A/N: Yeah, um… so I wrote some slash! I know it's not everyone's cup of tea—it wasn't even my cup of tea, until I read some really good fics by some really good authors. And hey, I'm a big fan of open-mindedness so I decided to give it a shot, mostly as a challenge to see if I could do it. Turns out I had a lot of fun writing this, and I hope you, my lovely readers, will enjoy reading it just as much.

This started as a slash chapter of "In the Dark" (hence the title), but it grew and took on a life of its own so I decided to make it a separate story. It's also a departure from my normal style in that I'm posting the entire story today, in multiple chapters.

One final note: If you hate this because of the writing, the characterizations, the plot, the style, etc., feel free to tell me. But if you hate it simply because you're homophobic, I'd appreciate it if you kept your "mouth" as closed as your mind. Thanks!

"Gibbs!"

Leroy Jethro Gibbs had been called a lot of things in his life. His father called him Leroy. His agents called him Boss. He often introduced himself as Special Agent Jethro Gibbs. He'd also been called a lot of things that were not his name, but were no less fitting. But his precious little girl had called him Daddy, and her pretty mother had looked at him once, smiled that radiant smile, and said, "I'm just gonna call you Gibbs."

So he figured it was fitting that Tony—his agent, his friend, and recently his lover—called him that, too. At first, it had been out of habit, but when Gibbs had questioned him on it—reminding himself to ask his partner, rather than demand of his agent—Tony had tried all kinds of names.

Leroy and Jethro were dismissed as too formal, Lee and Roy as too unfamiliar, LJ as too clunky, Jeth as too … laughable, Tony had said. Gibbs had listened with a patient amusement that Tony was slowly getting used to, and then he had offered his own suggestion when Tony had veered into dangerous "Honeybuns" and "Babycakes" territory.

"You could just call me J," he said, expecting Tony to rattle off a list of explicit euphemisms starting with that initial.

But all Tony said was a firm "no," the green eyes Gibbs had come to love going dark and shuttered.

"And why not?" Gibbs asked, wincing as he realized he should have left that tone at the office.

"I said no," Tony repeated. "What about—"

"Hey," Gibbs said, not caring about the sharp tone this time. "That would've worked a month ago. When I was just your boss. Why won't you just tell me?"

"Don't wanna talk about it," Tony said sullenly.

Gibbs crossed the room and put his hand on Tony's cheek, leaning in close. "How am I supposed to get close to you if all you do is shove me away?"

Tony turned his head and nuzzled Gibbs' palm, his lips as soft as a pony's muzzle. "I never shove you away," he murmured, his eyes still dark—but for another reason, Gibbs noticed.

He dropped his hand and stepped back, getting a wounded look from his young lover. "Not physically, no," he said, ignoring his body's response to the pout on Tony's face.

Tony paused, obviously debating. "Partner in Peoria's name was Jason," he said, huffing a soft breath in defeat. "Jay to his friends."

"And you weren't?" Gibbs asked.

"Oh, I thought we were. I called him Jay all the time. Went to a few ball games together, backyard barbeques with his family. His little boy called me Uncle T," he said, the grimace on his face contrasting with the seemingly happy memories.

And then Gibbs found out why.

"Until he found out I was bi and arranged a little get-together in a dark alley so I could meet his real friends—who apparently shared his views on people like me."

Gibbs was silent a moment before leaning over and planting a kiss on Tony's lips. "People like us, Tony." He pulled back, letting the simmering anger show. "Now tell me this guy's last name," he demanded, his tone menacing.

But Tony just laughed softly. "No, Gibbs."

"You gonna tell me how bad he hurt you?" Gibbs asked, still imagining a dark alley all his own.

"Not tonight," Tony said, studying Gibbs' reaction. "Maybe not ever, considering that look on your face."

They stared at each other, testing wills that had evolved now that they were not simply boss and subordinate. Gibbs had never realized just how long Tony could stay silent when he wanted to.

Finally, Tony said, "So. Gibbs."

"So what?"

And then Tony smiled, the one that made Gibbs wonder what had taken him so long to give in to Tony's subtle—and not so subtle—advances. "So," he said, still smiling brightly. "I'm just gonna call you Gibbs."

