Their first case, inevitably, goes very wrong.

Until Tony dug up all the resentment between the two of them, things had been just fine. The quickest way to get back to their old routines, which had worked for almost a decade, was simple: They kept everything buried and pretend that nothing had happened that could've torn them apart in the past few years.

While Gibbs and Tony manage to work together in a companionable silence like their unspoken agreement dictates, everything and everyone else works against them from the start.

They interview their witness together, easily finishing each others sentences and flawlessly following the same logic. She refuses to cooperate,though, and lies her way through the interrogation and disappears while they turn their backs to look at the body.

Ducky disagrees vehemently with their buried feelings when he finds them crouching next to the body after arriving late as always. Palmer smiles when he sees Tony, but Ducky takes one look at the way they are acting and ignores them as much as possible, subtly narrating tales linked to their resentment and feelings of betrayal to the body as he takes the liver temperature. He firmly believes that suppressing all of this will eventually blow up in their faces, and he's right.

They retain their companionable silence until it is time to get the results from their ballistics from Abby. The woman is upset with both of them, and while Gibbs knows very well why she is mad at him, neither of them can find out why she's pissed with Tony.

She rushes through her explanation, pushes them out of her lab, puts on the loudest music in her collection and locks the door behind them, refusing the Caf-Pow and making sure Gibbs can't kiss her on the cheek. When the door closes, she slides down against it and remembers all the hugs he's ever given her, and how she misses the affection already.

It leaves Gibbs mad and Tony confused, and they don't speak to each other during the left-over investigation. No one is exactly sure how they manage to do it, but despite the stony silence, they find their murderer by the end of the afternoon.

Their lack of communication eventually results in a cold case.

They can't convince their witness to testify and Abby can't find the evidence they need to lock the guy up. Their murderer smiles cockily as he exits the Navy Yard 48 hours later, both agents' eyes on his back.

Gibbs recalls all the events from the past days and finds that the only positive thing about the case is that Tony still calls him Boss, which neither of them had expected, but is a welcome familiarity among all the changes.

When Tony visits McGee and Abby at her apartment the same day, tired and defeated, she leaves him on the doorstep. Confused and frustrated after the day he's had, he is relieved when Tim opens the door again to let him in.

He makes his way to where he hears Abby in the kitchen, but McGee stops him with a hand on his shoulder. Knowing that when it comes to their scientist, Tim is the go-to guy, the older man nods and lets his probie steer him to the couch.

Tony isn't ready for yet another heart-to-heart. He doesn't want to hear what he's done wrong this time. The guilt is already weighing him down. Instead, he deflects the pending lecture with a question of his own.

"Enjoying the new job, McProbie?" he asks, genuinely curious.

It had been a surprise to all off them when Director Vance hadn't sent McGee back to head cyber-crimes Even Gibbs had frowned in confusion when Vance announced that Tim would be accompanying the director as a protection detail until he was ready to rejoin Team Gibbs.

They don't doubt he can do it, but all of them wonder about Vance's motive behind the assignment. The position allows McGee, if he does it right, to make contacts with agents and politicians all over the world. It is half a dozen steps up from Junior field agent, and a good career move. Vance wants McGee higher up, and that intrigues Tony, especially since getting his own job back from Vance was an absolute nightmare.

McGee smiles, and it is obvious that he's been enjoying his new job for the past few days. "I went to New York with the director. Meeting the chief of police there after he got sworn in was an honor. He and director Vance are old friends."

That doesn't really reassure Tony. After all, Vance and Eli David go way back too. He is happy for Tim though, he seems to be the only one that had gotten better of in this mess.

He was about to ask Tim more, but Abby appears in the doorway and stares at Tony.

"Are you feeling better, huh?" Abby starts. "You left us, could very well have been dead!" he feels a long lecture coming up, and can't help but look down at his shoes in shame. Whatever she says is probably well-deserved, and he can't bring himself to argue with the woman.

"You show up here, take your job back and suddenly everyone is supposed to act normally? If you can do that, why the hell did you leave in the first place!" she's furious now, pacing from her window to the couch and back.

"Everything went to hell, and if you'd just acted like a man in the first place instead of the coward you are, we would all still be together!"

