as he entered the kitchen, trying hard not to roll his eyes at the fact that DiNozzo was in his running gear while suffering the after-effects of catching a bullet and the invasive surgery required to remove it.
"Yeah, apparently I have no idea about what is classified as 'hinky' and I look like I need all the help I can get," Tony replied dryly as he thought of Abby's instructions on what an apartment should be. "All of this coming from a woman who, quite literally, has a coffin in her lounge."
Gibbs nodded, secretly glad that Abby had appointed herself head of the apartment hunting committee; he wasn't entirely sure that DiNozzo would go for something that the Senior Agent would term as 'suitable' either.
"You should get ready; we need to get going," Gibbs gestured towards the other man's slightly sweaty clothes.
"Yeah," Tony nodded as he headed up the stairs. "I'll make sure the shower is a quick one then we can get going. I get to work an actual case!"
The last statement was clearly said more to himself than to his new Boss, but Gibbs couldn't help but smile at the enthusiasm he heard there. He couldn't blame DiNozzo; he much preferred working a case, even a cold one, than dealing with the theory behind it all. Thankfully his long days at FLETC had been over for years and he was now only stuck with the occasional seminar.
Tony had seemed to become despondent over the past few days, so much so that Gibbs had considered ringing up the kid's former partner, Sam Jacobs, for a few words of advice.
He knew Tony was not enjoying much in the way of his classes at FLETC; having been an active cop for over six years Tony was miles ahead of most of his classmates when it came to his understanding of law and procedure.
Unfortunately, Morrow had made Tony's admission into the ranks of NCIS reliant upon his attendance of those classes. The Director was clearly worried about hiring an unknown entity and as far as he was concerned the classes and the feedback from them were allowing Morrow to see whether or not he had made an astute decision in allowing Gibbs free rein over his own team.
Gibbs wondered if Tony was aware of just how many of his instructors were reporting back to the Director about his progress.
"Ok, let's go," Tony came down the stairs in another smart suit ready to face the day.
Gibbs tried to hide a sigh.
It seemed as though DiNozzo was still not comfortable enough to relax his wardrobe. He had learnt early on that DiNozzo's clothes almost acted as an extension to the man's inner emotions.
DiNozzo had worn jeans and a hoodie in Baltimore around his old partner, comfortable and confident enough to know that Sam would have his back no matter what, both on the job and off; his fellow cops may not have always liked him but most could not deny his competency.
In DC it was an entirely different story.
Gibbs knew that the younger man was being judged more by the fact that he had personally requested the transfer, looking straight to Morrow for a green light; that alone had got the scuttlebutt started. There were so many bits and pieces of information circling the MCRT bullpen about one Anthony DiNozzo; some were true, some were clearly full of crap and others were ambiguous enough that they started up a whole other line of rumours.
With all of that, people were not just questioning Gibbs' decision, they were doubting Tony's abilities; the effects were obvious.
Tony wore his clean and crisp designer suits like armour; a chainmail made up entirely of expensive fabrics and famous labels designed to keep people focused on the image projected and not the man wearing them. Yet another layer of protection the young man seemed intent on keeping between himself and the world.
"Come on, DiNozzo," Gibbs said gruffly as he motioned for the man to get out to the car. One thing he had quickly understood about his new charge was that the man did not want to be molly-coddled; he may have brought out the kicked puppy routine every now and then, but he tended to be even more suspicious if Gibbs started trying to be nice.
"Coming, Boss," Tony said as he darted past the older man and headed to the car. With what he hoped would prove to be a busy day ahead of him, he didn't want to be on the wrong side of the Senior Agent before they'd even pulled up to the Navy Yard.
Gibbs had left Tony to review the case file while he was in with the Director; Tony really hoped that visit was nothing to do with him!
So far, he could find no real evidence of foul play; a young Petty Officer, Jose Ramirez, had been reported as UA after he failed to report for duty. A large pile of household bills on his door mat suggested that he had not been home for months before his tour of duty.
No one had reported him missing.
That alone had caught Tony's attention and he had flipped through the files to try and find out why there was no one in Ramirez's life who noticed that he had been missing for almost three months before he was declared missing.
The only living family member on file was an absent father, his mother having died of cancer when he was still in his teens. His older brother had died on his first tour of duty with the US Army.
Judging from old phone bills, there appeared to be very few out-going personal calls and his post contained nothing but junk-mail and utilities bills.
All in all, it looked as though Ramirez led a pretty solitary life.
Tony wondered who would come looking for him if he went missing.
He had no family to speak of; an estranged father who seemed to want very little to do with him while the rest of the family were little more than strangers to him. He had a few frat buddies from college that he kept in touch with, but they met up so infrequently due to conflicting work schedules that he didn't always know where they were, either.
