Hi folks! Sorry for the longer delay on this chapter. Lots of stuff is happening in RL, though most of it is good. First off, I'm very busy with work and secondly, I'm going to be moving into a new place soon. I'm very excited but it's going to take a lot of work to fix up first and I'm going to be doing all of it myself. So in the meantime I'm moving into a temporary place for the summer, while I work on the new one, and then move again in fall.

Yep, I know, moving twice in four months….what am I thinking?

So if there's some delays in chapters here and there, I hope ya'll forgive me. I figure we're about halfway through this story right now and about done with the first part. After that, the REAL Tony whumpage begins so hang in there. ;o)

-Moki

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Chapter Seven

Hell, tonight he'd even been good enough to fool me.

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"We're losing light, get your horse unsaddled and then start gathering wood," Gibbs ordered as he followed his own instructions, already starting with getting the gear off his mount.

"Right. Fire, sleeping outside….. kinda forgot about this part," Tony said as he tied up his horse and clumsily started undoing the various straps that kept the saddle and pack in place. He wasn't used to western gear, but the basic idea was similar. He got the hang of it fairly easily, pulling off his pack and getting ready to remove the saddle. When he was done, the sun was pretty much gone, leaving their camp in darkness.

"You want me to go out there, Boss? By myself?" Tony asked nervously, hearing rustling all around and fighting the instinct to reach for his gun. Suddenly the idea of being out on the open range wasn't nearly as much fun as it was when looking at it from the back of his horse.

"You can drop the act now, DiNozzo," Gibbs replied with a good-natured growl, dropping a few branches onto the growing pile he'd set up near a rock wall. He'd chosen the spot to protect them from the worst of the wind still blowing around them.

"Well yeah Boss, I know how to ride, sure. But it's not like we ever went out into the woods or camped or anything like that."

As he talked, Tony walked out to the edge of the camp, slowly venturing farther and farther when nothing came out of the darkness and threatened to eat him alive.

"The kind of riding I did," Tony continued as he worked. "was done in a civilized arena with people standing around holding martinis. The men came dressed in suits and the women in nice hats. This isn't exactly the same thing, Boss."

"You ever do any jumping?" Gibbs asked, giving in to the curiosity that had been tugging at him ever since he'd seen his Senior Field Agent go flying over a bush. Kneeling down, he stacked the branches into the proper shape for a good fire and pulled out the matches from his camp gear.

"Only after my mother said I was old enough," Tony replied, walking over with a large pile of wood and laying it to the side. Seeing that they seemed to have more than enough, he stayed where he was and reached for his pack. "At first all she would let me do was dressage - said it would build character, safer for a seven year old, all that."

"That's what they do in the Olympics, right? With the top hats?" Gibbs asked casually as he started getting their meal together. Canned beans over an open fire was about the best they could hope for, but Gibbs himself was starving after a long day of riding. He doubted his companion would mind the simple fare.

"Yeah," Tony replied. "Luckily only the very upper levels have to wear the monkey suits and I didn't get that far. We just wore the standard english gear. Kind of like what you see in old hunting prints, ya know?"

"Sounds uncomfortable."

Tony shrugged. "Actually you'd be surprised. The boots are awful at first but once you get used to them, they're not so bad and neither is the rest of it. Believe it or not, all of it is designed to help keep you in the saddle."

"Best way I found to do that was not falling off."

Tony started to laugh, but choked halfway through and suddenly looked frantically into the darkness. Jumping up from the seat he'd taken on the ground across from Gibbs, he reached for his Sig.

"Did you hear that?"

"Nothing to hear DiNozzo. Fire's gonna keep most living things away," Gibbs replied without moving from his spot near the fire, calmly putting another piece of wood on and watching as sparks shot up temporarily.

"Oh."

"Sit down and eat your dinner."

Gibbs handed Tony a can of beans warmed over the flames, along with a fork, and settled down to eat his own meal. Every other minute, Gibbs watched with some amusement as the younger man kept looking around into the darkness for unseen creatures, hearing sounds that weren't there. Jumping up repeatedly, Tony kept turning around to make sure that nothing had appeared out of the darkness behind him.

"DiNozzo, you do that one more time and I'm gonna hogtie you to that log over there." Gibbs said quietly after a while, taking the last bite of his dinner and putting the can down.

"Sorry Boss. Guess I'm not the camping out type after all," Tony replied with an embarrassed grin, still keeping his eyes constantly moving around him.

Not long after, McGee called Gibbs on the satellite phone to give them an update. When his boss finished the call, Tony looked at him questioningly across the fire.

"Anything?"

"Maybe. Apparently a woman was seen asking around about Dina's artwork in a local art gallery."

"Think she could be the one sending the letters?" Tony asked, thinking that their crazy fan theory might be panning out.

"We'll find out soon enough. For now we just gotta worry about getting to Dina."

They sat in mostly silence (broken only by the occasional squeak of fear from Tony) for the next couple hours before Tony spoke up, trying to hide a yawn.

"Think I'm gonna turn in, Boss."

Gibbs nodded and Tony walked over to his bedroll and climbed in. He was completely exhausted and not sure how much longer he could have kept his eyes open. He'd been hoping to stay awake as long as his boss, but decided to give up when he'd nearly fallen asleep sitting up.

Once the excitement and adrenaline of the day had worn off, Tony's body began attacking him again. The longer he sat still, the more pain made itself known. His chest ached, his head ached and after a little while he'd begun feeling nauseous. When Gibbs had handed him the can of beans, it had taken everything in him not to barf right then and there.

