There was a large specimen jar on Gibbs's desk.

He was so surprised to see Todd and DiNozzo at their own stations, working for once instead of needling each other like a couple of kids, that he didn't notice it until he sat down. Then the gelatinous mass inside stared him in the face, wobbling a little in its brine. A large flake of whatever it was broke off and floated to the top of the jar.

"What the hell is this?"

DiNozzo looked up, an expression of exaggerated surprise on his face, and addressed Todd in a loud, stagey tone: "I don't know. Agent Todd?"

Todd, who Gibbs had always thought of as the sensible one, blinked. "I'm not sure, Agent DiNozzo. Agent McGee? Any thoughts?"

McGee turned pink and stared at his monitor, mumbling something unintelligible. DiNozzo got up and crossed the small space between his desk and Gibbs's, picking up the jar and peering inside. "Oh, I remember. It's from Ducky. Seems that it's the lung of a man who quit smoking, then started again. Well," DiNozzo shrugged, shaking the jar. Another piece broke off. "One lung. The other one fell apart when they took it out."

"Hilarious." Gibbs scowled. "I take it you're finished with the Simons case, which is why you have time to come up with this stuff?"

"We're worried about you, boss." DiNozzo set the lung back down on Gibbs's desk. It swished around, a little disconcertingly, and Gibbs looked at his PDA.

"Touching. Like I told you, it was for the case." That was what he'd said when he'd brought Wilkerson in and both Todd and DiNozzo had sniffed him suspiciously, like they were bloodhounds or his parents. It was true, anyway. He'd taken the cigarette from Wilkerson to prove a point. And because, when McGee told him the first woman he'd been attracted to in more than a year was a murdering blackmailing coward, Gibbs had needed a smoke.

On the way home from her interrogation, he stopped off and bought his very own pack for the first time in years. They'd gone up in price a little.

"Oh. Right." DiNozzo nodded. "So that's why you were standing downstairs in the rain with the secretaries and the tech guys for the last ten minutes. For 'a case.'"

Gibbs's first smoke break in a decade had been a less-than-stellar experience, but he wasn't about to admit that to DiNozzo. "It was interesting. I had a fascinating conversation with some people I've never met." Namely, a middle-aged woman named Sandra and a young man named Steve who spent the whole ten minutes discussing some reality TV crap Gibbs had never heard of, "Fear Apprentice" or "Survival Factor" or something. "Wasted a lot of time travelling up and down, though. They should put a smoking room back up here."

"Oh, yes," Todd put in. "I'd love to have to dryclean the stink out of my clothes every time I walk down the hall."

"Excuse me?" Gibbs gave her the full force of his most intimidating stare. To his satisfaction, Todd didn't back down, and Gibbs said: "DiNozzo, get that thing back to Ducky."

DiNozzo pouted. "Aw. We thought we could make it our team mascot. We were thinking of names. Blacky, maybe. Or Gaspy." He considered the jar. "Malignant?"

"I like 'Carcinogenic'," Todd put in. "McGee?"

Gibbs didn't expect McGee to say anything. He knew there was no hope for mankind, or for his team, when McGee suggested: "'Emphysema.'" Gibbs fixed him with the stare. McGee swallowed and added: "Not that there's anything wrong with it, sir."

"Pleased as I am that you all spend so much time worrying about my health," Gibbs replied, with as much sarcasm as he could manage, which was a considerable amount, "I'd prefer it if you got back to work on the Simons case, before another innocent person dies."

"You got it, boss," DiNozzo said. Todd and McGee turned back to their workstations, but before Gibbs could feel too satisfied about bringing his team back in line, DiNozzo put the jar on top of his filing cabinet. "I'll just leave Blacky here, OK? I'll take it back to Ducky on my lunchbreak. You know," he shrugged. "Work to do."

"Yes." Gibbs wasn't going to take the bait. Turning away, he managed to type all of three sentences before his eyes were drawn back to the lung in the jar. He wasn't weak, Gibbs knew that, but there was no way he was going to spend the rest of the day next to that thing. "DiNozzo..."

He was back at Gibbs's desk in a second, which, Gibbs guessed, had to count for something. "Got it, boss." Without another word, DiNozzo picked up the jar and headed for the elevator.

***

The Simons case was a suicide. Gibbs hated when that happened, not only because it was a waste of their time and resources, but because Gibbs couldn't stand the idea of suicide on general principle. Even when it was bad, life was a gift, and Gibbs couldn't imagine how anyone could waste it.

Then again, Gibbs thought, it had taken him a long time to figure that out. Almost as long as it had taken him to forget how good a cigarette really was. Not to mention how much he liked sex.

Since he wasn't going to get any of that now that Wilkerson was awaiting trial for murder, Gibbs had to take his satisfaction from the cigarettes. He reached for his pack as he left the building, and was patting his pockets for his lighter when he bumped into DiNozzo.

Literally. "Why are you still here?" Gibbs pulled the lighter out of his jacket pocket and flicked it. DiNozzo frowned, but Gibbs ignored him, and when that first puff of nicotine hit his lungs, Gibbs decided DiNozzo could frown all he wanted.

