McGee-centric character study/romance. Want to start at the beginning? Click here.
Chapter 381: How Many
A/N: I know some of you aren't old enough to remember the '80s (God, how old do I feel, now?) Anyway, things were a whole lot different in the pre-AIDS era. But, for a quick reference, if anyone in Tony's circle in college might have been talking about AIDS, it would have been that vaguely nebulous 'gay cancer' thing. The idea that straight people could even get HIV didn't start to really percolate through most America until the early '90s.
Going to bed early was a good plan. Tony needed the rest. He's waking up, stretching out, and starting to feel fully human again.
Of course, rested means talking. Lots and lots to talk about. Lots to think about. He rolls onto his side, pulling the blankets over his shoulder, listening to Ziva snore.
'We can find your kids, if you want to know.'
Does he want to know? God… That number could be so damn high.
College alone… He went to school with a lot of those girls, but Ohio State isn't a small school. It had more than 40,000 students when he was there. (Sure not all in one spot, but everyone got together for games…) And some of the girls he saw over and over, had class with, or were cheerleaders. He knew none of them were wandering around visibly pregnant.
But if one had dropped out, no way he would have noticed.
And, of course, the team travelled. New schools for all the away games.
And a lot of them… He knows that after a big win, especially against another Big Ten school, or any of the Final Four Championships, he might have been with three a night, maybe four, and they'd just be whoever was cute and nearby.
Frat parties… God, they threw the best parties ever! And no one ever got turned away. Girls didn't have to pay for drinks, or drugs, or anything else. Just because he wasn't into coke, didn't mean it wasn't all over his frat. 1986-88, everyone with money was on coke and his college was rolling in the stuff.
Coke's got a kind of nasty side-effect, makes you horny, but you can't get it up.
So, loose, drunk, horny, happy girls all over the place, and he's the guy who's actually sporting wood. Not difficult math.
Condoms? Huh? What? He'd graduated by the time the whole safe sex thing really got rolling. They'd started to hear more about it by his senior year, so if a girl had one, he'd always go with it, but he never carried them. Never had to deal with the 'what kind of girl do you think I am?' stuff, never had to break the illusion of 'just got so swept away by you.'
College ball player, young, healthy, invincible. Sure he came up positive for gonorrhea, crabs, and the clap every single time they did a physical, but so did three quarters of the rest of the team. Antibiotics got handed out like breath mints for their team. Ten days on, a full dose of Quell for the crabs, and back you go, good as new, with a quick lecture about condoms, but really, what was the point, damn things were a pain in the ass, and as long as you weren't allergic to antibiotics, why bother?
Herpes was scary, but he always made sure to really look before he touched, and that seemed to keep him safe. At least, he never came up positive for it.
Graduated, police academy, first job in Peoria, he spent a lot of that time studying, learning the ropes, and banging anyone he could get his hands on during the weekends.
He was in the middle of a shift, traffic work, sitting on the side of an empty street, listening to the sports station, holding up the radar gun, waiting for someone to drive by when Magic Johnson's press conference came on. He'd been expecting something about the Dream Team (really was looking forward to seeing that) and got a hell of a shock instead.
And two days after Magic Johnson came out as HIV positive, he got tested, and was clean. He thinks half of his team found their first white hair that day. (Between getting tested and waiting for the results, he certainly did.) Six months later he was still clean. (And in possession of a large quantity of condoms.) Five years later, Rob (the center) was dead from AIDS and Stephen (point guard) was living with HIV.
Five years between then and meeting Wendy. A few girlfriends, but nothing steady. He was young, and hot, and could dance, no problem finding company whenever he wanted it. He… usually… used condoms, but, he didn't always have one, and sometimes he did actually get swept up in it, and besides Wilt Chamberlin had had way more women and he didn't come down with anything, so… (And rumor had it that Steve and Rob had been with each other a few times… At least, they liked to share girls, and come on, straight guys didn't catch AIDS… Well okay, everyone said they could, but... Come on…) Like lots of young guys, the little head was in charge a lot more often than it should have been.
The little head being in charge had a lot to do with never holding a job in one place for more than two years. No big screw ups, never really got in trouble, but he also never really fit, never made any friends, no one really wanted him for a partner. Too cool, too know it all, too much of a jerk or prankster. Whatever it was, he didn't fit in Peoria or Philly.
Then there was Baltimore, and Wendy, and settling down, getting on the straight and narrow, and a ring and the white picket fence, but it turned out Wendy didn't want the ring or the fence. Apparently, Wendy wanted the guy he was before he straightened out. So he went on his honeymoon alone and spent every minute he was awake drunk and balls deep in strange women.
Gibbs had been at the wedding. Was the guy who drove him to the airport, guy who picked him up. He slept on Gibbs' sofa for a few weeks and Gibbs made sure he was sober by clock in time every morning. (Hung over a lot of them, but that was true for Gibbs, too. After all, the Stephanie mess was just wrapping up, then.)
More clubs, more parties, more bars, Spring Break in Panama City… That year after Wendy he fucked every woman in DC, just to prove to himself that he could. Wendy may not have wanted him, but look at all these other women who did.
That lasted a year. Kate came around, and he slowed down, got to his 'grown-up' pace, two or three girls a month, longest dry spell he ever hit was eight weeks, and then he took a long weekend to make up for it. Still he knows he averaged about thirty girls a year, and at twelve years… Lord, him going slow was three hundred women over a bit more than a decade.
By then he was using condoms all the time. Girls expected them, looked at you like an unwashed sock if you didn't have them, and by then… He never wanted to give Kate the satisfaction of having some women he barely knew show up with a kid.
But even with them… Let's put it this way, that episode of Friends where Ross is flipping out about condoms not working all the time, that hit a lot closer to home than Tony would have liked.
God, Abby could dig up a hundred kids… Okay, probably not that many, but… twenty? Ten?
Does he want to know?
Does Ziva?
Does it matter if he wants to know? They're out there. They have to be out there. They don't let you donate sperm unless you've got lots of healthy wigglers per shot, and, at least as of college, he did. And he can't think of any reason why that wouldn't have continued to be true.
1984, April, he's pretty sure it was April, maybe March, he was home from school on spring break. Got into a Theta Chi party in the city, found a girl who made his night. He doesn't remember what she looked like, not anymore. (Not reliably anymore. She got hotter and hotter each time he told the story. He thinks her hair and eyes were brown. He knows she wasn't a Rockette. She had wanted to be one, he does remember her saying that.) But he does remember how she made him feel: special, sexy, crazy turned on, desired. And he very clearly remembers how she felt on him. That he remembers. Never saw her again. Never got her name… So, winter of '84-'85. His oldest child could be thirty-one. Lord. He wonders if Abby can make the computer find his grandkids, because, given how active he was in college, it's possible there are a bunch of little guys somewhere in Molly's age range who might be his grandkids.
