Box Out Pt 2/9
Jul. 20th, 2010 04:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
marzipan77Title: Box Out Pt 2/9
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
marzipan77
Category: Pre-slash/Post-slash
Pairing: Gibbs/DiNozzo
Rating: Mature – more angst than action
Summary: Tag for Boxed In – Tony has come to learn that team = family. And he'll do almost anything to keep his family together. Almost.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
A/N: Sorry this update took me so long. I blame the zombies.
Link to Part 2
Link to Part 3
Link to Part 4
Link to Part 5
Link to Part 6
Link to Part 7
Link to Part 8
Link to Epilogue
((Tony had switched to football in his junior year at the military academy, when all the guys he’d loved and respected – the upperclassmen and the coach who had become his surrogate family – had gone. He’d been a starter since his freshman year, and now would have the responsibility of leading the younger players. At graduation he’d looked around – at Leymer, Sanchez, and Natali standing there in their dress uniforms, eyes focused on the future, and he’d known. He wasn’t ready. Leading a team? Becoming the older brother? He blinked quickly and stole a glance at Coach shuffling his feet on the platform, uncomfortable with the limelight as always. They’d given him a plaque. Twenty years of loyal service. The new coach was young, twenty-something – his years on this planet just about equal with Coach’s experience - broad shoulders and thick neck and dark, glittering eyes standing there in the audience all arrogance and attitude, thinking that a hard body could possibly replace the gnarled hands and graying head of the man who’d taught Tony about teamwork. He felt sick. No. He couldn’t do it – wouldn’t do it. He ran.
That summer he’d worked out like a madman. Running, lifting, spending any hours he wasn’t busy on his job at the gym or on the track. Going home hadn’t been an option – or a desire - for him since he’d started boarding school at twelve. No one there wanted to see him and living on an empty estate in the New York suburbs was torture. So he worked. Maintenance. Painting. He helped resurface the parking lots. Cut grass. Stripped and refinished the gym floor. Repaired fences. Hauled garbage. Whatever they wanted him to do as long as it kept him there, at school, where he’d found a home. He’d run at night after the gym had closed. And in August, he was ready.
On the football team he was the kid again, the rookie. Learning. Memorizing plays, practicing footwork in the hot summer sun, growing calluses where the unfamiliar pads rubbed against his skin. He was fast – faster than the starting receivers. He didn’t mind their scathing looks or their loud comments to the other players; he was in their sandbox now, and he knew he’d have to win his place. And Tony’s reputation as a team player had gone before him. It was okay. He’d expected it. Played harder, worked harder, tried harder, took the hits, smiled through the pain, and came back the next day. The coach watched it all, seemed to have eyes everywhere, and ran the team so hard that any aggression they might think to take off the field disintegrated into exhaustion. And Tony sweated side by side with them day after day after day. And *earned* his spot.))
Tony stood quietly, eyes at half-mast, allowing Ducky’s rambling words to fill up the emptiness as the medical examiner’s fingers probed and prodded, ignoring the pain that spiked at the older man’s inelegant touch. He tried to reach back to that determination, that patience, the stubborn resolve that kept him centered during those weeks of testing while the new team dynamic had grown up around him. He didn’t know if he could do it again.
And, dammit, he shouldn’t have to. He ground his teeth together as his anger surged, hoping the doctor’s concentration on his popped stitches would keep him from noticing. Tony wasn’t the rookie anymore – he was far into his fourth year at NCIS and, supposedly, Gibbs’ senior agent. This was his team. The only person who needed to earn a place here was –
“Dammit, DiNozzo, I used to think you were pretty smart.” The words were coated with a thick layer of disappointment.
He hadn’t even heard the autopsy doors slide open and suddenly Gibbs was at his side, piercing stare leveled at the mess of blood and torn skin of his arm. Pain and exhaustion and nausea kicked his brain into neutral and sped the heated words from Tony’s mouth.
“Yeah, well, I used to think you were pretty damned perceptive, Gibbs, so I guess that makes two of us.”
The cool fingers of the physician stuttered against Tony’s skin but he couldn’t look away from Gibbs’ blue glare. Wouldn’t look away. Yeah, on another day, at another time, when he wasn’t crashing from an adrenaline high that had lasted for hours, when he wasn’t contemplating the dissolution of a team he’d made his family for the past four years, when he wasn’t aching for a connection that had turned away from him months ago Tony might have regretted those words, smiled and joked and hauled them back with a stream of prattling nonsense. But not today.