"My car's in the shop and my..." DiNozzo hesitated. "Friend was supposed to pick me up."

"She forgot about you?"

DiNozzo shifted in place, which wasn't like him. Gibbs had been expecting an extensive, heavily detailed description of this "friend's" no doubt copious assets. "Guess so."

"That's too bad." It must be the cigarette mellowing him, Gibbs thought, because the next thing he knew, he was offering: "Want a lift?"

"It's kind of out of your way, boss."

Gibbs shrugged. "It's OK." He needed to pick up another pack of cigarettes, anyway.

DiNozzo coughed a little when they got into the car and Gibbs rested the cigarette between his teeth so he could reverse out of the parking space. "You know, there is a bus," Gibbs said, but he cracked the window open as he turned onto the street.

DiNozzo was unusually silent. Gibbs finished the cigarette by the fifth set of lights, and stubbed it out in the ashtray. "Aren't you going to tell me about this friend of yours?"

DiNozzo glanced over. "I didn't think you'd be interested."

"Since when has that ever stopped you?" There was something off about him, but Gibbs couldn't tell what it was.

"He's just an old buddy of mine," DiNozzo said, turning back to the window. "We've known each other for years."

"Oh." Gibbs glanced in his rearview mirror and changed lanes. "I thought all your friends were women."

"Not all. Listen, boss, about Wilkerson..."

"No need to discuss it, DiNozzo." There wasn't. Gibbs should have known better than to get involved with anyone even peripherally connected to a case, but after so long alone, it had felt great to meet someone intelligent, attractive and vaguely in his age bracket. Too great. He'd lost his perspective, and he'd made what could have been a fatal mistake.

"It's just that I know what it's like to get...let down like that."

Of course. Voss. "I guess I can count myself lucky Wilkerson didn't turn out to be a man," Gibbs joked. Although, really, it wouldn't have made matters any worse.

"At least you didn't have to kill her." Gibbs could feel DiNozzo's eyes on him, but he kept his on the road.

Gibbs hated this kind of conversation, but he was the boss, and he knew there were certain, less-enjoyable responsibilities that came with that job. It couldn't all be coffee and suspect interrogations. "You're talking about that guy with the Iraqi artifacts."

"Jeffrey." DiNozzo sighed. "He liked me."

"Of course he did. You did a good job on that assignment." He'd nearly given Gibbs a heart attack in the process, but DiNozzo had done his job, there was no arguing that.

"I mean he liked me, Gibbs. A lot. He wanted us to go away together. He said I was the only person he could trust."

This was the kind of conversation Gibbs liked even less. So he said: "Things aren't always easy," which he knew was less than helpful.

"I guess," DiNozzo replied and they rode in silence until, an extremely long few minutes later, DiNozzo said: "This is my building."

"I remember," Gibbs lied. He pulled into an empty space as close as he could get to the door and waited for DiNozzo to get out. He didn't. Instead, he leaned over and kissed Gibbs.

It wasn't like kissing Wilkerson, who had been soft, smoky and clearly very experienced. DiNozzo's teeth bumped against his as he awkwardly shoved his tongue into Gibbs's mouth. He pulled back almost immediately, looking everywhere but at Gibbs, and put his hand on the door handle.

Gibbs couldn't let him just leave. "Tony, what the hell..."

His big eyes met Gibbs's, and, when he smiled, Gibbs felt a rush that he hadn't felt with Wilkerson. That he hadn't, he realized, even felt with the cigarettes. "You stink, Gibbs," DiNozzo said, succinctly, then got out of the car and disappeared into the building.

Gibbs sat there until a woman in a Saturn with a resident's parking pass on her rearview mirror coasted by and honked at him. Then, he pulled out and drove home, completely forgetting the cigarettes until he arrived back at the house.

***

It was late, but Gibbs knew he wouldn't sleep, so he didn't even try. He sat in the basement for a while, far away from the boat because he knew all about stray ashes and wood, but that just reminded him of Wilkerson and the self-consciously obvious innuendoes he'd made when he'd brought her down here. So Gibbs went back to the kitchen and sat at the table with his rapidly dwindling quarter pack of cigarettes and an extra-large mug of coffee.

Gibbs wasn't gay. He wasn't even bisexual, really. He loved women, at least for a while. Things tended to go downhill once commitments were made and vows were taken but, at first, Gibbs very much enjoyed all the benefits of being in a relationship with a woman. He liked the thoughtful gestures, the special in-jokes, the way they let him indulge his sense of chivalry. Women were amazing; men, Gibbs knew, were only good for one thing.

Something he hadn't had in a very long time.

It was after one when Gibbs heard the knock on his front door. He'd been expecting it. DiNozzo wasn't the kind of guy who left things alone and, while that was usually a good thing, Gibbs could have done without the trademark DiNozzo determination in this case. He couldn't leave DiNozzo standing on his doorstep in the middle of the night, though, not if he wanted to live in this neighbourhood. His last cigarette in hand, Gibbs opened the door, already prepared for an argument.