No, they wouldn't be in any of the databases… Well, it'd be unlikely.
Realistically, any of them who are under eighteen wouldn't be in there. But over eighteen would get all of his most active years, except for the Wendy fall out. Those kids would have been born in 2000, 2001 at the latest. So, they'd be fifteen or fourteen, out of the system unless they really screwed up at something.
He feels Ziva roll over next to him, facing him, hair all wild around her, eyes still closed.
"Morning," he says.
She sighs, stretching, cuddling in closer to him. He holds her, letting quiet and sleep and whatever calm she's got hold onto her for as long as it can.
Eventually she shifts some, moving back a bit, laying on her side, still facing him. "Sleep well?"
He nods. All things considered, yes he did. "You?"
"Enough."
"Talking first, or breakfast?"
She leans up on her elbow and checks the clock. His gaze follows her, it's a little bit after nine. For him that's a decent morning of sleeping in, for her, that's a sleep marathon.
She stretches again. "Talking. If we get called out…"
"Okay. Where do you want to start?"
They've done this in counseling often enough that if they don't actually set it down they'll just sort of keep nudging the topic without really getting into it. So this is him, tossing the ball in her court, letting her know he wants to get her topics done, first, then they'll get to his.
With any luck, they'll overlap.
She sighs. It's easier to be on the listening side, sometimes. Right now it'd be easier to be listening to him talking about finding out about his kids. Still, one of them has to start, so…
"You wanted to be part of Jeanne's son's life."
He nods.
"You jumped right into it, worry, fear, concern. He was your son, and you wanted to be... something… Intimate?" He nods, that'll cover it. "With him."
Ziva brushes the backs of her fingers down his cheek. "But you do not want my child."
His expression is somewhere between sheepish and a wince. "It's not… If it's already said and done… That's what I mean by I can't make myself jump, but I'll be fine when I land. I know when I hold our child, I'll be good, it'll work, but…"
She shakes her head. "I do not want to push you off a cliff. I want you to jump off with me. You used to like sex. We both used to like sex, a lot, and now… Since I have been off the pill, I have seen you go to dental appointments with more enthusiasm. Now, you are 'tired.' And while I do not mind all the oral sex when you aren't 'tired,' I know what you are doing."
He doesn't deny it. It's intentional after all. He knows she can get pregnant. It's been five months since her last pill, and that has made certain bits of his anatomy very skittish about getting too close to certain bits of her. His tongue on the other hand, that works just fine, no matter what, thank you very much.
And it's not like they haven't had any sex. But the frequency of sex that makes babies has dropped from three to five times a week to closer to once a week. And, he's not exactly relaxed on those occasions.
"Tiny person entirely dependent on us. Little bundle of never-ending need. Everything in our life changing. I can deal with it if it happens. I can handle it. But I can't just sign up for that."
"You already did, over and over apparently," her voice is sharp, and he sees her make herself stop that.
He opens his mouth, and closes it, and sighs. "I signed up for a lot of meaningless sex with women I'd never see again. Women who knew me well enough to have my name or my phone number, I was a lot more careful with." He's not proud of it, but it's true.
"Like Jeanne?"
He sighs at that, too. "The first time was when Cassidy died. We almost died that day, too, remember? I told her I loved her, and… And I didn't go hunting for any condoms. I didn't the first time I told you I loved you, either. You remember that, right?"
She nods. "I remember." Very gentle, very quiet, still in the hospital after they almost froze to death. They whisper/kissed it to each other over and over, rocking slowly. That's a good memory.
"I'm fairly sure that even if you hadn't been on the pill, I still wouldn't have said, 'Stop, go get protection!'"
That's a good point.
"And I'm not sorry about it, but, we just don't have the kind of relationship where I can get so caught up in how good right now feels and forget about the fact that we're going to wake up in the morning together and go to work together and come home again, together. The whole forever thing means I can't pretend there isn't going to be a tomorrow."
They watch each other for a few seconds. "That could have been our son, Ziva, and it could have been real, and…" He rubs his face. "How do you just sign yourself up for that? It's one thing if you have to. You've got the kid, you do the job, okay, but… I'll get there. I'll be a dad, a good one, but…"
She shakes her head. "I want you to want this, with me. This should be… joyful."
"I don't think I'm ever going to get there. Caring about people is terrifying. Even people who love you will hurt you. I mean… It's not easy. I can't just—"
She's looking frustrated as she cuts in with, "You think this is easy for me?"
"You want it, so I'm going to have to say, at least compared to me, that yes, it's easy for you. Maybe not cosmic scale easy, but… You're still breathing. The idea of making a child doesn't stop your heart or break you out in a cold sweat, so yeah, it's easy for you."
Tony sits up, back against their headboard, elbows resting on his knees, hands laced loosely together. "I want you. I want a life with you. I want you happy. I know kids are part of that. But they're not something I'm ever going to want for myself. They're something I'll want for you because I know you want them.
"I don't like kids. I don't like loud, messy, chaotic things, and that's pretty much the definition of kids. I'm getting better with them because we've got a bunch of the little ankle biters all over the place, and really, they're not that bad, but you'll notice I never line up to babysit because I don't enjoy spending time with them. I'm not saying I hate our girls, and I'm not saying that sometimes, when you're holding one of them, I don't get all, 'oh how cute,' but… I'm relieved when they go home.
"But I know you want them, so I want them for you, but… I'm sorry I'm not enthusiastic about it, but it really is like jumping off a cliff into icy water. Yeah, I know I can swim, but… So, whatever you need to do to get me into the water is fine, but… I can't just jump."
She nods, resigned. "I know."
"I'm sure, we have one, I'll be able to leap for the next one, but right now…"
"Okay. I know. I do." She looks disappointed by that, but not hurt. "Go get us some breakfast. I'm going to do some thinking. Then more talking?"
"Sure. I can do that."
His phone is showing he's got two texts. First one's from Draga. No cases yet. Enjoy your day off.
One from McGee. He checks it. Keys are in the glovebox. Already picked up Abby's car.
And yes, when he gets down to his usual spot his car is there, and the damn thing does sparkle. It didn't look that shiny when it was new, and Tony's wondering if McMoneybags actually hired someone to detail it. He uses Ziva's keys to unlock it, and finds his in the glovebox.
It doesn't have that 'clean car scent' detailers usually spray the interior with, but it's really, really clean.
That helps, a little. He's more… hurt? Disappointed? Something. Whatever it is, it's not raging angry. Not at McGee, not right now.
McGee picked Palmer over him. Flat out said it. 'He's never pulled any shit on me, you have, so I picked him.'