“Jethro, perhaps you should allow me to finish up with young Anthony and take him home.”
Always the buffering, compassionate soul, Donald Mallard, Tony smiled to himself. Unless you really pissed him off, and then he’d flay skin from bone without any help from those knives he wielded against dead flesh. Not tonight, Ducky, Tony thought, not tonight.
Gibbs’ eyes narrowed, head cocked slightly to one side. “You about done here?”
A small sigh cooled Tony’s skin along with one more swipe from the alcohol soaked gauze in the doctor’s hand. “Very nearly, Jethro.” He felt a clean bandage as it was placed gently against the raw wound and clever hands wrapping a bandage around and around his arm to hold it there. Ducky seemed to be moving slowly, drawing out his ministrations as if time could lance the poison from the air.
Tony dropped his gaze first. As always, he chuckled darkly. But this time it wasn’t respect or fear that made him look away. This time – for the first time – it was something closer to grief. Another ending. Another reminder that he just didn’t make the cut. He closed his eyes and waited, knowing Gibbs wouldn’t speak again until Ducky was finished and gone.
((Tony didn’t even play in the first three games of the season – all hard losses. But when Jorgens came out of game four with a pulled groin Tony got a short, stern lecture and a slap on the ass. And caught the winning pass. The feeling was heady, sending him soaring, but the coach brought him back to Earth, brought them all back to Earth, in the locker room. No gloating – no celebrations. Just the soft-voiced insistence that they’d better work twice as hard the next time.
He earned his place, eventually. And the rush of having a team again, a family, encouraged him to give everything, every ounce of strength, every molecule of oxygen, every trembling step. Taking the hits in practice and from the other teams – that was the easy part; the physical blows always healed. It was his own mistakes, his own fumbles or missed plays that seared his soul. Made him doubt himself.
And then, senior year, he’d been scouted by The Ohio State University. Big Ten powerhouse with the football legacy of the great Woody Hayes. Offered a partial scholarship. Scholarship housing. And a new family – one that sought him out - that wanted him.))
Like Gibbs had. Or, he smiled wryly, that’s what he’d thought.
Ducky was bending his elbow now, fixing the sling around his neck, and Tony took a deep breath, trying to settle his stomach against the roiling and twisting spasms, past and present merging to steal his control.
He managed a smile. “Thanks, Ducky.”
((He’d been so grateful. Practice before freshman year was like nothing he’d experienced before. Sweat ran from every pore, muscles bunched and shuddered in painful contractions – he couldn’t seem to get enough water, enough air, enough of anything, but he kept going, jaw clenched, forehead creased in a perpetual frown.))
“I suggest you follow your doctor’s advice from here on, Anthony,” the medical examiner was collecting up the bloody gauze, the old bandages, taking his time. “He’ll need light duty for a week, Jethro, or at least until the stitches come out.”
Silence ushered the older man from the room.
((And then, the week before their first game, Coach had called in most of the new freshmen who’d stuck with training, who hadn’t already dropped along the way, as well as some upperclassmen transfers. Tony had been ready for a lecture, a rant about the legacy of this school, this football program, and what they each owed to their new teammates. Instead, he’d been cut off at the knees, speechless, breathless.
“You’re not good enough, not for this team.”))
“Hey, Ducky,” Tony jolted forward a step just as the medical examiner headed out, coat over his arm.
The doctor looked up from under the brim of his hat. “Yes, my boy?”
“What did you think of Ziva’s cooking last night?”
((Tony had missed the rest of the speech from the roaring in his ears, but when the last man had shuffled out of the locker room, he had looked up to see the coach watching him, eyes hooded, arms crossed over his chest.
“DiNozzo, right?”
Tony had straightened his spine and stood, drawing up gracefully to his full height. He felt the haughty mask slip into place, the one his father had taught him to build inch by painful inch.
“Coach.” No mumbled pleas, no begging for another chance. DiNozzo’s didn’t cry, didn’t beg, didn’t break - didn’t damn-well bend.
They’d stood that way for what seemed like hours. Finally, Coach had nodded, once.
“Not giving up?”
After all his work? All his blood and sweat? Was he giving up on finding a new family, a team, a place to belong? “Hell no, Coach.”))
Hell no.
Ducky frowned and took a half step back into autopsy. “Last night - Sunday? I’m afraid I don’t understand.”
