Tony had worked hundreds of overnight stakeouts between the various PDs and NCIS. He’d long ago learned the power of a power nap and how to pretend he hadn’t crashed hard first chance he got.

But this was different. This was three straight days of not having a break. Not having a nap. Not being able to close his eyes and forget for even a second. Three days of pressure and grief and fear.

On the way to Indiana he’d been exactly what everyone expected him to be: the clown, the goofball impressed by the private jet, the one unaffected by everything going on around him.

But Kate was in the ground now and they were back in the air. He’d left his shades on even after they were in the dim cabin looking out over the setting sun. As soon as the pilot had announced that they were at cruising altitude, Tony had moved to the back of the plane where he’d sprawled out over the sofa type thing that spanned the back of the cabin. It was as close to peace and privacy as he’d get until he could get back to his car and his own place in D.C.

He wrapped his arms around his chest and tried to still the faint vibrations in his jaw and gut. It was probably ridiculously rude -" and Kate would have read him the riot act if she’d been there -" but he swung his feet up onto the couch, not caring if his shoes left scuffmarks and leaned his head back against the wall. He turned his face to the back wall and bit down on the inside of his lower lip in an attempt to keep control. The flight back to D.C. wasn’t going to be long. Maybe if he could sleep through it, he could make it home before he fell apart.

He was so busy trying to keep himself together that he didn’t even hear Gibbs sitting on the floor next to him. “You okay?”

Tony nodded, forcing himself to take a deep steady breath.

“You sure?” Gibbs asked.

If getting smacked in the head wouldn’t have led to the very abrupt demise of his very thin measure of control for sure, Tony would have bitten out some smartass comment about Gibbs insisting on asking a question he obviously felt he knew the answer to. Instead he just nodded again. In the end, speaking would take more energy than he could spare.

Gibbs shifted and even without looking Tony knew Gibbs was making himself comfortable. He wondered if it would be worth it to tell Gibbs to leave him alone. Tell him he was going to take a nap or something.

“Who processed Ziva’s statement last night?” Gibbs asked quietly.

“I did,” Tony said quietly, surprised that even after all that had happened Gibbs still wanted to talk shop, keep after him.

“How long did that take?” Gibbs asked him.

Tony took off his shades and leveled his boss with a look that surely would have gotten him cuffed on a different day. “We were done about three. Then I helped her get things together from Ducky and book her flight back home with that inter-agency tennis ball, Ari.”

“You use Ducky’s truck to bring Ari and her to the airport?”

“You were kind of hung up in whatever pissing match Fornell and his boys wanted to have with you.” Tony wasn’t sure where this line of questioning was going, but he wasn’t up to being interrogated.

He felt a warm, dry hand on his wrist and looked down. “I’m trying to figure out where, in the last three days, you’ve had time to get any sleep.”

“I slept on the flight here,” Tony lied easily.

“That’s not what Ducky and Abby tell me. They said you were busy keeping everyone too entertained to get worked up about the fact that we had to bury Kate today.”

Tony put his shades back on. “Give ‘em the old Razzle Dazzle, Razzle Dazzle ‘em. Give ‘em an act with lots of flash in it -"

“DiNozzo!” Gibbs interrupted Tony’s singing with a light smack to the shoulder.

“It’s from Chicago. Richard Gere and -"

“I’ve heard the song, DiNozzo. It was a play before it was a movie,” Gibbs bit out with as much patience as he could muster.

“And you… saw this play?” Tony asked raising his shades again and peering at his boss. His eyebrow rose of its own accord when Gibbs hand fell back over his own.

“I did have to date those women before I married them,” Gibbs told him with a slight smile and he was rewarded with Tony’s chuckle and an almost instant release of the tension in the hand under his.

“You know,” Gibbs said as he leaned back against the plane’s bulkhead, speaking low enough that only Tony would hear him, “A while back you asked me why I hired you.”

Tony took off his shades and put them in his suit pocket. He got the impression he and Gibbs were about to have the kind of talk that only days of no sleep and extreme stress and pressure would allow them to have. “Kate’s a prof- Kate was a profiler,” he forced himself into the past tense. “McGee’s a computer geek, Abby’s a forensic magician, Ducky’s a brilliant M.E. I’m a cop with a stack of reprimands for not taking my job seriously enough.”

Gibbs gave him a tight grin. “Abby’s not the only magician. Or maybe for you we should use the word ‘chameleon.’ You might have gotten a few notes in your jacket, Tony, but you also had one of the highest close rates in your division.”

Tony shrugged off the compliment. He still wasn’t sure where this was going.

“You know, Kate once asked me why I didn’t keep you on a shorter leash,” Gibbs said conversationally.

Tony squeezed his eyes shut. He was starting to get a headache and Gibbs ping-pong logic was doing him in. “Wait, Kate asked you why you didn’t-“

“Well, she didn’t put it exactly like that, but she wanted to know why I didn’t yell at you or smack you in the head for going through her things or some of the more crass remarks you made.” Gibbs shifted so that he was leaning back against the sofa Tony was stretched out on, which brought the back of his head against Tony’s arm.

“She was so… genteel when she started, talking to her reminded me of talking to my maiden aunt or my second grade teacher,” Tony said wondering if he was bordering on speaking ill of the dead.

“Yes, she was. Secret Service doesn’t actually spend much face time in interviews with the kind of dirtbags we haul in on a regular basis,” Gibbs agreed.