And honestly, with all the years of stuff between him and McGee… Given the same choice, he'd pick Palmer, too. They have a less complicated relationship. Or at least, that was true the day before yesterday. Now… Well, now, if he's ever in need of someone to hide a body, he's not going to Palmer.
Then he thinks about Bodnar, and the fact that Palmer and Breena did, literally, take care of a body for them. Tony sighs. If it was a clean kill, they'd do it again. Palmer will back him to the end of the line, as long as he's doing the right thing.
And he'll call him out and hurt him for doing the wrong one.
Tony shakes his head. He doesn't know what to do about Palmer. He's angry, because that whole thing just sucked, but… But if it was the other way around, and Palmer had pissed on anyone else for something like this, he'd get it and back him.
Flip it around… What if Jimmy wanted to do something nasty to McGee… for the book maybe. The whole necrophilia thing, or writing about them without permission… A whole night of pain… overkill, but… he didn't have any problem with the teasing Jimmy did, and he wouldn't have had any problems if Jimmy wanted to take that teasing up about ten or twenty notches.
He puts his key in the ignition.
McGee picked Palmer. Because whatever it is they've got, that's easier. He thinks that's some of it, sure, but, not all of it.
He and McGee don't work together every single day. They don't have to trust each other implicitly in all situations now. His life no longer literally rests in McGee's hands and vice versa.
If they hadn't worked together, they would have never been friends. Never been more than acquaintances, and likely less than that. If McGee had stayed in Norfolk, he would have just been a name and a face Tony kind of, sort of knew.
But that's not how it worked out. And right now, he is literally still breathing because of Tim McGee. And that's true for McGee, too. Every day for almost fourteen years, he put his life in McGee's hands, and McGee put his life in Tony's. And that's how it was.
But not how it is, not anymore.
Six months ago, when they were still working like that, Tony's fairly sure that McGee would have… maybe not picked him, but done a better job of coming up with some sort of common ground. He would have thought of a compromise, because his literal life depended on both of them trusting each other utterly with no hesitation.
And now they don't. Now their lives, their survival, isn't chained to their ability to work with each other. And, without something else, a deep interest in the same sorts of things… They're drifting apart.
It's not like they're ever going to be strangers or something. Not like they'll just be acquaintances. They're bound by this family they've got now. But their lives, literally, don't revolve around each other anymore.
They aren't partners, not anymore. They are friends now, but… it's not the same.
And Tony's fairly sure it never will be. It can't be. Because the stakes will never be the same again.
Things change, and they have this, family, now, that's gluing them together, but… It's not the same as knowing that's the guy who will take the bullet for you.
Tony pulls to a stop at the stop sign, idling for longer than strictly necessary.
Things change. Of course they do, and they're going to keep changing.
But Ziva's still there, and she's the one who will still take the bullet for him. She's the partner who's got his back no matter what…
Implicit trust. No questions, no hesitation. You lead and I will follow. I lead and you follow. No matter what I have your back and you have mine.
He touches his wedding ring. I will live. That's the promise he asked for. Those are the words that underline their marriage.
They've talked about that, too. In counseling, and out. How due to too many losses, too many broken loves, they are both terrified of going on by themselves. How that's not healthy. How, in the long run it's probably a good thing that Ziva's going to be getting out of police work, safer for both of them. They've talked that all through.
But that promise. I will live. That's his bedrock. That's what he needs from her. That if something happens to him, she'll keep going without him. That she'll put her fears aside and keep going, alone.
He blinks. He couldn't give that promise back to her, then. And he can't, now. If the words ever left his lips, they'd be a lie.
He can't give her that, but he can give her a child. He can stop being a jerk about it. He can, just like he's asked her to, stuff his fear down and keep going, doing what he needs to to treat her like she's more important to him than air.
He can do that.
And one other thing hits him as that does. If they have a child, and if something happens to her, he can't follow her. He can't let himself self-destruct if she's no longer in his life. He has to make the promise that scares him more than anything else.
Can't live without you. He said that to her, in Somalia. He didn't want to say it, but the wall between his brain and mouth was gone and it just fell out.
And suddenly why he's been dragging his heels, and as she put it, going to the dentist with more enthusiasm than he's been going to bed with her, slams into place and makes a whole lot more sense. Why he can jump full into the idea of another woman's child with both feet and no hesitation, makes perfect sense, too.
If they make a baby, then he has to make that promise, because no matter what, one of them has to come home.
And he's terrified it'll be him.
The car behind him honks, and Tony's got no idea how long he's been lingering at the stop sign. He pulls through the intersection, and then pulls over, stopping the car.
He takes his wedding ring off, and trails his finger over the inscription.
I will live.
His partner. The one he trust implicitly, in all things. The one who will take the bullet for him (though he'd very much prefer she didn't) or put one in someone else.
The one who always has his back.
He slips his ring back on, not feeling any less scared, but he knows what he has to do.
Fake it 'till you feel it… That's the phrase, right?
So, whatever you need to do to get me into the water is fine…
Ziva's in the shower, washing her hair, thinking about that.
She's not sure if that's as close as he can get to outright saying, 'Just lie to me, take it out of my hands, and when we land, I'll be good,' or what he means by that.
The problem is, if he is asking, 'lie to me' then her asking for clarification will screw up the lie. If she asks, 'Tony, are you saying you want me to pretend to go back on birth control?' and then he says, 'Yes,' and two minutes later she says, 'I'm on the pill again,' it's not believable.
If he's going to buy it, it has to look real, otherwise it won't work. He won't relax about it.
And if he's not saying 'lie to me…'
She's talked with Abby and Breena about this, and they've both said that since Tony's already mentioned that he needs some help with this, that he may be asking for her to just lie to him, but… None of them like that option. They all know someone who's done it, but… It feel dirty, and, just… wrong.
She doesn't exactly want to talk to her friends right this second. She's not feeling mad at them. Not right now, much bigger stuff on the horizon, maybe when this all fades that will change, but… Tim and Jimmy don't know about Philippe. Breena and Abby do. That story was told in confidence, and neither of the girls broke that confidence. That helps with mad. The fact that, like Breena, she'll back her husband, even if he's being stupid, helps with mad. The fact that Abby pulled some pretty serious crap on Helen helps with mad, too.
She is mad at Jimmy right now.
But that can wait. Feeling mad at Jimmy right now seems like a way to not deal with what's going on right here, right now. So, that can definitely wait.
She feels the temperature in the air shift, and a second later Tony says, "Hey. I'm back. Got hot coffee, croissants, and strawberries."
"I'll be out in a minute."
"Good."
He's laying food out on the table when she comes out, dressed in pajama pants and a t-shirt.
"I'm going back on the pill." She's not sure if she's lying or not as she says that. She still has two disks full of them, the option to do it for real is there.
He looks a little surprised at that.