“Ziva’s team party,” Tony explained lightly, grabbing his coat and clenching his hand around it, hoping his frustration would be consumed in strangling the jacket and not his oblivious team leader.
“But,” Ducky moved further away from the doors, letting them close again, the chilled air swirling among the three stiff figures. “When we talked Saturday evening, Anthony, and I asked if you had a ‘hot date’ lined up,” a smile flashed across his face and then disappeared, “you said you had nothing to look forward to but a boring day doing laundry and catching up on taped episodes of Survivor.” He shrugged as he slid one arm into the sleeve of his coat. “I heard nothing about a team party.”
“Huh.” Tony laced the syllable with every ounce of aggravation and sarcasm that bubbled up within him, gaze moving slowly and deliberately towards Gibbs.
The muscle in Gibbs’ jaw jumped. “Good night, Duck.”
As soon as the doors swished closed Tony moved, putting some distance between the two of them, hoping to claim some control in the few seconds he might have before Gibbs called him on his biting words, his attitude, his open challenge to ‘the Boss’s’ vaunted perfection.
“You have something to say to me, DiNozzo?”
Tony turned and shifted one hip onto the edge of Ducky’s desk and wished he could cross his arms over his chest for that tiny, extra layer of protection. He struggled to control his voice, to filter out the sense of betrayal, to leash the snarling rage that threatened to spill out all over the floor between them. Why was it so hard this time? Why had his restrained, impervious mask shattered in the face of this man’s – this team’s – rejection?
Back in college he’d kept his scholarship and juggled his time between warming the football team’s bench and running the boards with the basketball team until he’d proven his worth. It had taken a year of punishment to his body that made the police academy seem like a swank vacation paradise and Gibbs’ hard-handed discipline like a welcome home. Those two years working as a team with Kate and McGee … and Gibbs … had left him soft, vulnerable. Accepted. Believed in. Too easy a mark.
“Yeah, Gibbs, I do.” His breathing stuttered and he leaned heavily on the desk behind him, suddenly exhausted again. “She’s not Kate.”
Gibbs was in his face in a second, blue eyes narrowed to slits, muscles clenched, all righteous anger and icy retribution. Tony had known it might come to this, that, injured or not, Gibbs would lash out at him, knock him to the floor, beat him senseless. He’d take it, if it would heal his wounded team. He didn’t flinch.
Hot breath washed over his face, but Gibbs never touched him. “What the hell is wrong with you, DiNozzo?” the older man seethed.
He couldn’t help the laugh that forced its way out from between his lips, and Tony wondered if he’d been hoping for that punch to land, if he was so desperate for contact with this man that a fist breaking his skin in anger would feel like a lover’s caress. When Gibbs edged closer Tony brought up his good arm, hand still fisted in the soft folds of his jacket, and pressed it against his boss’s chest.
“Just listen, Gibbs. For once,” he splashed a parody of his usual grin across his face, “for once, just listen to me.”
The slight easing of the tense muscles in his boss’s chest allowed Tony to pull in a deep, relieved breath. He licked dry lips as the older man backed off a few inches, still teetering towards violence, waiting.
“You know a helluva lot more about foreign intrigue than I ever will, Gibbs. You know about training and philosophy and standard procedures. Spies and covert ops guys, they’re smart, trained in infiltration, probably plotting conspiracies in their sleep. ‘Plans within plans within plans,’” he quoted. “Me, I’m just a dumb cop working hard – damned hard. Yeah, I’m good at undercover, I can play a role, but underneath? Just Tony DiNozzo, trying my best to protect my team and catch the bad guys.”
“What the hell-”
Tony cut him off quickly. “You said you’d listen, Gibbs.”
“I’m not gonna stand here all night, DiNozzo, waiting for you to get to the point.”
“No?” The anger was rising again; Tony could feel its heat leaching up towards his face. “Think you can spare five minutes?” he snapped. “After all, Ziva got an entire evening with you and Probie and Abby and Palmer – you’d think I could at least be granted a five minute audience.” He winced inwardly at the pathetic tone that underlay his demand and the flicker of dismissal behind Gibbs’ blue eyes. No. This could not be personal; he would not convince Gibbs of anything if he made it personal.