"For God's sake, Tony..." He trailed off when he saw DiNozzo's face. He clearly hadn't been sleeping either, but it looked worse on him. There were bags under his normally bright eyes and his hair was spiky and uncombed.

Maybe, Gibbs thought, he should have addressed that Jeffrey thing a little sooner. But he'd thought DiNozzo was fine with it.

Still, if he'd been fine with it, Gibbs supposed DiNozzo wouldn't have come to him in the middle of the night, looking dishevelled and exhausted. He wouldn't, Gibbs thought, have taken the cigarette out of Gibbs's hand and he definitely wouldn't have said: "I want to be with someone I can trust, boss."

"You have plenty of options." DiNozzo nodded in what Gibbs presumed was agreement, before sliding a hand up Gibbs's neck. Gibbs didn't understand, but he didn't pull away. He did say: "And I'm not gay," but it didn't sound convincing, even to him.

"I know," DiNozzo smiled. "And don't worry, I'm not looking for commitment."

"It's too dangerous," Gibbs said, and immediately regretted it, since that was basically the same thing as admitting he wouldn't be opposed to the idea, in other circumstances.

DiNozzo picked up on it, of course. His smile got a little bigger and, for a second, Gibbs saw the normal Tony. Well, as normal as he ever got. DiNozzo waved the cigarette, then extinguished it in the bowl Gibbs used for his keys. "It's safer than this." He slid his arms around Gibbs's shoulders, and Gibbs didn't argue. How could he?

***

It was a long time---longer than Gibbs liked to admit---since he'd made love with a woman, but it was even longer since he'd done it with a man. He'd forgotten how fascinating men's bodies were: angles instead of curves, coarse hair instead of smooth skin, and, Gibbs's particular favourite, a penis that made it eminently clear when it appreciated what he was doing, with no guesswork or real effort required. DiNozzo's penis was particularly appreciative, and, once it had been satisfied, the appreciation quickly transferred itself to the rest of DiNozzo.

He lay plastered to Gibbs's side, sucking on Gibbs's neck in a way that made Gibbs forget how he'd ever thought cigarettes could be a substitute for sex. When he shifted, Gibbs caught one wandering hand against his chest and said: "Tony, we can't..."

DiNozzo chuckled a little, his breath warm on Gibbs's already overheated body. "I don't want you to marry me."

Gibbs laughed a little, more at the idea of requesting the honeymoon leave to their superiors than anything else. DiNozzo propped himself up on one elbow, twisting his fingers with Gibbs's. "Kate and I were really worried when we heard about Wilkerson. Then, when you started smoking again..."

"Todd was in on this, too?" Gibbs frowned, but DiNozzo shook his head indulgently.

"She wanted to get you counselling." Gibbs stiffened, and right away, DiNozzo's hands were moving again, stroking his chest and down to his stomach. "Don't worry, I told her I'd talk to you."

"I don't think that quite describes it." Gibbs sighed, watching DiNozzo's hands rise and fall on his ribcage. "Tony..."

"Just once in a while, boss. There's nothing wrong with a little stress relief."

"I know a lot of people who wouldn't agree with that."

"No one who matters." DiNozzo grinned, a real grin of the kind that, when they were out in the field, either meant DiNozzo had made a monumental discovery or had found yet another way to irritate everyone around him. Wondering whether that was a good sign or not, Gibbs coughed suddenly, his throat constricting and his lungs aching. DiNozzo moved to let him sit up against the headboard, keeping one hand on his shoulder as Gibbs choked and tried to clear his throat. When the coughing subsided, DiNozzo's smile got brighter and he said: "Anyway, I won't do that to you." He stopped, then glanced pointedly at his own, slowly re-animating cock. "Unless, of course..."

"Enough, DiNozzo," Gibbs tried, but he couldn't manage nearly as much venom as he would have liked. Gibbs lay back down, DiNozzo immediately moving to cover him again, his head against Gibbs's chest and his arm across Gibbs's waist. And, all of a sudden, Gibbs wasn't sure it was going to be enough.

***

Two weeks later, Todd came back from lunch, shoving her purse under her desk with a narrow-eyed glare at DiNozzo. He left her alone, which he'd been doing increasingly often since he'd started spending occasional nights at Gibbs's. So, Gibbs thought, maybe he could justify it as "employee management." Kind of.

"Angie from the second floor wants to know when you're coming back down for a cigarette break, Gibbs." Todd smiled a little. "I think she likes you."

"Sorry, Kate." Gibbs shook his head. "I quit again."

"Oh." She sounded pleased. "That's good."

"I think it was Blacky that did it," DiNozzo put in, from his desk.

Gibbs waited until Todd disappeared in the direction of the bathrooms before he took a drink of coffee and added: "No, I just found something else to do with my mouth."

It wasn't a wood joke, Gibbs thought, as DiNozzo started coughing like a pack-a-day man, but it was nearly as good as the "power tool" line.

Which he'd have to try on DiNozzo next time he came over. He had a feeling Tony would appreciate it. And so, Gibbs thought as Todd returned and DiNozzo made a show of typing up a report, did he.