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Tony pulled into Gibbs’ driveway next to the yellow Challenger and cut the engine with a sigh. He had swung by the store on his way over and grabbed a few more food items to pad out his meals now that he was feeding two people, but he still felt like he had gotten there too fast. He hadn’t had enough time to figure out what on earth he was going to do with this mess.


Never one to cower in the face of adversity, Tony got out of the truck and made his way into Casa de Gibbs without bothering to knock. Nobody who knew the man did.


As he crossed the threshold and swung the door shut, he was suddenly struck by the thought that at least this whole business with Gibbs discovering his secret had gotten his mind off the train wreck that was their last case. He gave out a chuckle that was more of a grunt at the thought, a strange smile-grimace hybrid blooming on his face.


“Something funny, DiNozzo?”


Startled out of his train of thought, Tony turned to see Gibbs standing in the doorway of the kitchen with his trademark half-smirk. Before Tony could answer, Gibbs turned away and went back into the kitchen only to return a few moments later with his arms full of gear, heading for the front door.


“Ready when you are,” Gibbs said as he brushed past Tony. With a quick glance around the room, Tony followed his boss out the door. Unsurprised at the efficiency of Gibbs’ packing, Tony merely hopped into the cab of his pickup and started the engine as Gibbs put his gear in the bed of the truck and climbed into the passenger seat beside him. With a quick reverse out of the driveway, they were on the road.


The silence between them was mostly comfortable, though there was a slight tension in Tony’s body that belied his calm expression. The silence stretched on until they hit I-66 westbound; Tony’s ability to keep quiet was obviously exhausted as he began to comment on the heavy traffic which then led into a rambling monologue about the various road trip films he’d seen, starting with Smokey and the Bandit and branching out from there.


Every once in a while, Tony would glance sideways to gauge Gibbs’ reaction, but the man was silent, his body language neutral, his only movements the occasional lifting of his coffee cup to his mouth to take a sip.


And seriously, where did Gibbs’ coffee even come from? Did he pull it out of hammerspace like some Looney Tune character? Perhaps “Summon Coffee” was a Gibbsian superpower along with “Super-Marine Stealth Mode” and “Break Your Brain With My Icy Glare”, Tony wondered to himself even as his mouth kept moving of its own volition. He had abandoned the subject of road movies in favor of some frat-boy tale about a keg smuggling that had gone hilariously wrong when, out of nowhere, he felt Gibbs’ hand lightly slap the back of his head.


Tony’s mouth snapped shut with an audible click, and he turned to gaze at Gibbs with an expression of mild surprise. Gibbs stared back, eyebrow cocked, and Tony silently replayed the last few minutes in his head in an effort to figure out what had earned the headslap. To his chagrin, he realized that his monologue had left the realm of entertaining storytelling and transformed into a half-manic caricature of his normal motor-mouth tendencies. The panic that had been waiting quietly in the background of his mind had pushed his mouth into high gear, and while the red herring that was his verbose nature kept most people off his emotional scent, Tony knew the bloodhound in Gibbs was not easily fooled.


Tony could feel the heat rushing up his neck and spreading across his ears, and he groaned inwardly as he realized that he was actually blushing in embarrassment. He struggled to control his body’s response to being caught panicking by Gibbs; he was determined not to give his boss even more fuel for the fire. He desperately cast about for something to say to ease the tension that suddenly filled the space between them.


To his surprise, it was Gibbs who broke the silence.


“So, have you been camping in Shenandoah before?” Gibbs asked the question with a casual grace that had Tony’s internal Gibbsometer blaring out a red alert. Tony had spent enough time with Gibbs in interrogation to fear that tone of voice; it was the one Gibbs pulled out when he wanted to lull a suspect into a false sense of security before crushing him or her like a bug.


Squish, squish, his mind supplied helpfully.


Normally, Tony would dodge the question with an artful bit of distraction or prevarication or, failing that, some good old-fashioned verbal diarrhea. Under the current circumstances, however, none of his usual methods would work. It was his garrulousness that had gotten him into this jam in the first place.


Heh, jam. Smashed up fruit. Squish, squish.


Tony shook his head and tried his best to push the panic back into the box in the back of his mind where he shoved everything he didn’t like or couldn’t deal with. Unfortunately, the box was already full to bursting and didn’t have room for one more bit of avoidance. Tony did his best to hog-tie and leave it in some back corridor of his mind where it couldn’t cause too much damage, at least for as long as it took him to get Gibbs off his back.


“Well, you see, Boss, it’s like this…”


As Tony launched into what he hoped was just enough of an explanation to satisfy Gibbs without actually revealing anything, he made the mistake of glancing at the man. Gibbs had that look on his face, the one he wore when he was sure that Tony was about to feed him a line of bull and he wanted to see how much rope it would take Tony to hang himself. It was a bit like a hawk watching a baby bunny, all feral hunter and secure sense of impending victory.


Tony swallowed whatever he was about to say; he could practically hear the sound of Gibbs swooping in to disembowel his prey.


It sounded an awful lot like squish, squish.

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