Tony sighed and swiped at his eyes with the back of his hand. “Look. You get it, right? That Ziva left me out of the big team night deliberately? That she wormed her way into McGee’s confidence, teased a hell of a lot of intel out of him about me, about our past?” Undermines me at every opportunity, he added to himself. “That she’s been doing her best to get past Abby’s rejection since day one?” He swallowed and lifted his gaze to lock with the frigid blue one just a few feet away. “That she’s been playing you?” he whispered.
The silence congealed around them until Tony felt as if he was encased in ice. Solitary. Alone. He’d opened a bottomless trench between himself and the man who’d become his mentor, his friend … more. Tony clenched his teeth – he had to make Gibbs see, to reach him, no matter what it cost. It always fell to him to tell Gibbs the hard truths, to take the nasty, vindictive crap that the Marine could spew and to still stand up to him the next time. To take one for the team. It was his job, his place. Damn it, he wished Gibbs would just hit him, it couldn’t hurt this much.
“One simple lie tonight and McGee woke up and saw it. He’s smart - I’ll bet he’s thinking over everything that’s happened during the past few months right now. Ducky understood before he left here tonight. And Abby?” Tony shook his head. “She’s going to figure it out real soon, and then the shit will truly hit the fan.”
Gibbs wasn’t moved. “I trust Ziva, DiNozzo. That should be good enough for you.”
Tony’s eyes widened. He’d known it was a long shot, that the fallout from Ari had linked Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs to Mossad Officer Ziva David in some basic, fundamental way. But he hadn’t realized that it had cut his loyalty to Tony so utterly, so completely, that he wouldn’t hear the truth. “I’m not saying she’s evil, Gibbs, I’m saying that she’s doing things, saying things, that are weakening this team. I just-”
“Weakening the team or weakening you?”
Enough. Tony stood quickly, brushing off the dizziness that threatened to send him plummeting to the floor. He was done. Gibbs was the team leader, NCIS’ favorite son, unorthodox in his habits and infallible in his results. Let him deal with the consequences. He swallowed the acid in his throat and carefully maneuvered to the door, fumbling his good hand into his pocket to reach for his phone. Just before he pressed ‘4’ to see if Ducky was still in the parking lot, he stopped.
He didn’t turn, didn’t want to see, but more importantly, didn’t want Gibbs to see the pain he couldn’t mask. “Okay, you trust Ziva. I guess the question is, when did you stop trusting me?”
End Pt 2
Author:
marzipan77Category: Pre-slash/Post-slash
Pairing: Gibbs/DiNozzo
Rating: Mature – more angst than action
Summary: Tag for Boxed In – Tony has come to learn that team = family. And he'll do almost anything to keep his family together. Almost.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
A/N: Sorry this update took me so long. I blame the zombies.
Link to Part 2
Link to Part 3
Link to Part 4
Link to Part 5
Link to Part 6
Link to Part 7
Link to Part 8
Link to Epilogue
((Tony had switched to football in his junior year at the military academy, when all the guys he’d loved and respected – the upperclassmen and the coach who had become his surrogate family – had gone. He’d been a starter since his freshman year, and now would have the responsibility of leading the younger players. At graduation he’d looked around – at Leymer, Sanchez, and Natali standing there in their dress uniforms, eyes focused on the future, and he’d known. He wasn’t ready. Leading a team? Becoming the older brother? He blinked quickly and stole a glance at Coach shuffling his feet on the platform, uncomfortable with the limelight as always. They’d given him a plaque. Twenty years of loyal service. The new coach was young, twenty-something – his years on this planet just about equal with Coach’s experience - broad shoulders and thick neck and dark, glittering eyes standing there in the audience all arrogance and attitude, thinking that a hard body could possibly replace the gnarled hands and graying head of the man who’d taught Tony about teamwork. He felt sick. No. He couldn’t do it – wouldn’t do it. He ran.
That summer he’d worked out like a madman. Running, lifting, spending any hours he wasn’t busy on his job at the gym or on the track. Going home hadn’t been an option – or a desire - for him since he’d started boarding school at twelve. No one there wanted to see him and living on an empty estate in the New York suburbs was torture. So he worked. Maintenance. Painting. He helped resurface the parking lots. Cut grass. Stripped and refinished the gym floor. Repaired fences. Hauled garbage. Whatever they wanted him to do as long as it kept him there, at school, where he’d found a home. He’d run at night after the gym had closed. And in August, he was ready.