"Not forever. Not more than six months. But… I am tired of sex being a chore. And we have more than enough big issues to deal with right this second." So much for what he was planning on saying to her. Before he gets a chance to do much besides stand there and look startled, she says to him, "Your turn."
His turn… Time for him to talk and her to listen. "Okay." His stuff. They can start there, and get back to hers. They've got all day. "I don't know what to do about Abby's offer. It's easier not to know. It's safer, for me, and us, and this tidy little life we've got going here. It's less complicated. But I have this suspicion that not finding out isn't right. That… if you can know, you should know."
She nods at that.
"What do you think? Do you want to know? If we find out, this can hit on a lot of levels, not just emotional, but… God, I feel like a dick for saying this, but, this could be a hard financial hit, too. I mean, if I know those kids are out there… Especially if they're kids, under eighteen and all, I kind of have to do something about it, and…"
And she knows. Money is going to be tight if she wants to do the stay-at-home-mom thing. Adding a pile of child support to the list of bills would only make that worse, and, possibly, take it completely off the table.
Time with these kids… That'd be taking him away from her and their family. It would be… destabilizing. Thinking about that doesn't make her feel good. But, it's real.
"I don't want to know." She's fairly sure that's not the 'right' or 'good' answer. But she doesn't want to know. She looks up at the ceiling for a moment. "But there is likely a child somewhere who wonders about her father. And I do not want to be the wall between you and that child."
"Do you think there's… I don't know, some sort of in between? Some way to set it so that if that girl's out there, looking, she can find me, but… But I don't have to go barging into her home? I mean… I'm sure there are kids who wonder, and there's likely some who don't… I mean… I know at least three of the ladies I hooked up with were doing a last night before the wedding fling, and… if that resulted in kids, they probably aren't wondering who their dad is… They may not have the right answer, but they probably aren't wondering. If I'm just sitting there with a list of people Abby dug up, I won't know who is who."
Ziva shrugs. "I would think so. You cannot be the only man in this situation."
"I think that's what I'd like to do."
Ziva nods at that. Maybe not a perfect answer, but, she can live with it.
Tony spreads some butter on his croissant. That was actually a lot easier than he was expecting it to be. Of course, if he gets on or whatever, and someone does find him, this might get a whole lot less easy.
But that's tomorrow, not today. Other things for today. He puts the croissant down. "Don't go back on the pill."
Her eyebrows rise.
"I'm scared. I'm not going to stop being scared, but…" He touches his ring again. "I asked you for something that scared the hell out of you, and you've handled it with grace. And you deserve that back. So… Don't go back on them." He stands up, heads to their bathroom, and finds both disks. A minute later, he's out in their kitchen, tossing them in the trash.
"You and me, to the end of the line, and… And I've got you. You've got me. That's how this works."
Ziva's smiling at him, very touched, very wowed, and very much hoping that he can stay in this headspace, because she likes it.
He looks at the plate in front of her, about half a croissant and two strawberries has been eaten. He takes the basket of berries, and her hand, tugging her out of her chair.
"Come to bed with me," he says with a smile. (And yes, that might not be the most genuine smile he's ever had, but part of this whole loving people thing is putting them and their needs first. He can do that.)
And Ziva smiles back. She can see that this isn't entirely real, but she really appreciates the effort.
Next
Showing posts with label Tiva. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tiva. Show all posts
Thursday, September 4, 2014
Shards To A Whole: Karma
McGee-centric character study/romance. Want to start at the beginning? Click here.
Chapter 376: Karma
"Sure, I'll see her." Tony says, putting down his phone. Usually calls on his desk phone mean dispatch wants them to go deal with a dead body. Not today.
Today there's a call from the front desk, with a visitor.
One he really doesn't want to see.
"What is it, Tony?" Ziva asks. "You look like ghost just walked over your grave."
"Something like that."
"DiNozzo?" Draga asks.
Tony shakes his head. "Later. No way this isn't going to be a long story."
Ziva looks worried, but he shakes his head. He is worried. Why on earth would she want to see him?
She's older now, of course she is, not like she found some sort of magical time stopping device. He could have walked by her a thousand times in a thousand grocery stores and never noticed. After all, they only met the one time, not like he burned her face into his mind. But she's here, sitting in the break room, staring, glaring, at his wedding ring.
"What can I do for you, Helen?"
Dr. Helen Berkley, Jeanne Benoit's mother, looks up from the ring. Seems to be debating if she should even be here. But finally, glaring at him, she says, "Are you a bone marrow donor?"
"Excuse me?" Of all the things she could have asked, could have needed to see him about that, was… nothing he could have even possibly thought of.
Her voice is crisp and precise and slaps him with each word. "Not a single word of what I said was unclear. Are you on the bone marrow registry?"
Tony shakes his head. "No."
"Get on it! Fast. Before the end of work today. I am a doctor. I can and will take care of the blood work."
He feels the ice down his spine, knows there's only one reason why anyone would ask that of him, but he's got to hear the words, has to know it's really true.
"Why?"
Her eyes narrow, but she seems to think he probably is stupid enough not to figure this out for himself, so she says, "Because in December of 2007 my grandson was born. He has brown hair and hazel eyes. After what you did to her, his mother never spoke your name, but I can do simple arithmetic."
Oh shit! He nods. "Okay. And I take it he's sick?"
"Yes." The heat in her eyes could boil him alive.
"She said she went to Africa."
"She did. Nothing about Africa prevents people from having babies there."
"I didn't know."
"No, you didn't. And the second she learned you had a real name, you lost all right to know."
"Yeah. Okay," Fuck! If this isn't every worst nightmare he's ever had of the hookup who's got news for him, all combined and multiplied by twenty, he doesn't know what could be. "What do you need?"
"You to get on the bone marrow registry. I didn't think I was unclear about that."
"Won't that take a long time? Couldn't we just… do the test straight up?"
"Mr. DiNozzo, you are not my grandson's father. You are, at best, a stranger who may be able to provide him with the bone marrow he needs to survive. He will never meet you. He will never speak to you. You don't even get to know his name."
Tony holds up his hands. "Set whatever rules you like. I'll abide them. But, just, let's get it done as fast as we can. There's no need to jump through the hoops or whatever. Jeanne's not here to see me herself, even to save her son's life, then she must still hate me pretty fiercely."
Helen bit her lip.
"Helen?" That's a warning sign. Something about this really isn't right. Everything about this isn't right. He has a son. With Jeanne. Who's sick and… Shit! He can't think about that right now. There's something else there, something about Jeanne, he's hit a nerve for Helen. Think about that.
"You lost the right to know about that when she learned you had a real name, too." But her voice catches on that.
"Is Jeanne all right?"
"You don't get to know! I have privileges at Washington General. We can get the blood work there."
"That's… Okay. We've got a fully functional medical suite less than a hundred feet from here. If you'd like to do it even faster."