In fact, until he went to Baltimore, Tony would have been quite convinced that he could easily have met the same fate as Ramirez. Before Baltimore, he'd worked with a few people that he had both liked and trusted, but those relationships had always stayed in the workplace.
Sam Jacobs changed all of that.
Sam had been gruff and caustic when they first met, letting Tony know that he wasn't going to take any crap from his new partner; he still couldn't say why, but Tony had felt it was beyond important to impress Sam with his abilities.
Thankfully, he had quickly managed that.
Once Sam knew that the rumours surrounding him had no basis, and saw with his own eyes that Tony was not just able, but willing to pull his own weight, things started to change. After that had been established, Sam had taken the young Detective under his wing and taken great care in teaching Tony all he could with patience and diligence.
Sam had done his best to ensure that the ridiculous hazing in the 22nd Precinct had not gone overboard, and had tried to shield him from the stupidity of their Captain. The man had even taken the effort to include Tony in his own small family gatherings over the holidays.
All in all, Sam had managed to prove to Tony in every way possible that he was not just a partner, but a friend as well.
Tony knew that if anything was ever to happen to him, Sam would not stop hunting for clues; even his disability wouldn't slow him down. He'd throw away his cane and limp to get from A to B if he had to, enduring all that pain without one word of complaint.
That Tony had one person in his life that he could rely upon like that meant more to him than words could adequately describe.
Now, Tony suspected he had two.
Agent Gibbs was a gruff man, who seemed to be reserved with all emotions except, perhaps, anger and impatience; however, having stayed with the man for almost four days, Tony had learnt a lot about him and knew that nothing about Special Agent Gibbs was simple.
Gibbs had done what he could to accommodate a man he hardly knew and had managed it all without accepting one word of thanks; Tony had tried, but after the fourteenth attempt he knew it was futile. He was taking time out of his mornings and evenings to ferry Tony to and from FLETC, which Tony appreciated, even if the man's driving did take some getting used to. The older man had even helped to find him a good physiotherapist, and an attractive one at that.
Tony had come to DC expecting to find a job and nothing more; he and Gibbs had worked well together in Baltimore and Tony had appreciated the way the Senior Agent had gone above and beyond to help out him and his partner. None of that, however, prepared Tony for the situation he found himself in.
He had imagined himself spending his first week in a motel while he got his job sorted out and looked for an apartment; he certainly hadn't believed that Gibbs, the gruff, stoic former Marine Scout Sniper, would house him in his spare room until Tony got his act together.
There had also been concern about his dietary habits and his morning runs; these concerns were delivered with a far greater severity than he was used to with Sam, but Gibbs' comments certainly had an impact, nonetheless.
Of course, that didn't mean that Tony was going to stop going for his morning run or cease doing his physio exercises for longer than he had been advised; he had managed to go through his life so far on his own without doing any permanent damage so he was confident that he didn't need a constant minder, no matter what Sam or Gibbs thought.
It did feel good, however, to know that he had someone like Gibbs to watch his six. In Baltimore he had trusted Sam implicitly with every facet of his life, but he had been the only one; there had been others, mainly uniforms, that he trusted on the job but that was as far as it went.
Too many people in Baltimore had been all too eager to buy into the rumours surrounding him, and that had meant that they were too busy trying to bring him down rather than even think about giving him a helping hand up.
Rumours, it seemed, were intent on following him even to DC, but Gibbs was apparently immune to the speculation that was currently circulating the bullpen in a wild frenzy.
All in all, Tony was pretty confident that even if he made no other friends, Gibbs would watch his six wholeheartedly and unfailingly, and Tony would do everything in his power to prove himself worthy of that.
Gibbs had been in MTAC trying to assure his Director that the scuttlebutt surrounding his latest acquisition was completely unfounded; Morrow's face was pretty stoic about the whole situation, but his firm words indicated otherwise.
He returned to the bullpen to find DiNozzo still hunched over the case files that were spread across his desk. The younger man had ignored the desk next to Gibbs and had obviously recognised the neatly organised desk opposite Gibbs' as belonging to Blackadder. Tony had seated himself diagonally across from him; Gibbs wondered if that choice had anything to do with the views that the desk afforded him.
From his seat, Tony would not only be able to watch the rest of the team, but he had a direct line-of-sight on the elevator and the door way to the stairwell. He also had a good view of the balcony above the bullpen, able to watch the comings and goings of MTAC and visitors heading up to the Director's office.