So while it wasn't uncommon for Tony to call him Gibbs at home, the urgency with which the name was called was definitely an oddity.

"What?" Gibbs called, his tone carrying the annoyance of being in the middle of a long, knotted investigation and having given in to Tony's repeated nudgings to let the team get some rest and come back at it fresh in the morning. He heard a thump and imagined Tony dropping onto the couch—the old, ratty couch he kept threatening to burn if Gibbs didn't let him replace it soon. He was met with silence so he called up, "Can't you come down here? I'm busy."

There was a long pause, and then the basement door opened, and Gibbs looked up to see only Tony's shadow.

"Need to run home for something," came his tight voice. "I'll be back later."

Gibbs made it to the top of the stairs just as the front door clicked shut. He thought about hauling his young lover back in the house by the scruff of his neck and demanding answers. But he didn't. One thing stopped his anger dead in its tracks. It had been a long time since Tony had referred to his apartment as "home."

So Gibbs let him go.

Even though he didn't like it. Tony had been acting strangely all day, and while Gibbs wanted to believe it was simply the frustrating case, his gut wouldn't quite buy it. At work, they often paired off with other team members so they wouldn't be together—and possibly distracted—but it wasn't exclusive. That would be too suspicious. But it had seemed odd to him that Tony had practically hauled McGee out of the squad room to go talk to a suspect that afternoon.

Avoiding suspicion was also the reason Tony kept his apartment. "Gotta keep up appearances," Gibbs heard his lover saying. He smiled softly at the boat, remembering the first time he had called Tony out on that mantra of his—and how glad he was that he had.

Gibbs and DiNozzo were on their way to interview a witness, with Tony chattering away a mile a minute about the latest action flick he had seen while on a date with "the hottest human being alive." And Gibbs was indulging the endless talk, something he found himself doing more and more lately, but for reasons he didn't quite understand. He told himself this time it was because Tony sounded genuinely happy for the first time a long time.

He did not examine why his agent's happiness should matter to him.

They pulled up outside the suburban house and got out of the car, Tony giving a very male jogger a very long leer—only to realize his boss had been watching his lustful eyes the entire time.

"Uh, I, um…" Tony stammered, blushing ten shades of red as he stopped short on the sidewalk. He swallowed hard and was obviously trying to think of a way out of what he deemed a disastrous situation. "Boss, I am—"

"Not as picky about gender as you'd like everyone to think?" Gibbs finished for him. He shrugged and turned back to the house. "Don't care, DiNozzo. Who you sleep with doesn't change the agent you are."

Gibbs made it halfway up the front walk before he realized Tony was still frozen beside the car, green eyes wide with shock and some other emotion Gibbs couldn't read.

Until he marched back down and saw the tension, plain as day.

"Are you even listening to me?" Gibbs asked, throwing up his hands in frustration.

Tony flinched at the movement, his hands coming up to guard himself against physical blows.

"Hey," Gibbs said firmly, settling a hand on Tony's shoulder and trying to ignore the shame and fear burning in his agent's eyes. "Second b's for bastard, Tony, not bigot. I hired you for how you work, not how you play—or who you play with."

Tony blinked several times, his words coming out in a squeak. "You've known since—"

"Baltimore," Gibbs confirmed, his mouth tightening at a particularly bad memory. "One of your fellow officers made some crack about me knowing 'who I was getting into bed with.' I should've hit him. But that jackass didn't know me," Gibbs said, looking at Tony with disappointment. "I thought you did."

Tony dropped his gaze to the sidewalk. "I'm sorry, Boss," he said quietly, feeling the sting of Gibbs' words. "I know you're not a bigot."

Gibbs raised an eyebrow. "That why you thought I was going to hit you?"

Tony grimaced. "Habit," was all he said.

And that one word made Gibbs' blood pressure skyrocket. He took a breath to calm down, knowing Tony was still slightly on edge—and now knowing exactly why. Certain facts about Tony's past slid into place. "Don't even think about running away again, DiNozzo. This doesn't change a thing about your place on this team." Tony didn't speak, but Gibbs saw the small nod—and the massive gratitude in his eyes. "Now can we go interview this witness before he forgets whatever he probably never saw in the first place?"

