When I entered the NCIS fandom in 2008, with Hiding in Plain Sight, I had no idea what a huge whoosh of writing energy I’d have in this fandom, and that I’d be writing it non-stop for the next three years. What a great feeling!

‘Andy’ was one of those fantastic writing experiences where the story flows out very easily. This is all the more satisfying for the fact that it has a complex story structure.

In ‘Andy’, I juggle two timelines – seventeen years ago and the present day – and seismic events are happening in both, leading up to one huge culmination. I love this kind of storytelling – it’s one of those areas where I feel I’m at my strongest, judging the pacing to bring together an ultimate denouement.

I’m don’t believe that the end result of this kind of build-up must always be a surprise or ‘twist’. Those can be great used in the right way, but there is also something delicious about reading something unfolding, and having the slowly dawning realisation that you know where it’s going, and being on tenterhooks to find out if you’re right, and then having it happen, and hopefully with all the detail, relish and emotion that you were longing for. In the case of ‘Andy’, the ultimate revelation might genuinely come as a surprise for the reader – but I hope that whether or not you guess what Gibbs did for Tony all those years ago, the enjoyment is the same.

I have no idea at what point people realise the various truths about the past – who Andy is, and how precisely that ties in to Gibbs’s sense of foreboding in the present, what might come to light, and whether Tony remembers Gibbs and the part he played in his past. I love stoking the suspense with the storytelling, leaving the changes of timeline with a question or a hint or a moment of drama (one of my great pleasures, even if it DOES get me called a ‘tease’ far too often!).

One thing that was a particular joy (and revelation!) with writing ‘Andy’ was how liberating it was telling the story entirely from Gibbs’s point of view. Here is a man of few words, whose emotions are very tightly contained. I, as you might have noticed, am rather more free-wheeling and generous with my verbiage! Gibbs isn’t – and that made him surprisingly simple to write. He isn’t like Tony, who hides layer upon layer upon layer, uses words to misdirect, and is always shouting ‘over there!’ to distract you from what is really going on for him. Gibbs keeps it all tightly in, giving very little away, but is a man of equally strong emotion.  I loved how that gave my writing a sparse, clear quality that I liked a lot and have often aimed for since.

That aspect of these two men is one of the reasons I found them such interesting sources of inspiration for so many years. They are both keeping their true emotions hidden, but in entirely different ways and with very different styles. They were and are perfect for each other, and I explored all the many ways in which that is the case in my stories between 2008 and 2011. In ‘Andy’, we see the consequences of these two men being so adept at hiding their feelings that they can keep them under wraps for so long – there are seventeen long years of silence before the past finally catches up with them.

‘Andy’ was also my first fanfic in which I really explored Tony’s back story, guessing how he became the man he is, based on the very little information the show had given us at that time. In fact, the little nuggets of information concerning Tony’s upbringing and relationship with his father that the show gave us provided fandom with rich fodder for speculation over many years. In some ways it was a shame that the introduction of Senior on the show ruined that. I enjoyed the initial riff on the character of Senior, but as time went on the ‘lovable rogue’ persona seemed more and more at odds with the clues Tony had given us about his father and that relationship during the first few years of the show. I think I prefer all the many different ways we portrayed Tony’s father before Senior turned up. In ‘Andy’, he’s a right old bastard, probably the least sympathetic I’ve ever written him, but I enjoyed writing him that way!

One of my enduring memories of writing ‘Andy’ was how much I enjoyed that battle between Tony’s father and Gibbs on Daddy DiNozzo’s deathbed. That was so satisfying! I loved couching it in terms of a knockdown dirty fight over Tony, and I loved that neither Gibbs nor Daddy DiNozzo gave an inch, even at the bitter end. That’s the kind of men they are, for good or ill. Maybe some part of Tony’s attraction towards Gibbs in this story is that steely quality his father also possessed. In a less compassionate man, like Daddy DiNozzo, that steeliness can be cruel and despotic, but in Gibbs, it’s a benign version of a quality that makes Tony feel safe and protected.

Then there’s that moment when Tony and Gibbs are, finally, honest with each other. All this time, in the true style of a man who deflects and a man who keeps everything buttoned up, neither had ever revealed that they remembered every second of that brief time they spent together in that motel room all those years ago, when Tony was a hustler and Gibbs was hovering on the brink of suicide following the deaths of Shannon and Kelly. It was satisfying to write those masks finally dropping, allowing them to see each other as those two people again. For the quote competition I held recently, Hilde sent me this moment from ‘Andy’:

He took out his key and let himself into his own room. It was in darkness, and for a moment he thought he’d guessed wrong – and then he saw Tony, standing by the floor-to-ceiling window at the far end of the room, one arm resting on it, his forehead pressed against his hand as he gazed out.

“Tony?” Gibbs said, turning on the light.

Tony didn’t turn around. “No,” he said firmly. His shoulders were hunched, and he looked like a man who had taken too many body blows this evening – one more might have him out for the count.

Gibbs thought about it for a moment. Seventeen years led inexorably to this single point in time and there was no use pretending any more.

“Andy?” he asked.

Tony moved his head to look at him. “Yeah,” he said softly.

They couldn’t have been together all those years ago, because Tony was too young, and Gibbs was too damaged. Now, seventeen years later, with many years of friendship and affection built up between them, the time is finally right for them to drive off into the sunset together in that bright red Ferrari :-).

One final thing – I hadn’t realised that this story had had much impact on fandom compared to a biggie like HiPS, until I offered to write a story for the ‘Help Haiti’ appeal and said I’d be happy to write a coda to an existing story. The winning request, by quite some margin, was a follow-up to ‘Andy’, from Tony’s point of view. At first, I wasn’t sure I had anything further to say, but then I realised there was a gap to fill – so I wrote Ghosts.