Helen shakes her head. "Washington General is close enough."
"I'll get my coat and be there in half an hour."
"Fine."
He skirts the bullpen, going out the back. He sends a quick text to Ziva. It's a mess. Got to go for a bit. Back this afternoon. We'll talk.
How bad is it?
Bad. Not in danger, not that kind of bad, but it's bad.
Okay. This afternoon. Do I need to…
No. Nothing for you to do. Few hours, I'll be back.
He doesn't know what he's feeling as he drives. Numb. Numb is probably right.
"Was any of it real?" Jeanne'd asked him, scared, angry, hurting, hurting so bad, and it was all on him.
"No." God, he thought he'd done the right thing. Thought it'd be better to let her hate him. He wonders what would have happened if he had said 'Yes,' because, after all, it was real. He tries to imagine the life if he'd dropped the job and gone with her to… What? That apartment they were moving into, eventually a home in the 'burbs with a little boy who looks like him and a ring that matched one on Jeanne's finger?
Still be a cop? Moved onto something else? He sure as hell wasn't a Professor of Film Studies.
He tries to will that image to form in his mind, but it won't. He is who he is, and Jeanne's husband was never in the cards for him.
December of 2007, he'd be eight now. Brown hair, hazel eyes, and eight-years-old.
Eight-years-old, and no dad.
Of course Tony doesn't know that, not really. Jeanne may not have come because she married. There could be a guy who is this child's dad, but…
No.
He can't believe that she could hate him so much she'd let her son die rather than talk to him again.
But she could hate him enough to send her mom to do it. She could be sitting in a hospital room, holding his hand, worrying for him, husband, the man this child calls Dad by her side, hoping that somehow he's the Hail Mary that'll get her boy through this.
That works.
He pulls into Washington General, looking for a space.
He probably deserves Helen jabbing him three times before getting a good draw. Deserves a lot more than that. There are a lot of questions he'd like to ask, lots of things he wants to know, not the least of which is whether the child is actually his or not, but…
But he's already hurt this family enough, and even if the child is his, it's not like he's got any claim to him.
It's not enough to be the guy who broke your mom's heart. Even if she broke yours, too. Though, really, Jeanne didn't break his heart. He broke his own heart by not being enough of a man to choose her over the job.
Helen tosses him a band aid. "If you match, I'll let you know."
"Okay. Is there… I… I know you don't want me to have any contact. That's… Not fine… But I'll respect it… But, anything you need for him, anything I can do, anything I can ever do, call."
"How noble of you," Helen says, her voice indicating he would't know noble if he tripped over it.
"I can't change what I did—"
"No shit!" Her voice is scalding hot with anger.
"I didn't know about him. Didn't even suspect. And I won't go tromping into your family. But, just, anything..."
She's staring at him, furious, and he feels his body go on high alert, because this is a woman who will physically attack him if he so much as breathes wrong. "Here's what you can do: if you match up, you can provide my grandson with bone marrow, and after that you can remember that somewhere there's a child with your eyes who you will never know. You can spend the rest of your life knowing how you hurt his mother, and how, because of your lies, he never knew his father. You can go to sleep at night with your wife and maybe your kids and know that you failed your son and fucked his mother while lying to her about every single thing in your life, including the fact that you loved her. You can spend the rest of your life hurting for what you did to my child. And you can spend the rest of your life knowing your son is sick, but never knowing if he got better, never knowing if he's alive or not. You can steep in the torture of that, and have it eat your insides out. That's what you can do!"
Tony swallows, wanting to step back, away from this rage, but not doing it, pressing the band aid to his elbow instead. "How long before you'll know if I match up?"
"Day after tomorrow."
He's been thinking of ways to say this to Ziva as he's driving back to the Navy Yard, but nothing feels right.
She knew about Jeanne. They've talked about it a little. Some at the time. Some since. She had a few Jeannes of her own in her past. She gets that that's the job, sometimes you hurt people, but you say it's for the greater good and you get up the next morning and you keep going.
But he can't for the life of him figure out how to start this conversation.
He heads through the metal detector at the front desk, strides toward the elevator, and finds himself hitting the B button instead of the 3 one that leads to the bullpen.
"I fucked up," Tony says, slumping into the chair next to Tim's desk.
"Mmm…" Tim's not listening, he's working on making sure that the test makes three separate ships look like they all began the programs on their own, while firing at each other. His fingers are flying over the keys and he's, at best, tangentially aware of the fact that Tony's in his office.
Tony stares at Tim, looking really hurt. "Way to show some sympathy, man. How 'bout you kick me in the balls a few times while you're at it?"
"Huh?" That gets Tim looking up. What Tony actually said hits him, and more than that, the look of utter desolation on his face, breaks Tim out of programming mode. "What's wrong?"
Tony told him. And wrapped up with, "Can't go to Gibbs with this; he'll snap my dick off for getting her pregnant and not sticking around long enough to find out. Don't even know where to begin how to say this to Ziva. I mean, she knows about the Jeanne thing, but…" Tony lets that trail off.
"Gibbs isn't going to be that hard on you. Franks didn't find out about his son until he was in his twenties, and Gibbs didn't have a fit about that. You do right by this kid, and you're not going to have any problems with Gibbs."
"Besides opening a vein and offering whatever he needs, what is doing right by him?"
Tim blows out a long breath. "I don't know. If Jeanne had been a one-night-stand or something, I'd say try to get involved in his life. Be a dad, or as much of one as she'll let you."
"But she wasn't. And she still hates me enough she sent her mom to come talk to me."
"Yeah."
"And she made it very clear that I am never to have anything, at all, to do with this child."
Tim nods.
"What would you do?"
The idea of being in this situation is so ridiculously foreign to Tim that he's got no idea, at all. "I really don't know."
"He's eight now, so he's got to wonder who his dad is. Of course, he might have a dad. She might be married, there might be a man who he calls Dad and if that's the case…"
"You want me to check her out, see what I can find?"
"Please." Tony sits there, glances at the door, seeming to think about moving, but doesn't. "What the hell am I going to tell Ziva?"
"Same thing Helen told you? That there was a very good reason why she took a year off before trying to get revenge?" It sounds lame as Tim says it, and he knows that, but he doesn't have anything better for Tony.
"Don't think that's going to cut it."
Tim shakes his head. "No. It's not."
The idea that there would be a downside to Tim's paperwork software never really hit anyone at NCIS until the software was up and running.
But, there is. Namely, they suddenly have way more agents then they need. When you go from, on average twenty hours a week of paperwork to an hour of database entry and five minutes of printing, you suddenly have a whole lot more time.
On the upside, the case backlog is dwindling rapidly. The cold cases are seeing more attention than ever before.