Abby stops in her own tracks, and looks at Tony for the first time. He doesn't look up, doesn't wish to face Abby's judgement, not when she means so much to him. She looks at her friend and sees a shell. Tony hasn't made a single joke, hasn't played around. It is frightening to see the agent like this.

What Tony doesn't expect is for Abby to lift his head by his chin and look into his eyes with a gaze that is part toned-down anger and part apology.

"I shouldn't call you a coward," she says quietly. It hurts her to see Tony vulnerable as much as it hurts Tony to see her upset. They have been friends for years, and she can't stay mad at Tony for this.

After all, she has more than once considered accepting a job offer from another agency, for many reasons she chose not to, but the FBI offer still rests under her pillow. Has for the past month. She can empathize with Tony's moment of weakness (, or maybe strength, she isn't sure.)

One case turns into a dozen, and it gets easier with time. Ducky (, arguably Gibbs' only friend) is persistent with his opinion, but that irritation is countered when Abbs hugs Gibbs for the first time in almost two months, and refuses to stop doing it at every opportunity.

Tony and Gibbs are up at the leader's house working overtime more often than not, which means that Tony occasionally ends up sleeping on the man's couch. Ziva joins their case-littered table almost every time, playing mediator often enough.

She hasn't moved out yet, and their colleagues don't wonder why she hasn't, all of them know that Gibbs and Tony are taking turns sabotaging potential apartments. She still doesn't like to be alone, and while Ziva sighs and snaps at them for it when she catches them red-handed, she is content to let them be.

In this story, the linchpin is not a thing or a person. It is the bond between the two agents that keeps them all together, strong and standing where other teams eventually crumble. When that bond fails, so does everyone that depends on it.

For months, they're okay. Sure, they fight, but they solve their cases and easily pretend that there are no secrets between the two of them. Because of that, McGee schedules his return to the team for a month later, seeing as Vance is reluctant to let him go earlier.

It is then, that Tony and Gibbs find a Navy Captain in his car in the middle of nowhere, with signs of a struggle. It seems like their standard murder, but it isn't. The wife calls his cellphone and starts with: "Hey honey, can I talk to Lucy?"

Lucy turns out to be the Captain's daughter, a nine-year-old that should've been in the back seat. Their case is immediately called a kidnapping, and they head back to Headquarters together.

It is four hours later when they are out of leads and Gibbs calls everybody in to work the case. Ziva and McGee are both available, and they work for hours to find the murderer and the girl. After fourteen hours have passed, Gibbs becomes completely unreasonable, even worse than he was when Ari had walked out of the building unidentified and unscathed.

When he goes too far, Tony calls him on it. He has no time to talk to an unreasonable Gibbs, and neither does the girl. The senior field agent pushes his boss into the elevator, shuts it and forces a picture into the older man's hands.

It is the little girl on a swing, smiling at the camera with long locks resting on her shoulders. "She's not Kelly, Gibbs," he says quietly.

The grumpy Gibbs is nothing compared to the man he turns into at Tony's words. He pins the younger man to the side of the elevator and holds him there. He doesn't speak, but Tony doesn't need him to. He just needs Gibbs to clear his head, and he'd rather the guy punches him than that the girl turns up dead.

The elevator opens at the garage level and Gibbs lets Tony go. He knows better than to stay and exits immediately, deciding to go back to the crime scene and find whatever they missed.

He finds it easily, the tape still encircling the location where they found the body. He flashes his badge at the deputy sheriff and looks around. There is nothing left but the highway and the forest on either side.

He frowns at the trees. Fourteen hours, and no ransom note or call. It makes no sense, this whole case hasn't made sense.

What if?

He shakes his head and clenches his fist. He waves to the sheriff, who comes over and runs into the woods with the man on his tail. He runs as quickly as he can, feels his lungs burning. He stops dead, out of air, and feels the sheriff collide with his back. They end up on the ground, and Tony takes the time to catch his breath. He coughs to get the pressure from his chest and looks at the sky.

It's nearing dark, and if the girl is here somewhere, she could very well die, if she isn't dead already. The sheriff has managed to get himself to his feet and helps Tony up. It's half-way to his feet that Tony notices a red cross on the bark near his hip. He points it out to the other man and they look around for another.

