authors note. Thanks for all the reviews! And to clear up any confusion… The conversation between Tony and the Director is the one that appears in the show, where she offers him the Rota posting and he turns it down; I haven't portrayed that scene because I wanted to keep it a story about Tony and Gibbs. As far as timeline, Chapter One occurs between 'Escaped' and 'Singled Out,' and the last two chapters take place sometime in the hypothetical future, weeks or even months later.
And with last night's episode, they've made me a liar with the striped shirt. Ugh.
Anyway. On to the story.
"I still say, Sean Connery was the best Bond."
Tony leaned against the workbench, impossibly relaxed, long legs crossed at the ankle. He still wore sweatpants and running shoes without any socks, but he had at least exchanged his blood-streaked T shirt for a clean one of Gibbs'. His boss knew he was still hurting, and not just because he had eleven stitches in the palm of his hand. Gibbs wondered how much of his sudden insouciance was artifice - a put-on meant to get Gibbs off his case - and how much was the genuine result of good pain drugs and bad whiskey.
Gibbs guessed the ratio was about sixty-forty.
"Shaken, not stirred," DiNozzo was saying in his best 007. "So anyway, Nurse Emma pointed out to me later that I'd forgotten Timothy Dalton, which is weird, because I remembered George Lazenby, right?"
"George Lazenby. Right, DiNozzo." Gibbs picked up his sander with a small grin.
Ducky had taken one look at Tony's wound, given him a fresh bandage and a pat on the back, and sent them off to a real hospital. Tony would have been furious about this but he was already growing woozy from the blood loss. After his hand had been stitched up by an actual surgeon, when the first round of drugs wore off and Tony grew agitated, Gibbs struck a bargain with the emergency room staff. The end result of that bargain being that Tony was here, in Gibbs' basement, watching the older man sand his boat with patient strokes. Tony would sleep on Gibbs' couch tonight, and not for the first time, either.
"So, what really happened?"
Tony immediately sobered, straightening imperceptibly against the workbench. "What?"
"Don't 'what' me," Gibbs said, gesturing towards Tony's injured hand. "Tell me what really happened."
Tony studied the hand, himself. "I told you, I broke a glass." He squirmed under Gibbs' withering glare, which almost never failed to work on suspects in interrogation. "I… may have thrown it against a wall. I was trying to clean it up, that's all."
"And you thought you should pick up the pieces with your bare hands?" Gibbs accused, but still, he was relieved. Stupid, but an accident. "Don't you own a dustpan? Wait - don't answer that." Tony smiled ruefully. "You ever do something that stupid again, and I will head slap you all the way back to Pittsburgh."
Tony didn't have the heart to point out that it was Philadelphia, not Pittsburgh.
"So why are you still here, anyway?" Gibbs pressed. Maybe the painkillers would allow him to get some answers.
"I'm here for the conversation." Tony held up a battered NIS mug with his good hand, swirled it a little so that the liquid sloshed around inside. "And the drinks." One lousy shot: Gibbs had poured him one ounce of bourbon in a dusty mug, not wanting to explain to Ducky why his senior field agent was passed out on the basement floor. And darned if DiNozzo hadn't been nursing it for the past twenty minutes. This irritated Gibbs to no end because it was not a sipping drink: it was meant to be knocked back in one gulp, so you didn't taste it.
"You know what I mean," Gibbs responded evenly. "Rota. Why didn't you take the offer?"
Tony was suddenly alert. "You knew about that? She said she wasn't going to tell."
Gibbs raised a calming hand. "I figured it out, DiNozzo. I've been an investigator since you were a drunken frat boy. Why'd you turn it down?"
"European women," Tony grinned, relaxed again. "I've heard they don't shave."
"Did you hear they have topless beaches?" Gibbs added, just to make his agent squirm.
"Dang!" Tony said, under his breath.
Gibbs turned back to the boat. "You know, Stan Burley took the Rota assignment."
"Stan Burley," Tony repeated, enunciating the name of his rival.
"Not who I would have chosen," Gibbs added offhandedly.
"Yeah?" Tony's face was a question mark. "Why's that?"
"Stan's married now," Gibbs explained, and Tony's face fell just a little. "He has a kid. That kind of life is rough on families." He peered up from the boat, watching his agent. "But Stan'll do fine. He's a good agent. He's ready for his own team."
He had to ask; he didn't care how pathetic it would probably sound. "What about me?" Tony probed. "Do you think I was ready for my own team?"
Gibbs was noncommittal. "Do you?"
Tony shrugged. "I'm not a kid anymore. I'm thirty-five." And, counting backwards, Gibbs was surprised to discover that he was right. He'd been a few months shy of thirty when he joined NCIS - old for a probie, actually - but the combination of experience and innocence had always blurred his chronological age. "I like to think I've learned a few things."