But, well, lots of time means lots of pranks. And Tinkerbell and Flyboy are right now in the middle of what, until this morning, was a vastly enjoyable prank war of epic levels, but is now, as Tony heads to Ziva's desk to talk to her and somehow triggers some sort of shrieking menace that one of his Junior Agents planted to prank the other one, rapidly becoming VERY annoying.
Tink's looking sheepish and shutting whatever that thing is up. Flyboy's grinning, very satisfied. Tony's eyes narrow. "If you have this much free time, you can go back to filling out the forms by hand."
Both of them look properly chastised and move so quickly to find something useful to do that they practically dematerialize.
Ziva's watching him, coolly, knowing something she's not going to like is about to hit her. "Here or at home?"
"Home."
"Home" actually translates to their car.
"Do you remember what I told you about Jeanne Benoit?"
She nods, pulling out of the parking lot.
"Her mother called me, today." Ziva's carefully holding her face, keeping her expression neutral, and beyond knowing that that's a coping mechanism for her, a way to shut things down so she can process, he doesn't know what precisely she's feeling. Probably dread, she knows the next sentence can't be good. "Her eight-year-old grandson is sick, and she asked me to give blood and see if I'm a match for a bone marrow donation."
She stops the car. They're at the entrance to the parking lot, not a good place to stop. People will want to get in and out. So she drive eight more feet and parks them in a new spot.
"You and Jeanne have a son?"
"I think so. She told me he's eight, and has brown hair and hazel eyes."
She doesn't say anything.
"I didn't know, Ziva. Didn't guess."
"I know." And she does know. Even if this wasn't something they talked about before they got married, granted not for Jeanne in specific, she can do the math, knows, as best as he can guess, how many partners he's had, and how careful wasn't how you would have described him for the first twenty years he was at it. So, for the whole time they've been together, she's known a day like this was possible. "Is he really yours?" Obviously he can be Tony's. They had sex. A lot. She knows that; it's not what she's asking. "Were you careful with Jeanne?"
He shakes his head. Usually they were. But there were a few times. He thinks back. Twice. There was twice, and they were just in it, and everything was going right and it felt right and… "Not always." He thinks more. "The last time was a few days before everything fell apart."
She nods. "And he is sick?"
"Yeah."
"Did she tell you anything?"
"Just that there's a child, he's a boy, he's sick, and she wanted to know if I was on the bone marrow donor list." He takes off his jacket and shows her the bandaged crook of his arm. "I gave her some blood. If I'm a match, she'll get back to me."
"And if not, you will never hear from her again."
"Yeah. She was very clear about this not being my child, and that I do not get any say in the matter."
"No, you do not."
She's still holding her face very carefully, and he doesn't know what she's thinking.
"Are you angry?"
"I don't…" She shakes her head. "Some. Yes. You should have been careful. Missions like that are hard enough on the people you leave behind even if you are careful. She should have told you. But it is long, long past. Long before there was an us. And I know, have known, just like you, that today was always a possibility. So, not too angry, but there is some. Sad, maybe? You have a child, and he's not mine."
"He's not mine, either, not really."
"But now that you know about him, you'd like him to be?"
"Yeah. No. I don't… His mom hates me, and she's got every right to. I told her it was all a lie, that there was never anything between us, that I'd faked the whole thing because I thought it'd be easier for her. Because then she could just be angry, and I could be the bastard, and there'd be a nice, clean break. And that's probably why she never told me.
"But he's sick, and he might want a dad. He might need one. He might already have one. I know nothing about him, nothing about them. And I don't know what the right thing to do is. I've got Tim hunting Jeanne down, looking into her. If she's married… If her son already has a dad, I'll leave them be."
"And if he doesn't?"
"I don't know. She still hates the idea of me so much her mom came to see me. She didn't want to be in the same room with me long enough to ask for blood. I can't imagine how 'Hey, how about you let me spend time with our kid' would go. For all I know, Helen might not have told Jeanne she was coming to see me about it. Or Jeanne may have told her not to, knowing that if she asked, I wouldn't be able to leave it alone."
Ziva shakes her head. "Her son is sick. She'll go to whomever can make him better. And if that's you, it's you. I'm sure she knows Helen called you."
They sit there, in the car, people walking past, looking at them curiously.
"I don't want to rip up his family. He's sick, and that's as bad as it gets for parents. I don't want to add me to the mix and make it worse, more stressful. I don't want him thinking that he was just abandoned. Don't want him thinking I found out about him and couldn't be bothered to look him up. I don't want him wondering about me, and why I wasn't around. If Jeanne's been telling him I'm an asshole his whole life… I don't know what to do."
She squeezes his hands, and then turns the car on again. "I don't know, either."
"Where are we going?"
"Home, eventually. I'm taking you to Gibbs' house."
"You think he knows what to do?"
"No. I don't think anyone knows what to do with this. But I think some quiet time with him will make you feel a bit better."
He nods. "What are you going to do?"
"Learn about bone marrow transplants and donations."
He kisses her. "Thanks."
She nods.
Ziva drops Tony off and heads away, quickly.
He doesn't really notice that because he's feeling awfully scattered.
He heads in, and it's once he's in the house that it hits him, he's alone. It's a brilliant, sunny day out, mid-70s, birds are chirping. It's everything a spring day is supposed to be. Gibbs and Ducky, and maybe Penny, are at the house, putting up masonry or something.
So he's at Gibbs house, alone, with no car.
He's about to call Ziva back, but… Actually, alone time might be a good thing. He heads to the basement, currently empty, but the bourbon's down there, and pours himself a glass. Then he heads back up.
Tony takes a sip. For a second he's fully in right now, taste of bourbon on his tongue, awareness of the room around him, the feel of his clothing on his skin, and then the next second it's washed away by this: I have a son!
He feels dizzy at it, having to sit down. He has a son, and he's missed his whole life, and he's sick and hurting and in need and probably dying and his mother and grandmother will likely never let him see that child, won't let him try for a paternity test, won't…
He rubs his face. DiNozzo men don't cry, so he's not crying, he's wallowing in the epic fuck of all fucks this is.
His son was born, and lived, and got sick, and if he's not a match, may die, and he will have never seen him, never spoken a word to him, and yesterday none of that mattered but today it does. Today it burns.
Numb falls away, replaced by scalding pain, heart wrenching failure.
His son is dying, and he can't so much as walk in and hold his hand.
Next
Chapter 376: Karma
"Sure, I'll see her." Tony says, putting down his phone. Usually calls on his desk phone mean dispatch wants them to go deal with a dead body. Not today.
Today there's a call from the front desk, with a visitor.
One he really doesn't want to see.
"What is it, Tony?" Ziva asks. "You look like ghost just walked over your grave."
"Something like that."
"DiNozzo?" Draga asks.
Tony shakes his head. "Later. No way this isn't going to be a long story."