DiNozzo might be able to fool most people into believing he was shallow and arrogant, but Gibbs knew better; the younger man might waste more time than Ducky talking about the trivialities of life, and he might get more excited than Abby on a caffeine rush about completely irrelevant events, but in spite of his seemingly oblivious nature, he actually missed very little.
"Goddammit!" Tony threw the file he had been re-reading down on the desk with a great deal of frustration.
Tony had never before worked a missing persons case and the stress of it was beginning to show. He had worked one or two kidnap cases, but in those situations the conclusion was usually a foregone conclusion; most kidnap victims die within the first twenty-four hours and the odds of survival decrease exponentially after that dead-line. Their whereabouts were usually unknown, but the motives and the suspects were usually easy enough to figure out.
Murder victims presented a puzzle to be worked at, starting with the last piece, the murder itself, and working back through the victim's final hours and try to find a motive and a suspect.
Jose Ramirez had left them nothing except a large, unopened pile of envelopes and a full wardrobe; there had been no activity on his account to suggest he was getting ready to run anywhere, his clothes were still in his wardrobe and his bags were empty and sitting in the bottom of his closet.
The man had no criminal record and his performance reviews were exemplary. His C.O. had nothing but kind words for the Petty Officer, citing the young man's introverted nature as his only negative trait even though the C.O. suggested it caused far greater harm to Ramirez than it ever would to anyone else.
Tony could find no one with any potential motive and no one stood to gain from his death; his will, that had been drawn up before he served his first tour of duty, stated that all of his possessions should be sold and the profits given to a charity in his local community that provided activities and training for youths as an alternative to gang life.
"There's nothing here, Gibbs," Tony waved the file with an exasperated sigh. "There is not one shred of evidence to suggest that anything bad happened to him; if it wasn't for his exemplary record I would have thought he'd gone UA, but even then, there are no monetary transactions that suggest he left with any money to his name."
"It was because of his record that NCIS was called in," Gibbs offered the frustrated young man. He felt the same way; that a man could disappear so completely without anyone noticing for months left him feeling more than a little sick. "Shore Patrol found the stack of mail in his apartment when then went looking for him; the postage dates led them to calling us in, suspecting foul play."
"Except there isn't any sign of that, either," Tony pointed out. He'd read the forensics report and knew that the whole apartment had been gone over with a fine toothcomb and still turned up nothing.
"It's like he just disappeared into thin air, and no one noticed…no one! How the hell could no one notice that their friend or their neighbour…their son, just stopped answering phone calls or opening his door for three months!"
Gibbs frowned a little at how worked up DiNozzo was getting over the case; he understood that it was frustrating but he couldn't see why this case would affect him so much more than any of the others. DiNozzo's anger over their case together in Baltimore had been more to do with the FBI offering hardened criminals a get-out-of-jail-free card than him being unable to handle the distressing nature of the case.
"I'm going to go and get Ducky's review of the case," Gibbs said as he left the room, leaving behind a very confused DiNozzo.
"Why the hell does he need a Medical Examiner?" Tony mumbled to himself. "There isn't even a body!"
Gibbs didn't need to see Ducky, but he did go down to autopsy with a purpose. He couldn't understand DiNozzo's reaction to the case and he honestly didn't know why so many people seemed to be intent on hating DiNozzo before they had a chance to see his competency, before they had even met him. He wandered down to autopsy to ask the M.E. for his opinion, as he was wont to do when he needed a good sounding-board.
"Jethro," Ducky said in a tone that Gibbs knew meant that one of his short-comings would be brought up. "Surely you cannot be that oblivious! The men and women who work in the MCRT know you as one of NCIS's most highly capable agents; your case-closure rate is something that has you revered by many and that has other teams aspiring to reach. These rumours surrounding young Anthony are malicious, but not out of hatred; they are deeply envious in their origin.
"You have worked alongside some of these people for years, and when the Director granted you permission to create your own team, there was a sudden, eager rush of hopefuls milling around your desk in the bullpen, desperate to be chosen to fill a place on your team.
"Instead, you choose a Baltimore Homicide Detective from a case which forced you to work alongside local Law Enforcement Officers, a task that everyone knows you despise with a passion.
"You had Agent Nixon removed not only from your team, but also from the DC office; you are not exactly subtle in your disregard for Agent Blackadder's abilities, either. However, even with Vivian's presence, you still have one empty desk to fill and yet you show no signs of seeking to fill it.
"People are jealous of the faith you appear to place in a man that you only spent mere days working alongside; they cannot understand what young Mr. DiNozzo possesses that they lack. They have yet to see in him what you witnessed in Baltimore!