"Then why'd you want to resign, Tony?" Gibbs asked quietly.
And there it was. Tony couldn't help thinking that the whole conversation was a set-up, but he was too tired to argue. "I should have interrogated Sergeant Brown," he stated. "I worked that case all summer. It's just dumb luck that we didn't get a lead until now."
"He's a Marine," Gibbs said, as if that explained everything.
"I know how to interrogate a Marine," Tony pointed out. "I didn't join NCIS yesterday."
Gibbs actually looked amused. "Is that right, DiNozzo."
"I've been shot at, beaten drugged and kidnapped. I caught the plague, for Pete's sake, Gibbs. I think I can handle one lousy Marine sergeant who is clearly guilty." Tony was breathing hard, angry.
Gibbs was a bit angry, himself. "It's not your call. I'm team lead now."
"Yes, you've reminded us all of that, and thank you," Tony snapped. "It was my case. Did you know I spent all of July Fourth weekend at my desk, working that case?"
"I didn't know." Gibbs pictured his agent, sleeping at his desk in an empty bullpen, and was proud.
"No, you didn't know, because you quit."
"I retired."
"And yet, here you are," Tony replied sarcastically. "Funny, you don't look like Michael Jordan to me."
Gibbs ran a hand over his head with half a smile. "More hair, for one." And Tony had to grin at that, in spite of himself. "You should have taken the interrogation. You're right."
"Wow." Wow, I thought I'd die before I ever heard - They each knew what the other man was thinking, so Tony left it at 'Wow.' "Look. You asked me to step up, and I did. I ran the team for four moths. I did a good job."
"I know."
"You do?" Tony asked, with some surprise.
"Jenny told me. And… I knew."
"I understand if you wanted to come back, but you could have called. If you've forgotten my number, it's in your speed dial." Number one on his speed dial, actually, but Tony wasn't aware of that. "I didn't deserve to be shoved aside like that."
"I know." Gibbs was genuinely regretful of piling Tony's things on his desk. Of the 'what?' that had made his agent's face fall like a little boy's. "It was a crappy thing to do."
Tony's face relaxed into a wide grin. "Is that an apology?"
Of course he would have to push it. Gibbs became gruff again. "What do you want me to say, DiNozzo?"
Tony couldn't meet his eyes. "Say I'm a good agent."
"You're a great agent, Tony," Gibbs said so softly that Tony could barely hear him. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the younger man stand a little straighter. "I wouldn't have kept you around if you weren't." And once it was said, Tony could go another five years on that one statement. "I promise, the next time I leave, I'll call you before I come back. All right?"
"All right." Tony's anger was draining away; he remembered just how much his hand was hurting him.
"But next time you resign, I'm not putting it in the circular file."
"Fair enough." Tony sagged against the workbench, suddenly looking very tired. "I'm going to hit the hay." He set down the mug - which in some miraculous, loaves-and-fishes manner was still not empty - and headed for the stairs.
Gibbs knocked back the remainder of his own drink and listened for the movements upstairs to stop. Once, when Kelly was learning to walk, she'd fallen against the edge of a table and needed stitches. Even though the emergency room staff was kind and professional, Jethro and Shannon had felt defensive the whole time they were there. We're not bad parents, they kept wanting to say. We didn't do this to her. We love our daughter. It was an accident. And even though Tony wasn't his responsibility, Gibbs had felt somewhat the same way at the hospital with him that night. It's not my fault. He didn't do this because of me.
The thing was, Gibbs knew what had caused this situation. He liked to think that he treated his people better than Mike Franks had treated him - and now he didn't exactly have the best track record, in that area. But there was still time. They had reached an uneasy truce for now, and Gibbs was not going to lose his best agent.
After twenty minutes , Gibbs abandoned the boat and headed upstairs himself. Tony was sleeping the sleep of the dead in the living room. He was too tall for the couch; his bare feet hung over one end. He would have cut his feet to ribbons, if Gibbs hadn't stopped him. Or he'd still be sitting there, amid the glass and blood and half-packed boxes. Freed from the sling, Tony's bandaged hand rested lightly on his chest, rising and falling with the motions of breathing. Gibbs could remember a time, not that long ago, when even the rhythm of his breathing would have been a miracle. When he had almost died of the plague, Gibbs had simply ordered him not to die and Tony had believed him. They were past that now.
Tomorrow, they would return to Tony's apartment. They'd clean up the broken glass and the blood. They could sort through his half-filled boxes and put everything away again. Technically, it is tomorrow, Gibbs realized, looking at the clock. Okay, so when the sun comes up. He snapped off the table lamp, leaving Tony in the darkness.
The anger would still be there in the morning, but this was a start.