Ziva looks worried, but he shakes his head. He is worried. Why on earth would she want to see him?
She's older now, of course she is, not like she found some sort of magical time stopping device. He could have walked by her a thousand times in a thousand grocery stores and never noticed. After all, they only met the one time, not like he burned her face into his mind. But she's here, sitting in the break room, staring, glaring, at his wedding ring.
"What can I do for you, Helen?"
Dr. Helen Berkley, Jeanne Benoit's mother, looks up from the ring. Seems to be debating if she should even be here. But finally, glaring at him, she says, "Are you a bone marrow donor?"
"Excuse me?" Of all the things she could have asked, could have needed to see him about that, was… nothing he could have even possibly thought of.
Her voice is crisp and precise and slaps him with each word. "Not a single word of what I said was unclear. Are you on the bone marrow registry?"
Tony shakes his head. "No."
"Get on it! Fast. Before the end of work today. I am a doctor. I can and will take care of the blood work."
He feels the ice down his spine, knows there's only one reason why anyone would ask that of him, but he's got to hear the words, has to know it's really true.
"Why?"
Her eyes narrow, but she seems to think he probably is stupid enough not to figure this out for himself, so she says, "Because in December of 2007 my grandson was born. He has brown hair and hazel eyes. After what you did to her, his mother never spoke your name, but I can do simple arithmetic."
Oh shit! He nods. "Okay. And I take it he's sick?"
 |
| Not Happy |
"She said she went to Africa."
"She did. Nothing about Africa prevents people from having babies there."
"I didn't know."
"No, you didn't. And the second she learned you had a real name, you lost all right to know."
"Yeah. Okay," Fuck! If this isn't every worst nightmare he's ever had of the hookup who's got news for him, all combined and multiplied by twenty, he doesn't know what could be. "What do you need?"
"You to get on the bone marrow registry. I didn't think I was unclear about that."
"Won't that take a long time? Couldn't we just… do the test straight up?"
"Mr. DiNozzo, you are not my grandson's father. You are, at best, a stranger who may be able to provide him with the bone marrow he needs to survive. He will never meet you. He will never speak to you. You don't even get to know his name."
Tony holds up his hands. "Set whatever rules you like. I'll abide them. But, just, let's get it done as fast as we can. There's no need to jump through the hoops or whatever. Jeanne's not here to see me herself, even to save her son's life, then she must still hate me pretty fiercely."
Helen bit her lip.
"Helen?" That's a warning sign. Something about this really isn't right. Everything about this isn't right. He has a son. With Jeanne. Who's sick and… Shit! He can't think about that right now. There's something else there, something about Jeanne, he's hit a nerve for Helen. Think about that.
"You lost the right to know about that when she learned you had a real name, too." But her voice catches on that.
"Is Jeanne all right?"
"You don't get to know! I have privileges at Washington General. We can get the blood work there."
"That's… Okay. We've got a fully functional medical suite less than a hundred feet from here. If you'd like to do it even faster."
Helen shakes her head. "Washington General is close enough."
"I'll get my coat and be there in half an hour."
"Fine."
He skirts the bullpen, going out the back. He sends a quick text to Ziva. It's a mess. Got to go for a bit. Back this afternoon. We'll talk.
How bad is it?
Bad. Not in danger, not that kind of bad, but it's bad.
Okay. This afternoon. Do I need to…
No. Nothing for you to do. Few hours, I'll be back.
He doesn't know what he's feeling as he drives. Numb. Numb is probably right.
"Was any of it real?" Jeanne'd asked him, scared, angry, hurting, hurting so bad, and it was all on him.
"No." God, he thought he'd done the right thing. Thought it'd be better to let her hate him. He wonders what would have happened if he had said 'Yes,' because, after all, it was real. He tries to imagine the life if he'd dropped the job and gone with her to… What? That apartment they were moving into, eventually a home in the 'burbs with a little boy who looks like him and a ring that matched one on Jeanne's finger?
Still be a cop? Moved onto something else? He sure as hell wasn't a Professor of Film Studies.
He tries to will that image to form in his mind, but it won't. He is who he is, and Jeanne's husband was never in the cards for him.
December of 2007, he'd be eight now. Brown hair, hazel eyes, and eight-years-old.
Eight-years-old, and no dad.
Of course Tony doesn't know that, not really. Jeanne may not have come because she married. There could be a guy who is this child's dad, but…
No.
He can't believe that she could hate him so much she'd let her son die rather than talk to him again.
But she could hate him enough to send her mom to do it. She could be sitting in a hospital room, holding his hand, worrying for him, husband, the man this child calls Dad by her side, hoping that somehow he's the Hail Mary that'll get her boy through this.
That works.
He pulls into Washington General, looking for a space.
He probably deserves Helen jabbing him three times before getting a good draw. Deserves a lot more than that. There are a lot of questions he'd like to ask, lots of things he wants to know, not the least of which is whether the child is actually his or not, but…
But he's already hurt this family enough, and even if the child is his, it's not like he's got any claim to him.
It's not enough to be the guy who broke your mom's heart. Even if she broke yours, too. Though, really, Jeanne didn't break his heart. He broke his own heart by not being enough of a man to choose her over the job.
Helen tosses him a band aid. "If you match, I'll let you know."
"Okay. Is there… I… I know you don't want me to have any contact. That's… Not fine… But I'll respect it… But, anything you need for him, anything I can do, anything I can ever do, call."
"How noble of you," Helen says, her voice indicating he would't know noble if he tripped over it.
"I can't change what I did—"
"No shit!" Her voice is scalding hot with anger.
"I didn't know about him. Didn't even suspect. And I won't go tromping into your family. But, just, anything..."
She's staring at him, furious, and he feels his body go on high alert, because this is a woman who will physically attack him if he so much as breathes wrong. "Here's what you can do: if you match up, you can provide my grandson with bone marrow, and after that you can remember that somewhere there's a child with your eyes who you will never know. You can spend the rest of your life knowing how you hurt his mother, and how, because of your lies, he never knew his father. You can go to sleep at night with your wife and maybe your kids and know that you failed your son and fucked his mother while lying to her about every single thing in your life, including the fact that you loved her. You can spend the rest of your life hurting for what you did to my child. And you can spend the rest of your life knowing your son is sick, but never knowing if he got better, never knowing if he's alive or not. You can steep in the torture of that, and have it eat your insides out. That's what you can do!"
Tony swallows, wanting to step back, away from this rage, but not doing it, pressing the band aid to his elbow instead. "How long before you'll know if I match up?"
"Day after tomorrow."
He's been thinking of ways to say this to Ziva as he's driving back to the Navy Yard, but nothing feels right.
She knew about Jeanne. They've talked about it a little. Some at the time. Some since. She had a few Jeannes of her own in her past. She gets that that's the job, sometimes you hurt people, but you say it's for the greater good and you get up the next morning and you keep going.