"I have no doubt that once they see Anthony working, and working well, that some of that bitterness will disappear, but it will take time and patience, Jethro," Ducky stressed the last part with a pointed look at his old friend, all too aware that patience was not the Senior Agent's strong point; he could spend two days sat in a sniper's nest with nothing but a rifle without so much as a twitch, but ask him to wait five minutes for an answer and he was skulking off in search of caffeine!
"Huh," Gibbs muttered darkly to himself as he thought of people's petty issues impacting upon his team, his Agent! "And the case?"
"I couldn't say with certainty," Ducky offered with a censure and disappointment that suggested Gibbs was missing something vitally important. "I would suggest that young Anthony is feeling slightly empathic towards Petty Officer Ramirez."
"Why?" Gibbs asked, completely nonplussed. "They're nothing alike!" he said as he thought of their lives.
DiNozzo spent his childhood in a wealthy Long Island neighbourhood, while Ramirez came from one of the poorest areas in the capital. DiNozzo had spent all of his working life as a cop, bouncing from one place to the next once he cashed in his pay-check, while Ramirez stayed in the same place for years and joined the US Navy. DiNozzo was wild and unpredictable while Ramirez was quiet and methodical. He couldn't see any similarities.
"Jethro, when you asked me for my opinion on this case yesterday, I did actually take the time to read the files," Ducky said sounding quite offended. "They are both young men with no family to speak of, with few people in their lives who hold any real level of expectations. Given what little I do know of his past, I imagine Anthony would have no trouble at all identifying with the young Petty Officer, envisioning a life where he too went missing, and no one cared enough to notice.
"Your latest acquisition has many strong points to his character, but his greatest weaknesses are all tied up with some truly crippling insecurities; he seems to have very few doubts about his ability to do his job, but on a more personal level he seems entirely lost. His need to prove himself worthy is almost pathological in its intensity."
"He's not going out of his way to prove himself to everyone in the MCRT," Gibbs pointed out, and it was true; DiNozzo had surely heard at least some of the rubbish going around the bullpen about him, but so far he had resolutely ignored it all.
"Because he is not interested in what they think," Ducky explained. "Their malicious words may well affect him, but they are not the ones he feels the need to prove himself to." The older man paused and waited for some of what he was saying to sink in, but his friend still looked ridiculously clueless; for someone with a gut as infamous as his, Jethro certainly did miss some of the more important aspects of life when it came to the personal side of things.
"You, Jethro," Ducky finally pointed out with more than a touch of exasperation. "He wants to impress you. You hand-picked him from a case you both worked in Baltimore, a case that was certainly not without its problems; his transfer here is already causing a stir and he wants to prove to you that he is worth all the trouble you went to in order to acquire him."
He didn't really have anything else to say to Ducky after his long-winded explanation; it did make sense, as loathe as he was to admit it. He also knew that if he wanted the sort of working relationship that DiNozzo had with Jacobs then he was going to have to go beyond the job.
However, he also thought that in offering DiNozzo the job in the first place he was clearly showing the younger man that he already had confidence in the former Detective's abilities. If DiNozzo hadn't already managed to prove himself then Gibbs would never have made him an offer!
If one thing had been made clear since DiNozzo had started his probationary period at NCIS it was that nothing would be simple with the man.
Gibbs desperately needed a coffee before sitting himself down at a desk and going over the Ramirez case yet again. His insecure addition was undoubtedly feeling the strain of the hostile glares being thrown his way, and DiNozzo could probably do with the break that a caffeinated Gibbs would offer him.
Gibbs and Tony had just returned from re-questioning Ramirez's next-door neighbour. The elderly woman had nothing but kind words about her quiet, polite and respectful neighbour but could not come up with any more information than she had managed in her initial statement, nearly ten months ago.
It was yet another dead end.
However, Gibbs had managed to find some sort of amusement from the depressing situation they had both found themselves in; when Mrs Kaplinski was not answering questions, she spent most of the interview clucking her tongue over Tony's apparently dishevelled appearance.
Gibbs had thought the younger man looked well put together; his suit was clean and crisp and his hair was carefully styled. Seeing DiNozzo in one piece and relatively healthy in DC made it hard to imagine the weak and pale man who had emerged from a Baltimore hospital bed all those weeks ago.
The elderly Mrs Kaplinski was not so easily convinced.
DiNozzo's frame was considered too skinny for one his height, and Gibbs did have to concede that the younger man had lost a worrisome amount of weight that he had yet to fully regain over the course of his recovery. The bags under DiNozzo's eyes were apparently so pronounced that the elderly woman had managed to wrangle a solemn promise from him to get a good night's sleep.
Despite her obvious concern, her maternal considerations could not have been bestowed upon a more reluctant victim.