“I figured if I pushed her buttons…” Tony trailed off with a shrug.

“If you pushed her buttons, then her buttons were way too visible. And if you could find them and push them, so could a suspect. So if she learned to hide them from you, she’d be better at interrogation, less vulnerable when she ran into a real misogynist asshole.” Gibbs finished Tony’s thought.

“Do you think she died thinking that’s who I really am?” Tony asked staring at the ceiling.

“Kate stayed in a quarantine room with you for hours after it had been confirmed that you were sick and she wasn’t. They had to throw her out, from what I hear from Ducky. What does that tell you?”

Tony nodded and for some reason that was the last straw. He slid the edge of his hand along the bottom of his eye hoping to wipe away the tear before Gibbs could see, but when he opened his eyes again, Gibbs was holding a clean tissue over his shoulder.

Tony grabbed it and wiped both eyes and blew his nose. “She lied to me. Told me she had it. Well, she didn’t tell me, she let me ramble like an idiot until I was left with the conclusion that she had it.”

“She knew you would have made her leave; she wanted to stay with you,” Gibbs told him.

“You know, once it stopped feeling like I was sucking in razor blades, I realized that I was glad it was me that got a face full of that stuff,” Tony admitted.

“You were glad?” Gibbs asked incredulously.

“Not glad that it happened, but if we’d strictly followed protocol, you would have been stuck in the room from Aliens and that … It was better that it was me,” Tony finished lamely.

Gibbs just turned and glared at him, the glare that said Tony better finish that thought out loud. Or else.

“It’s just… you saw how sick I was. And I’m in pretty good shape. And, you know… younger. I had a better shot of fighting it off.” Tony shrugged. His sentiment was sincere, but he was pretty sure he didn’t have a chance in hell of explaining himself without sounding insulting or stupid or both.

“You calling me old, DiNozzo?” Gibbs asked, but there was a light in his eye that made Tony take a deep breath and relax a little.

“No, boss, of course not. But you were in Desert Storm. Who the hell knows what you were exposed to over there? I mean, it’s like… well, I’m glad it wasn’t Kate, either, you know. She’s kind of small, if she’d taken in the same concentration I did, it could have been fatal for her because of her smaller lungs. And McGee… he probably has asthma or something. All the computer geeks in movies have asthma or… something...”

Gibbs had long ago realized it was a great source of entertainment during their less stressful moments to let Tony talk himself into a hole without interrupting him or smacking him on the head. This time he sort of wished he’d cut him off. Mostly because he could see Tony’s point - his age and Kate’s size would have seriously limited their chances for surviving the plague - and he kind of wished he didn’t. He never doubted that any of his people would take one for the team - Kate was certainly proof of that - but the idea that Tony justified it as ‘a good plan’ worried him a little. But today was not the day to confront DiNozzo’s self-esteem issues head-on.

“She came to visit a lot while I was in the hospital. Almost as often as you did,” Tony added absently. He hadn’t realized until that moment that it had meant so much to him that she’d come by almost every day until he was released. “Sometimes when there was nothing else to talk about we’d run through old cases. I’d give her the clues and see how much I had to feed her before she’d figure the rest of the details on her own. She was pretty good by the time they released me.”

Gibbs shifted again and this time took Tony’s hand in his. “That’s why I hired you,” Gibbs told him softly. “You know how to get stuff out of people that I can’t. With you that kind of thing would be a challenge, a game. If she didn’t get it she’d learn from it and blow it off. If I’d done that with her she’d have been freaked out that the boss was quizzing her. You know when and how to buddy up to people and when to annoy them to death. And you’re learning how to simply stare at them and be intimidating. But mostly I need you for the other stuff. And the great thing is, it’s a talent that works on both sides of the game. It gets things out of witnesses and victims as well as the suspects.” Gibbs turned enough to make sure Tony was looking him in the eye when he said, “Just because your skills aren’t ‘book skills’, Tony, don’t think they aren’t very, very valuable to me or to the team. Got it?”

Tony sniffled, no longer sure what had him still on the verge of tears - Kate’s death or Gibbs’ confidence in him - and finally replied, “Got it, boss.”

“Where’s your car?” Gibbs asked suddenly and Tony was grateful for the mundane question that kept him from making a complete ass of himself in front of Gibbs.

“At the office. They picked us up and drove us to the plane.”

“Well, mine’s at the airstrip. Why don’t you come back to my place tonight and I’ll drive you in tomorrow?” Gibbs squeezed Tony’s hand again.

Tony stuttered for a minute unsure what to make of such an uncharacteristic gesture from his boss. He’d conned his way into Gibbs’ guest room a few times in the past, but usually because he’d begged and pleaded in public and deliberately engineered the situation to make sure that Gibbs would look like an ass if he said no.

“Do you really want to go home alone tonight, DiNozzo?” Gibbs asked so softly Tony wasn’t sure he even heard the question correctly. Before he could answer Gibbs continued, “We can raise a few glasses to Kate and not be alone when we finally reach our breaking points.”

Tony rubbed his eyes in that way that most people felt was surreptitious when they did it, but knew exactly what it was on someone else. “I’m not sure I’m not already there,” Tony whispered.

“You’re not,” Gibbs told him in his no-nonsense tone. “You’re not much further away than I am, but you aren’t there yet,” Gibbs told said more quietly.

And suddenly Tony knew he’d weather the rest of the trip home and not lose it in front of those who were still, to some degree or another, depending on him to hold it together so they could believe that they could too.