On the football team he was the kid again, the rookie. Learning. Memorizing plays, practicing footwork in the hot summer sun, growing calluses where the unfamiliar pads rubbed against his skin. He was fast – faster than the starting receivers. He didn’t mind their scathing looks or their loud comments to the other players; he was in their sandbox now, and he knew he’d have to win his place. And Tony’s reputation as a team player had gone before him. It was okay. He’d expected it. Played harder, worked harder, tried harder, took the hits, smiled through the pain, and came back the next day. The coach watched it all, seemed to have eyes everywhere, and ran the team so hard that any aggression they might think to take off the field disintegrated into exhaustion. And Tony sweated side by side with them day after day after day. And *earned* his spot.))
Tony stood quietly, eyes at half-mast, allowing Ducky’s rambling words to fill up the emptiness as the medical examiner’s fingers probed and prodded, ignoring the pain that spiked at the older man’s inelegant touch. He tried to reach back to that determination, that patience, the stubborn resolve that kept him centered during those weeks of testing while the new team dynamic had grown up around him. He didn’t know if he could do it again.
And, dammit, he shouldn’t have to. He ground his teeth together as his anger surged, hoping the doctor’s concentration on his popped stitches would keep him from noticing. Tony wasn’t the rookie anymore – he was far into his fourth year at NCIS and, supposedly, Gibbs’ senior agent. This was his team. The only person who needed to earn a place here was –
“Dammit, DiNozzo, I used to think you were pretty smart.” The words were coated with a thick layer of disappointment.
He hadn’t even heard the autopsy doors slide open and suddenly Gibbs was at his side, piercing stare leveled at the mess of blood and torn skin of his arm. Pain and exhaustion and nausea kicked his brain into neutral and sped the heated words from Tony’s mouth.
“Yeah, well, I used to think you were pretty damned perceptive, Gibbs, so I guess that makes two of us.”
The cool fingers of the physician stuttered against Tony’s skin but he couldn’t look away from Gibbs’ blue glare. Wouldn’t look away. Yeah, on another day, at another time, when he wasn’t crashing from an adrenaline high that had lasted for hours, when he wasn’t contemplating the dissolution of a team he’d made his family for the past four years, when he wasn’t aching for a connection that had turned away from him months ago Tony might have regretted those words, smiled and joked and hauled them back with a stream of prattling nonsense. But not today.
“Jethro, perhaps you should allow me to finish up with young Anthony and take him home.”
Always the buffering, compassionate soul, Donald Mallard, Tony smiled to himself. Unless you really pissed him off, and then he’d flay skin from bone without any help from those knives he wielded against dead flesh. Not tonight, Ducky, Tony thought, not tonight.
Gibbs’ eyes narrowed, head cocked slightly to one side. “You about done here?”
A small sigh cooled Tony’s skin along with one more swipe from the alcohol soaked gauze in the doctor’s hand. “Very nearly, Jethro.” He felt a clean bandage as it was placed gently against the raw wound and clever hands wrapping a bandage around and around his arm to hold it there. Ducky seemed to be moving slowly, drawing out his ministrations as if time could lance the poison from the air.
Tony dropped his gaze first. As always, he chuckled darkly. But this time it wasn’t respect or fear that made him look away. This time – for the first time – it was something closer to grief. Another ending. Another reminder that he just didn’t make the cut. He closed his eyes and waited, knowing Gibbs wouldn’t speak again until Ducky was finished and gone.
((Tony didn’t even play in the first three games of the season – all hard losses. But when Jorgens came out of game four with a pulled groin Tony got a short, stern lecture and a slap on the ass. And caught the winning pass. The feeling was heady, sending him soaring, but the coach brought him back to Earth, brought them all back to Earth, in the locker room. No gloating – no celebrations. Just the soft-voiced insistence that they’d better work twice as hard the next time.
He earned his place, eventually. And the rush of having a team again, a family, encouraged him to give everything, every ounce of strength, every molecule of oxygen, every trembling step. Taking the hits in practice and from the other teams – that was the easy part; the physical blows always healed. It was his own mistakes, his own fumbles or missed plays that seared his soul. Made him doubt himself.
And then, senior year, he’d been scouted by The Ohio State University. Big Ten powerhouse with the football legacy of the great Woody Hayes. Offered a partial scholarship. Scholarship housing. And a new family – one that sought him out - that wanted him.))
Like Gibbs had. Or, he smiled wryly, that’s what he’d thought.
