Disclaimer: The usual. I don't own, I don't make money, it's all for fun.
Author's note: Written and set before season finale. Thank you Kate98 for betaing, you're wonderful, girl.
"Hello?" He thought he had the phone lined up with his ear and mouth and he was pretty sure he was talking on the phone, because that seemed to be the clock telling him that it was 3:02 am (0302 in Gibbs-speak), but he wasn't entirely positive, simply because it was 3:02 am and until that annoying ringing started (that shut up as soon as he picked up the device in hand, which seemed to indicate that it was the phone) had been sound asleep.
"Tony… Tony, Tony, Tony." An all too familiar voice slurred into his ear. "I wouldn't have called you, but I couldn't call Ducky – well, you know his mother – and Gibbs isn't answering his phone and…"
"…you need a ride home." He finished the sentence for her, half-wishing he didn't know it so well. On the other hand, at least she was calling, and not deciding to drive off into the night in her current condition which sounded somewhere past the point of smashed. "Abbs, you know better. Gibbs isn't answering his phone because it's anniversary-number-three time, so why did you even bother calling him? Now he's going to be cranky tomorrow, which means he's going to hit me." The thought of Gibbs cranky tomorrow made Tony cranky right now. Besides, it was three… oh-five am, which wasn't Tony's favourite time to wake up. If it were anybody but Abby he'd have hung up.
"Well, I wouldn't be worried, but there's this guy giving me the creeps. Which is why I wanted Gibbs…"
"Where are you?" Sighing, he sat up and began a hunt for socks. Other clothes would probably be good too, if he was going to be going out in public. Probably.
"Hey… where're you going?" The guy grabbing Abby's sleeve dwarfed her by several inches, not to mention pounds.
"Leave me alone." She tried to shake him off, but she was drunk and he was persistent.
"Come on, sweetheart… don't go running off just yet." This time he grabbed more than her sleeve.
Three hours, forty-five minutes and twenty-seven seconds. That was the food count, long past the point of safe. By twenty-nine seconds Tony had gone from the door to right behind the guy who – now that he was close up – dwarfed even him. "I think she said leave her alone." Normally he'd hear an inner-protest, or at least an inner-request to consider that he was outweighed by at least forty pounds, but tonight all inner-voices were in agreement. Nobody picked on Abby, not with Tony close by.
The guy turned around and took in the height deficit, the preppy t-shirt and the fifty-dollar haircut, and began to laugh. "You're gonna stop me, pal?" He turned back to Abby. "I mean it, baby…"
Forty-eight seconds. Tony rushed the guy across three feet of crowded-club floor and pinned him to the wall, one hand under the guy's jaw holding the neck taut and the other digging clawed fingers into a not-well-enough muscled gut. "Leave her alone, or I disembowel you right now. Now, what's your name?"
"Fuck you." Terror replaced contempt in the big-guy's eyes, even as he tried to cover it with belligerence. Tony could see him trying to work out how this twerp suddenly gained the upper hand.
"Tony!" Abby protested, but Tony ignored her. He couldn't help it; he wasn't making conscious decisions anymore. Someone was, but it wasn't him.
"I'm Bad-Tony, so, hi, Mr. Fuck You. You see, Abby's like my little sister, so you're pissing me off." He smiled and dug his fingers in harder. "I am not a very nice person when I'm pissed off, which is why most people try not to do it. Even my boss, who is a Marine and has been in heavy combat doesn't try to piss me off."
"Bad…" The guy didn't sound too healthy anymore, he sounded like he was having breathing trouble. Maybe Ducky could sort it out. Tony liked the thought of that.
"There's Good-Tony and there's Bad-Tony. Most people only see Good-Tony. But Good-Tony's not here, because it's four in the morning and my blood-sugar is at a nasty low-point, which means I'm not too happy. So what you're going to do, Mr. Fuck You, is you're going to tell Abbs here that you're sorry. And then you're going to apologise to me…"
"Tony, let him go. They're calling the cops." Abby sounded suddenly sober, probably due to shock. Of course, it was… she'd never seen him like this before. She only knew Good-Tony, the big friendly goof. This was not that Tony.
"And then you're going to apologise to the nice policemen for making them have to do all the paperwork." Tony smacked the guy's head against the wall then let him go. He turned away and spun Abby around, herding her towards the door.
"Doesn't Gibbs…" Abby seemed to have gained new understanding about certain… agreements between Tony and Gibbs, agreements that everybody for some reason (even though Gibbs wasn't inclined to that sort of thing) thought were jokes.
"Special Rule Number 13." He ignored the fact that she stumbled a little as he pushed her out onto the sidewalk and towards the car. Pretty soon that guy was going to be on his feet and remembering that he was just humiliated in anti-social society by some prep-school shrimp, and he was going to want to fix the imbalance. "Bad-Tony doesn't care about special rules."
In the car, Abby sat as close to her door as possible, playing very, very quiet and inconspicuous, not her usual role at all. Bad-Tony did that to people, though. Even Gibbs was scared of Bad-Tony, which was why he was so tolerant (in a Gibbsian sort of way) of Good-Tony's strange habits and inherent stupidity. Gibbs had only seen Bad-Tony once, and he was smart enough that once was enough, thus the institution of special rules. Ducky said it was possibly some neuro-emotional blood-sugar thing, but it didn't take a doctor to figure out that. It was a simple equation, really. Tony didn't eat, then he got cranky, then somebody did something incredibly stupid (like picking on a friend of Tony's or just plain picking on people, or any number of things that most people would only find discomforting or mildly irritating), and Bad-Tony showed up to say hello, and possibly do some mindless yet ultimately stress-reducing violence.
He dropped her off, keeping an eye open as she walked into her apartment building. She didn't even say goodbye, which was atypical Abbs, but quite typical close-encounter-of-the-unsettling-kind. A small part of him hoped they'd still be friends in the morning, or at least the later morning when both of them dragged themselves into work and he found out whether or not he was on any Be-On-The-Lookout lists, and whether or not he still had a job.
He checked the clock on the stereo. Four-thirty-five. No sense returning to sleep… he'd only have to get up again anyway. He drove off, looking for something to eat.