Tony smiled, following his boss up to the front door of the cookie-cutter house, exactly the same as the one beside it, except for the color of the trim.

Gibbs knocked, looking around impatiently, as if he hadn't just had a seriously personal conversation with his agent. Because to him, it really didn't change anything. In fact, he found himself feeling relieved—with a hint of something else he couldn't quite place. He didn't have time to examine it because the door finally opened, and the "witness" took one look at Gibbs' NCIS ID and bolted, shoving past the agents and knocking Gibbs into a flower bed.

"Go!" the agent yelled from the ground, flexing his bad knee and getting to his feet as DiNozzo took off after the fleeing suspect. He forced himself upright and ignored the aching joint, running after both of them.

DiNozzo was moving with all the grace of the standout college athlete he had been—the athlete he still was, judging by his speed as he closed the distance on the suspect. Gibbs suddenly realized he was watching Tony with what was probably the same leer his agent had given the jogger, but he shoved those thoughts out of his head as he tried to keep up with the younger men.

Because Gibbs was several long paces behind DiNozzo, he could see everything that the agent, intent only on his prey, couldn't.

And so Gibbs watched, fear squeezing the remaining air from his overworked lungs as Tony hopped nimbly off a curb—and straight into the path of a car headed the wrong way down the one-way street.

Brakes squealed and Gibbs could smell the burning rubber from the locked-up tires, but the driver's efforts were too little, too late, and Tony bounced off the hood of the car, his body rolling up the glass before being spit back onto the pavement by the momentum of the vehicle skidding to a stop.

Gibbs froze—his warning shout still stuck in his throat.

His every instinct was screaming at him to MOVE, to get to his partner, to help him. A part of him that was still functioning, like background music in a crowded restaurant, saw the suspect barely slow before continuing his flight away from the agents, saw the driver's stunned face, saw the spider-web cracks in the windshield.

But all Gibbs was seeing was Tony's unmoving body, crumpled in a heap on the pavement where he had landed.

Finally, Gibbs snapped out of his shock and ran to his fallen agent, motioning for the driver to stay in the car. He knew it was unlikely the suspect would come running back, but he waved the driver off all the same. Gibbs sank to his knees, fear in his laserlike blue eyes as they roamed Tony's motionless body, and his hands shook as he reached out to check for a pulse.

The second his fingers touched Tony's throat, the downed agent rolled onto his back with a groan. Gibbs' hands went to either side of his neck, trying to keep him still and supported.

"Dammit, DiNozzo, don't move!" Gibbs snapped, concern making his tone sharp.

"Suspect," Tony said, reaching up to remove Gibbs' hands from his neck.

"Long gone," Gibbs said, looking down into pained green eyes and wishing Tony would stop moving. "You stay right here."

Gibbs wasn't expecting Tony to laugh. But then, when did DiNozzo ever do what was expected of him?

"Not going anywhere," he said, wrapping a hand around Gibbs' wrist and trying to sit up. "Not with the choke hold you've got going on here."

Gibbs moved one hand to rest flat against his agent's chest. "Stop moving."

"I'm fine, Boss," Tony returned, wincing as he shifted slightly. "But I've got this rock jabbing me in the back and I'd like to get off it. So if you don't mind?"

With thoughts of shattered spines and other assorted broken bones, Gibbs ran his hands over Tony's body, starting with his arms, his chest, sliding under to feel his back and moving down each leg only to come back to his chest to repeat the gentle examination.

"Hey," Tony said, his hands locking around Gibbs' wrists, stilling them on his belly. "If you're done feeling me up, Boss? Are you gonna kiss me, too?"

The firm touch and dancing green eyes snapped Gibbs out of his concerned trance and he rolled his eyes. "In your dreams, DiNozzo."

The hands on his wrists tightened slightly, and Gibbs found himself looking at the suddenly serious face of his partner. "Yeah," Tony said softly. "Sometimes."