Ducky was bending his elbow now, fixing the sling around his neck, and Tony took a deep breath, trying to settle his stomach against the roiling and twisting spasms, past and present merging to steal his control.
He managed a smile. “Thanks, Ducky.”
((He’d been so grateful. Practice before freshman year was like nothing he’d experienced before. Sweat ran from every pore, muscles bunched and shuddered in painful contractions – he couldn’t seem to get enough water, enough air, enough of anything, but he kept going, jaw clenched, forehead creased in a perpetual frown.))
“I suggest you follow your doctor’s advice from here on, Anthony,” the medical examiner was collecting up the bloody gauze, the old bandages, taking his time. “He’ll need light duty for a week, Jethro, or at least until the stitches come out.”
Silence ushered the older man from the room.
((And then, the week before their first game, Coach had called in most of the new freshmen who’d stuck with training, who hadn’t already dropped along the way, as well as some upperclassmen transfers. Tony had been ready for a lecture, a rant about the legacy of this school, this football program, and what they each owed to their new teammates. Instead, he’d been cut off at the knees, speechless, breathless.
“You’re not good enough, not for this team.”))
“Hey, Ducky,” Tony jolted forward a step just as the medical examiner headed out, coat over his arm.
The doctor looked up from under the brim of his hat. “Yes, my boy?”
“What did you think of Ziva’s cooking last night?”
((Tony had missed the rest of the speech from the roaring in his ears, but when the last man had shuffled out of the locker room, he had looked up to see the coach watching him, eyes hooded, arms crossed over his chest.
“DiNozzo, right?”
Tony had straightened his spine and stood, drawing up gracefully to his full height. He felt the haughty mask slip into place, the one his father had taught him to build inch by painful inch.
“Coach.” No mumbled pleas, no begging for another chance. DiNozzo’s didn’t cry, didn’t beg, didn’t break - didn’t damn-well bend.
They’d stood that way for what seemed like hours. Finally, Coach had nodded, once.
“Not giving up?”
After all his work? All his blood and sweat? Was he giving up on finding a new family, a team, a place to belong? “Hell no, Coach.”))
Hell no.
Ducky frowned and took a half step back into autopsy. “Last night - Sunday? I’m afraid I don’t understand.”
“Ziva’s team party,” Tony explained lightly, grabbing his coat and clenching his hand around it, hoping his frustration would be consumed in strangling the jacket and not his oblivious team leader.
“But,” Ducky moved further away from the doors, letting them close again, the chilled air swirling among the three stiff figures. “When we talked Saturday evening, Anthony, and I asked if you had a ‘hot date’ lined up,” a smile flashed across his face and then disappeared, “you said you had nothing to look forward to but a boring day doing laundry and catching up on taped episodes of Survivor.” He shrugged as he slid one arm into the sleeve of his coat. “I heard nothing about a team party.”
“Huh.” Tony laced the syllable with every ounce of aggravation and sarcasm that bubbled up within him, gaze moving slowly and deliberately towards Gibbs.
The muscle in Gibbs’ jaw jumped. “Good night, Duck.”
As soon as the doors swished closed Tony moved, putting some distance between the two of them, hoping to claim some control in the few seconds he might have before Gibbs called him on his biting words, his attitude, his open challenge to ‘the Boss’s’ vaunted perfection.
“You have something to say to me, DiNozzo?”
Tony turned and shifted one hip onto the edge of Ducky’s desk and wished he could cross his arms over his chest for that tiny, extra layer of protection. He struggled to control his voice, to filter out the sense of betrayal, to leash the snarling rage that threatened to spill out all over the floor between them. Why was it so hard this time? Why had his restrained, impervious mask shattered in the face of this man’s – this team’s – rejection?
Back in college he’d kept his scholarship and juggled his time between warming the football team’s bench and running the boards with the basketball team until he’d proven his worth. It had taken a year of punishment to his body that made the police academy seem like a swank vacation paradise and Gibbs’ hard-handed discipline like a welcome home. Those two years working as a team with Kate and McGee … and Gibbs … had left him soft, vulnerable. Accepted. Believed in. Too easy a mark.
“Yeah, Gibbs, I do.” His breathing stuttered and he leaned heavily on the desk behind him, suddenly exhausted again. “She’s not Kate.”
Gibbs was in his face in a second, blue eyes narrowed to slits, muscles clenched, all righteous anger and icy retribution. Tony had known it might come to this, that, injured or not, Gibbs would lash out at him, knock him to the floor, beat him senseless. He’d take it, if it would heal his wounded team. He didn’t flinch.
