Warning: if swearing bothers you, you might want to avoid my fics in general. I have a liberal word policy.
Wadusky fired, and the big thug reaching for the crowbar went down screaming.
Ricky snarled and pulled his gun, pressing its cold metal tip straight to Tony's temple. "You set this up for fun? You think you can fuck with me?"
There had been time for DiNozzo to draw his own gun, but he hadn't. Instead, he moved to cover all three NCIS agents, spreading his arms out high and wide, both showing he was not holding a weapon and trying to create a shield against what seemed an inevitable hail of bullets.
He shot Gibbs a look that the agent interpreted as a warning. Don't draw your gun. Don't do it.
It went against all of his training, but he didn't. Gibbs unzipped his jacket, hand hovering over the holster, but he did not touch it.
"Rookies, Ricky. Rookies. Look at them. They're just kids. Baby cops." Tony's words were quiet and soothing, a tumble of verbal band-aids. "This wasn't planned. I told you why I'm here. You know me, this isn't my style. Baby cops, Ricky. Dumb, dumb, dumb baby cops."
Ricky's eyes were crazy, but he hadn't fired. His men were better trained than Gibbs' probies; they waited for orders to shoot.
In a move of breathtaking stupidity, DiNozzo turned around completely, arms still spread, now facing Greene and Wadusky, leaving Ricky's gun pressed to the back of his head.
"What precisely are you doing here?" He asked in an eerily pleasant voice.
Wadusky's face was white and his hand was shaking. His whole body was shaking. If he didn't put the gun down soon, they'd have another problem on their hands.
Greene was frozen. At Tony's mild-sounding question, his eyes jerked away from the man on the ground and onto the detective's. "Abby…Abby found a tie to this tattoo parlor. We couldn't reach you. I thought…" His voice faltered.
"Put your guns down," DiNozzo ordered quietly, and Greene complied, lowering his pistol. Wadusky still did not move, his shaking hand pointed straight at Ricky.
"Put. Your gun. Down, Wadusky. Now!" In a remarkably commanding tone Gibbs would not have thought Tony capable of, the detective exuded authority that the younger of the two probies finally paid attention to. He cast a wild glance at Tony, failing to believe the order could be true.
A look at Tony's face convinced him otherwise, and he lowered his weapon.
Tony stilled for a moment. Gibbs thought he was taking stock of the situation, hoping Ricky would command his crew to back off.
A tall, thin man crouched down over the large man who had been shot. "He's bleeding bad, man. Passed out already. Doesn't look too good."
Ricky screamed wordlessly, spittle flying onto Tony's neck.
Still the detective did not turn around.
"Gibbs," he said quietly.
"Yeah, DiNozzo?" Though he'd been through hairy situations before, it still mildly surprised him that his voice was soft and steady.
"Go take their guns, please."
Slowly, unbelieving that this was a good idea, Gibbs stepped forward. Nine steps later he made it to Greene and Wadusky and reached a hand out to each of them, taking their guns.
"Bring them here."
As Gibbs walked back to Tony, he held the younger man's eyes.
It was a disturbing moment. DiNozzo's eyes were clear and alert, but showed no sense of self-preservation. He looked like a man ready and willing to jump on a grenade to save the unit.
And there was no way for Gibbs to stop it.
All he could do was follow the detective's lead, as he'd agreed to do back at the station house.
And hope this hadn't turned into a suicide mission.
His nine steps were up, and Gibbs put the guns on the ground by Tony's feet as the other man gestured him to do, then stepped back. But only once.
Tony looked back at the probies, again with dominance in his face and voice. "Sit down on the ground, hands out in front of you."
They complied. Greene aptly turned green, Wadusky went from white to blue in the face.
Finally, DiNozzo started to turn back to face Ricky. He turned slowly, and did not try to pull away from the gun, letting its tip scrape along the side of his head as he moved. When it rested on his forehead, he stopped.
"Ricky, I've disarmed the stupid baby cops. Now there are two things that can happen here. You can start firing and probably kill all of us, after which you'll have not only the Baltimore PD, but the Navy and Marines on your ass, 'cause these are Navy cops. Eventually, you'll get dead. Or, you can put those guns away and we can get your guy to the hospital where he can get treated. Then you can go find a sleazy lawyer and sue the Navy cops for a boatload of cash."
He paused. "Personally, I'm voting for option number two."
Sirens blared in the distance.
"Don't think of it as not taking revenge for a shooting. Think of it as being smarter than the feds. Smart enough not to get pulled into a fight that'll eventually lose you a lot of men. If your crew is weak, Ricky, you know the other gangs aren't going to back you up. They'll obliterate you. It's a bad choice, I know it, but at least if you let it go you all walk away. And maybe you walk away with a couple million dollars for your troubles."
DiNozzo's voice was smooth and reassuring, his face intent but carefully free of anything that could be seen as condescension. He waited now, having made his move, letting the approaching sirens force Ricky's hand into making his decision.
Ricky cocked his gun.
All at once, Gibbs, Ricky, and Ricky's crew all noticed the blood dripping from DiNozzo's side, falling in fat plip-plops to the dirty snow that covered the pavement at their feet.
Snorting, Ricky stashed his gun inside his jacket. "Ain't no one but babies gonna accidentally shoot through the leader they're trying to protect." He waved the rest of his guys to put their weapons away, and someone quickly hid the downed man's gun, kicking the crowbar to Tony.
DiNozzo lowered his hands and took out his badge as an ambulance and cop car came into view. The only guns in plain sight were the two lying at his feet.
Tony reached a hand down to his side, gingerly pulling material away from the spreading sticky red stain.
He looked at Gibbs with hangdog eyes. "You NCIS guys are seriously depleting my wardrobe."
Ricky laughed.
Gibbs kept both Greene and Wadusky's guns as he ordered them to drive back to the Navy Yard and park themselves in an interrogation room until he was damn well ready to deal with them.
They fled.
The first ambulance took Ricky's thug away, lights flashing and siren blaring. Tony stayed to calm the situation with the incumbent cops and give a preliminary report. Eventually he got Ricky and his crew free, and they trooped off to the hospital.
By then a second ambulance had arrived, and the EMTs were trying to work on Tony as he laughed and joked with the cops on scene.
Gibbs marched up behind the detective's ear and growled.
Rolling his eyes, Tony said his goodbyes, with promises to get in touch for a full report later and to make the probies available if need be.
"It's just a graze, Gibbs, or I would've lost a lot more blood that this."
He hopped up on the back of the ambulance and leaned back so the medic could peel his shirt off with a sick slurp and take a closer look.
"What the hell?" The medic had apparently not been prepared to see a bullet wound on top of a watermelon-sized scrape haloed by a sickly green bruise.
Tony looked down. "Oops, forgot about that."
Gibbs growled at him again. "That's it, I'm calling Ducky."
DiNozzo looked up, now whiney. "Come on Gibbs, that's not necessary!"
"Shut up. Shut up!" Barely avoiding snapping out more furious words that rose unexpected from a place in his gut he thought long closed off, Gibbs tuned out the rest of the detective's complaints and made arrangements to follow the ambulance to the hospital.