Tony was pretty certain that Gibbs would not have appreciated that after he'd gone to so much trouble preparing their meal. So he had swallowed hard and quietly accepted his dinner, though he just couldn't bring himself to eat it. Jumping up in pretended fear every few minutes had served him well, nicely distracting Gibbs from the fact that Tony wasn't eating anything. It had also been useful in hiding the coughs that had crept back into his throat and chest. He'd continued with his city slicker act, jumping around like a scared chicken every time there was a rustle (and a few times when there weren't), keeping the boss from hearing the coughs or seeing the uneaten meal.

By the time he crawled into his bedroll, Tony was so tired he didn't even care about how much his chest ached. It was a familiar ache, though he couldn't put his finger on why. It wasn't plague-familiar. It was different than that, yet still he knew he should recognize it. Or maybe it was just another flu thing. Deciding it wasn't worth the effort it took to think about it anymore, Tony closed his eyes and was fast asleep in minutes.

Gibbs smiled when the sound of a soft snore reached his ears only a few minutes after Tony had hit his bedroll. Getting up, he quietly picked up Tony's discarded can of beans and went to throw it into the bag where he was storing their trash. When he picked it up, he was surprised to find that it wasn't empty. In fact, when he looked inside, he saw that Tony had barely touched it at all.

Before he could ponder further, Gibbs heard Tony cough in his sleep. Not the deep frightening cough that brought up memories of blue lights, but still worrying in its own way. As he stood there, holding the empty can in his hand, he realized he'd been fooled, but good.

He supposed he shouldn't be too upset. After all, Tony was one of his team and he trained his team to be good at their jobs. That included undercover work and Tony was one of the best he'd ever seen. Not that Gibbs could take too much credit for it. Tony had come to him with the skill already honed.

Tony loved undercover, loved the chance to act like someone else for a while. Movies had been his escape as a child, a way to get away from a life that wasn't as great as it looked from the outside. Watching people pretend to be someone other than who they were in real life, it had fascinated a little boy trapped in a gilded cage.

Tony also had an almost insatiable curiosity, a trait that made him both an annoying co-worker and a good agent. He could walk into a room and spot something new immediately. Something as slight as a new iPod on someone's desk would pique his interest and once he saw it, he just had to explore it. Like a puppy, he would sniff around, learning about the item and the person behind it. Gibbs had seen how that drove the other team members crazy, but he only held Tony back when it was absolutely necessary - slapping his nose with the proverbial newspaper if he took it too far. Otherwise, Gibbs let it go, entrusting his people to learn to keep their stuff put away if they didn't want it pawed at. Tramping down on the other man's curiosity felt like telling a hunting dog not to sniff - it probably wouldn't work and if it did, the dog would be ruined as a hunter forever.

Besides, Gibbs liked that Tony's curiosity came with almost no shame. Whenever the younger man was caught with his nose where it wasn't wanted, he accepted his blows and moved on without rancor. It made him extremely valuable as an undercover agent. Where others might hem and haw with embarrassment after being caught in a position that could blow their cover, DiNozzo rolled with the punches. He wasn't the only agent who could do it but in Gibbs' experience, he was one of the fastest at it.

Gibbs supposed that the curiosity came from Tony's childhood. A small boy left to his own devices in a large mansion was bound to get himself into trouble a lot. With a father who barely gave him the time of day, little Tony found out about things any way he could. It wouldn't have surprised Gibbs in the least to find out that Tony had gone through his father's mail, sneaked into his closet and listened in on his conversations. All just so he could find out any tidbits about things in his own home.

It was one of the reasons why Gibbs never admonished Tony for apologizing. The younger man was constantly pushing the limits of everything and when he stepped over the line, it was Gibbs' job to put him back in his place. A stare, a gruff word, a smack to the back of the head, sometimes these were the only ways he could get the message across. Some days it felt like Gibbs heard "sorry Boss" about a thousand times from Tony. But only rarely (if ever) did he remind DiNozzo of the rule about apologies. A "sorry Boss" from Tony wasn't like a standard apology coming from someone else. It was just his way of acknowledging that he'd screwed up, and Gibbs accepted it as such.

Gibbs would usually still find his senior agent continuing whatever behavior got him in trouble, even after a reprimand and yet another "sorry Boss". Maybe it would be a few days or weeks or (on the more annoying days) only a few hours, but Tony would invariably do it again. Once again, it reminded Gibbs of an old hound dog. You could take them off the scent, but one way or another they'd find a way to get back on it again.

Gibbs knew that he needed that from Tony. The younger man had never really been afraid of him and he appreciated that. Sure Tony talked a big talk, pretending that he was shaking in his boots when his boss walked up silently behind him during an asinine trick or while relentlessly teasing a probie. But Gibbs knew better. Tony wasn't really scared of him. Sometimes Tony was the only one who pushed Gibbs; pushed him, challenged him, made him re-think what he was doing.

He also pushed the boundaries of humor, but Gibbs needed that too. Lord knew that Gibbs wasn't much good at lightening a mood, so he let Tony do it for him…..and take the blows that came with it when he went too far. When that happened, Gibbs was always pleased to see the way the younger man simply bounced right back.

Yep, Tony had become quite the undercover agent under Gibbs' tutelage.

Hell, tonight he'd even been good enough to fool me.