Give Tony an interview with a shallow, big-breasted barmaid who would look at him as a lioness would look at a gazelle and Tony's attention could not be diverted, but give him a woman who fusses over his well-being and his eyes dart desperately around the room looking for a way to escape.
DiNozzo may well love attention, but it clearly had to be attention of a certain nature; the younger man seemed to thrive on competition and judging from his personnel files he seemed to flourish when forced to deal with other people's animosity towards him, but concern from anyone he was not well acquainted with was clearly something DiNozzo did not understand and therefore would not seek out.
Normally Gibbs would never consider allowing a Junior Agent to lead an interview, but he knew that the cold case needed new eyes and ears, and more than that, he wanted to see how well DiNozzo performed.
Besides having a slightly hunched octogenarian berating his dietary habits, DiNozzo had done well with the interview, steering the elderly Mrs Kaplinski back to the subject at hand and artfully extracting information. Unfortunately, no matter how well DiNozzo performed in the interview, there had been no new information to turn up.
"Maybe we should dredge the Potomac," Tony said as he fell into the seat behind his desk, depressingly aware of the fact that the case was likely to remain cold no matter how much they looked into things. "He doesn't seem to be anywhere else; the Potomac seems like just a good a place as any to start looking for a body."
"DiNozzo," Gibbs sighed heavily, as though he were a teacher explaining something simple yet again to one of his more stubborn students. "I don't think we can rationalise the expense of such an action on the off chance that we might find a body."
"I bet we'd find more than one," Tony snorted, as he thought about just who else might turn up if they dredged the major river. He turned back to the files strewn across his desk and began to re-read them for the thirty-second time.
"DiNozzo," Gibbs walked over and closed the files. "Rule 11: when the job is done, walk away."
"Is it done?" Tony asked with a frown, mentally noting down the latest rule to be thrown his way.
"It is for now; we can't dwell on every case," Gibbs shrugged. "My team has one of the highest case-closure rates, but no one has a perfect record; no matter how hard we try, some cases just can't be solved."
"So you walk away, and it's really that easy?" Tony asked sceptically. He couldn't reconcile the words with the Agent he had come to know.
Gibbs knew that there was no simple answer to such a question; it was one of his rules and that should mean that it was one he could follow. However, there were some cases that just refused to leave him alone, some unsolved cases that he refused to file away in the basement with the others, and instead insisted on housing them in one of his desk drawers.
There were some cases, like the Ramirez case, that would never be solved until a body turned up or someone's conscience got the better of them. Some people were undoubtedly murdered, but others were simply the victims of misfortune; he suspected Ramirez fell into the latter group.
The hard part was setting those cases to rest. However, his years in NCIS had taught him that he could not close every case personally and that if he set out to achieve just that then he would likely burn out in less than a year.
"It is never easy, but I know when to walk away," Gibbs finally settled on answering.
DiNozzo could believe that; for all of his impatience and gruff commands, Gibbs was of a relatively pragmatic nature. Tony had worked a Homicide desk in Baltimore so he knew about not being able to solve every case; that didn't make it any easier to handle.
It was, however, strangely reassuring to know that a Federal Agency like NCIS struggled with case closure just as much as a Police Department like Baltimore's, where the funding was worlds apart.
"Yeah," Tony sighed as he gathered the files together and put them in one of his desk drawers; he might not be able to solve the Ramirez case yet, but that didn't mean he was going to give up.
Gibbs followed DiNozzo's movement and hid a smile as he saw where the files ended up; there were certain actions the younger man executed that made it feel as though Gibbs were looking into a mirror. However, DiNozzo's highly unpredictable nature would mean that Gibbs was never likely to forget just who, exactly, he was dealing with.
"Come on, DiNozzo," Gibbs said as he shrugged into his jacket. "There are a couple of steaks and beers with our names on them."
Tony got up and gathered together his belongings, giving a final glance towards his desk drawer with a furrowed brow; one day he would find out how Ramirez had managed to disappear into thin air without anyone noticing, but right then, food sounded too good to pass up.
"You know, Gibbs," he started conversationally. "You might want to consider a more balanced diet; you need some greens in there and some carbohydrates. Man cannot live on protein alone."
"DiNozzo," Gibbs replied just as conversationally as he pressed the elevator buttons with one hand and slapped Tony up the head with the other. "Shut up."
"Yes, Boss," Tony grinned even as he rubbed his head; those head slaps were going to take some getting used to.
There you go, let me know what you think; constructive criticism is welcome.
C.O. – Commanding Officer.
UA – Unauthorised Absence.
Next up, Tony finds out about just how closely he is being watched at FLETC and he tries to deal with things while hunting for an apartment with Abby.