Hot breath washed over his face, but Gibbs never touched him. “What the hell is wrong with you, DiNozzo?” the older man seethed.
He couldn’t help the laugh that forced its way out from between his lips, and Tony wondered if he’d been hoping for that punch to land, if he was so desperate for contact with this man that a fist breaking his skin in anger would feel like a lover’s caress. When Gibbs edged closer Tony brought up his good arm, hand still fisted in the soft folds of his jacket, and pressed it against his boss’s chest.
“Just listen, Gibbs. For once,” he splashed a parody of his usual grin across his face, “for once, just listen to me.”
The slight easing of the tense muscles in his boss’s chest allowed Tony to pull in a deep, relieved breath. He licked dry lips as the older man backed off a few inches, still teetering towards violence, waiting.
“You know a helluva lot more about foreign intrigue than I ever will, Gibbs. You know about training and philosophy and standard procedures. Spies and covert ops guys, they’re smart, trained in infiltration, probably plotting conspiracies in their sleep. ‘Plans within plans within plans,’” he quoted. “Me, I’m just a dumb cop working hard – damned hard. Yeah, I’m good at undercover, I can play a role, but underneath? Just Tony DiNozzo, trying my best to protect my team and catch the bad guys.”
“What the hell-”
Tony cut him off quickly. “You said you’d listen, Gibbs.”
“I’m not gonna stand here all night, DiNozzo, waiting for you to get to the point.”
“No?” The anger was rising again; Tony could feel its heat leaching up towards his face. “Think you can spare five minutes?” he snapped. “After all, Ziva got an entire evening with you and Probie and Abby and Palmer – you’d think I could at least be granted a five minute audience.” He winced inwardly at the pathetic tone that underlay his demand and the flicker of dismissal behind Gibbs’ blue eyes. No. This could not be personal; he would not convince Gibbs of anything if he made it personal.
Tony sighed and swiped at his eyes with the back of his hand. “Look. You get it, right? That Ziva left me out of the big team night deliberately? That she wormed her way into McGee’s confidence, teased a hell of a lot of intel out of him about me, about our past?” Undermines me at every opportunity, he added to himself. “That she’s been doing her best to get past Abby’s rejection since day one?” He swallowed and lifted his gaze to lock with the frigid blue one just a few feet away. “That she’s been playing you?” he whispered.
The silence congealed around them until Tony felt as if he was encased in ice. Solitary. Alone. He’d opened a bottomless trench between himself and the man who’d become his mentor, his friend … more. Tony clenched his teeth – he had to make Gibbs see, to reach him, no matter what it cost. It always fell to him to tell Gibbs the hard truths, to take the nasty, vindictive crap that the Marine could spew and to still stand up to him the next time. To take one for the team. It was his job, his place. Damn it, he wished Gibbs would just hit him, it couldn’t hurt this much.
“One simple lie tonight and McGee woke up and saw it. He’s smart - I’ll bet he’s thinking over everything that’s happened during the past few months right now. Ducky understood before he left here tonight. And Abby?” Tony shook his head. “She’s going to figure it out real soon, and then the shit will truly hit the fan.”
Gibbs wasn’t moved. “I trust Ziva, DiNozzo. That should be good enough for you.”
Tony’s eyes widened. He’d known it was a long shot, that the fallout from Ari had linked Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs to Mossad Officer Ziva David in some basic, fundamental way. But he hadn’t realized that it had cut his loyalty to Tony so utterly, so completely, that he wouldn’t hear the truth. “I’m not saying she’s evil, Gibbs, I’m saying that she’s doing things, saying things, that are weakening this team. I just-”
“Weakening the team or weakening you?”
Enough. Tony stood quickly, brushing off the dizziness that threatened to send him plummeting to the floor. He was done. Gibbs was the team leader, NCIS’ favorite son, unorthodox in his habits and infallible in his results. Let him deal with the consequences. He swallowed the acid in his throat and carefully maneuvered to the door, fumbling his good hand into his pocket to reach for his phone. Just before he pressed ‘4’ to see if Ducky was still in the parking lot, he stopped.
He didn’t turn, didn’t want to see, but more importantly, didn’t want Gibbs to see the pain he couldn’t mask. “Okay, you trust Ziva. I guess the question is, when did you stop trusting me?”
End Pt 2