They follow the trail of colors like a treasure hunt, and find a dead end. "Lucy!" Tony yells loudly, hoping for a reply. "Lucy! We're federal agents! Yell if you can hear me!"

There is silence for a second, and that's when they hear a soft reply. "Hello?"

Both men breathe a sigh of relieve, and follow the sound. They find her in a sewer pipe, and Tony thank god that it didn't rain last night. There is a small layer of water on the bottom, but they should be able to get her out.

Gibbs gets called at headquarters by a distressed sheriff and deputy. They had lowered Tony down, but the line snapped and Tony is unconscious on the bottom of the pipe with a crying girl with a hurt leg.

Eight minutes later, Gibbs, Ziva and McGee arrive at the crime scene and rush to Tony. He is awake already, but he sounds disoriented and can't stop coughing. He insists he is fine, makes sure the girl gets hoisted up first, and Ziva has to go down for him as well since he is to weak to climb up.

They have to force Tony into the ambulance, and Gibbs sends Ziva to ride with him while he takes McGee to his car. It takes two seconds for the sheriff to confirm that he will get the girl home, after which Gibbs races to the hospital. They mysteriously arrive before the ambulance does, and wait.

After an examination, the doctor lists Tony's injuries. He has a concussion and a dislocated shoulder. The scariest part is that he has swallowed the contaminated water, and his lungs are doing badly.

He is forced to stay the night, and is caught by Gibbs when he tries to sign out AMA. He grins with some kind of apology, like he is saying: 'What did you expect?'

When the morning arrives, Gibbs kidnaps Tony and with Ziva's help gets him into the bed in Gibbs' bedroom. They take care of him. Gibbs makes sure he takes his meds, Abby comes over with soups and stews, McGee gets Tony a movie-filled laptop, and Jimmy brings Kate over, while Ducky comes in every day for medical check-ups.

During the day, Ziva keeps him company, and he helps her study for her citizenship exam in return. That means that they end up on the couch with movies all day, until Gibbs comes home from work.

McGee and Tony return to team Gibbs at the same time, and the leader couldn't be more grateful, because he has been working with probies for the past four weeks, and has reached the limit of his patience.

Tony and Ziva still live with Gibbs, which may be weird to outsiders, but feels completely normal to them. Kate, Tony's fish, has her own spot in the house, and Tony's movie collection is neatly stacked by the flatscreen he brought over from his place. He shares the closet in the guest bedroom with Ziva, and the left-overs from Abby and Tim when they crash there.

Ziva gets her citizenship, but doesn't rejoin the team. She is done with the danger, recalls her dreams from the days she was figuring out how to run from Mossad, and goes looking for another job.

While they're not exactly glad with her decision, they find that as long as she stays in their lives, it doesn't really matter all that much. Which she does. Ziva finds a job as a hand-to-hand combat trainer on the Navy Yard, and drives with Tony and Gibbs to work whenever they aren't called away to a crime scene.

When Tony and Ziva finally start the relationship that has been a long time coming, there are no rules to stop them, and in their own crazy way, they actually work out.

After almost two years, they move out of Gibbs' place, and move their stuff into the house next door. It isn't perfect, but it is very close.

Tony jokes around all day, Abby bounces up and down to her loud music and hugs every man and woman that enters her lab. Things are better than they have been in years, and while some things still go wrong, there are no secrets left to uncover and destroy what they have.

Tony proudly throws a party at their house when he has been working together with Gibbs for fifteen years. Everyone brings silly gifts and it is nearing four when only Gibbs and Tony are still up. Gibbs didn't bring a present (Tony didn't expect him to), but when he tells his Senior field agent that it is at his house, Tony bounces the thirty feet between their homes to look for it.

"The boat?" he asks incredulously, when Gibbs gestures at it.

"You get to name it," Gibbs smiles, which he does a lot more these days, but not enough to actually set of any alarm bells. He is still a grumpy bastard after all.

They both know that her name will end up to be Kate. The proof of how much the bond between them has regrown and strengthened is when they set sail one weekend after Gibbs shows him how to get her out of the basement.