But he can't for the life of him figure out how to start this conversation.
He heads through the metal detector at the front desk, strides toward the elevator, and finds himself hitting the B button instead of the 3 one that leads to the bullpen.
"I fucked up," Tony says, slumping into the chair next to Tim's desk.
"Mmm…" Tim's not listening, he's working on making sure that the test makes three separate ships look like they all began the programs on their own, while firing at each other. His fingers are flying over the keys and he's, at best, tangentially aware of the fact that Tony's in his office.
Tony stares at Tim, looking really hurt. "Way to show some sympathy, man. How 'bout you kick me in the balls a few times while you're at it?"
"Huh?" That gets Tim looking up. What Tony actually said hits him, and more than that, the look of utter desolation on his face, breaks Tim out of programming mode. "What's wrong?"
Tony told him. And wrapped up with, "Can't go to Gibbs with this; he'll snap my dick off for getting her pregnant and not sticking around long enough to find out. Don't even know where to begin how to say this to Ziva. I mean, she knows about the Jeanne thing, but…" Tony lets that trail off.
"Gibbs isn't going to be that hard on you. Franks didn't find out about his son until he was in his twenties, and Gibbs didn't have a fit about that. You do right by this kid, and you're not going to have any problems with Gibbs."
"Besides opening a vein and offering whatever he needs, what is doing right by him?"
Tim blows out a long breath. "I don't know. If Jeanne had been a one-night-stand or something, I'd say try to get involved in his life. Be a dad, or as much of one as she'll let you."
"But she wasn't. And she still hates me enough she sent her mom to come talk to me."
"Yeah."
"And she made it very clear that I am never to have anything, at all, to do with this child."
Tim nods.
"What would you do?"
The idea of being in this situation is so ridiculously foreign to Tim that he's got no idea, at all. "I really don't know."
"He's eight now, so he's got to wonder who his dad is. Of course, he might have a dad. She might be married, there might be a man who he calls Dad and if that's the case…"
"You want me to check her out, see what I can find?"
"Please." Tony sits there, glances at the door, seeming to think about moving, but doesn't. "What the hell am I going to tell Ziva?"
"Same thing Helen told you? That there was a very good reason why she took a year off before trying to get revenge?" It sounds lame as Tim says it, and he knows that, but he doesn't have anything better for Tony.
"Don't think that's going to cut it."
Tim shakes his head. "No. It's not."
The idea that there would be a downside to Tim's paperwork software never really hit anyone at NCIS until the software was up and running.
But, there is. Namely, they suddenly have way more agents then they need. When you go from, on average twenty hours a week of paperwork to an hour of database entry and five minutes of printing, you suddenly have a whole lot more time.
On the upside, the case backlog is dwindling rapidly. The cold cases are seeing more attention than ever before.
But, well, lots of time means lots of pranks. And Tinkerbell and Flyboy are right now in the middle of what, until this morning, was a vastly enjoyable prank war of epic levels, but is now, as Tony heads to Ziva's desk to talk to her and somehow triggers some sort of shrieking menace that one of his Junior Agents planted to prank the other one, rapidly becoming VERY annoying.
Tink's looking sheepish and shutting whatever that thing is up. Flyboy's grinning, very satisfied. Tony's eyes narrow. "If you have this much free time, you can go back to filling out the forms by hand."
Both of them look properly chastised and move so quickly to find something useful to do that they practically dematerialize.
Ziva's watching him, coolly, knowing something she's not going to like is about to hit her. "Here or at home?"
"Home."
"Home" actually translates to their car.
"Do you remember what I told you about Jeanne Benoit?"
She nods, pulling out of the parking lot.
"Her mother called me, today." Ziva's carefully holding her face, keeping her expression neutral, and beyond knowing that that's a coping mechanism for her, a way to shut things down so she can process, he doesn't know what precisely she's feeling. Probably dread, she knows the next sentence can't be good. "Her eight-year-old grandson is sick, and she asked me to give blood and see if I'm a match for a bone marrow donation."
She stops the car. They're at the entrance to the parking lot, not a good place to stop. People will want to get in and out. So she drive eight more feet and parks them in a new spot.
"You and Jeanne have a son?"
"I think so. She told me he's eight, and has brown hair and hazel eyes."
She doesn't say anything.
"I didn't know, Ziva. Didn't guess."
"I know." And she does know. Even if this wasn't something they talked about before they got married, granted not for Jeanne in specific, she can do the math, knows, as best as he can guess, how many partners he's had, and how careful wasn't how you would have described him for the first twenty years he was at it. So, for the whole time they've been together, she's known a day like this was possible. "Is he really yours?" Obviously he can be Tony's. They had sex. A lot. She knows that; it's not what she's asking. "Were you careful with Jeanne?"
He shakes his head. Usually they were. But there were a few times. He thinks back. Twice. There was twice, and they were just in it, and everything was going right and it felt right and… "Not always." He thinks more. "The last time was a few days before everything fell apart."
She nods. "And he is sick?"
"Yeah."
"Did she tell you anything?"
"Just that there's a child, he's a boy, he's sick, and she wanted to know if I was on the bone marrow donor list." He takes off his jacket and shows her the bandaged crook of his arm. "I gave her some blood. If I'm a match, she'll get back to me."
"And if not, you will never hear from her again."
"Yeah. She was very clear about this not being my child, and that I do not get any say in the matter."
"No, you do not."
She's still holding her face very carefully, and he doesn't know what she's thinking.
"Are you angry?"
"I don't…" She shakes her head. "Some. Yes. You should have been careful. Missions like that are hard enough on the people you leave behind even if you are careful. She should have told you. But it is long, long past. Long before there was an us. And I know, have known, just like you, that today was always a possibility. So, not too angry, but there is some. Sad, maybe? You have a child, and he's not mine."
"He's not mine, either, not really."
"But now that you know about him, you'd like him to be?"
"Yeah. No. I don't… His mom hates me, and she's got every right to. I told her it was all a lie, that there was never anything between us, that I'd faked the whole thing because I thought it'd be easier for her. Because then she could just be angry, and I could be the bastard, and there'd be a nice, clean break. And that's probably why she never told me.
"But he's sick, and he might want a dad. He might need one. He might already have one. I know nothing about him, nothing about them. And I don't know what the right thing to do is. I've got Tim hunting Jeanne down, looking into her. If she's married… If her son already has a dad, I'll leave them be."
"And if he doesn't?"
"I don't know. She still hates the idea of me so much her mom came to see me. She didn't want to be in the same room with me long enough to ask for blood. I can't imagine how 'Hey, how about you let me spend time with our kid' would go. For all I know, Helen might not have told Jeanne she was coming to see me about it. Or Jeanne may have told her not to, knowing that if she asked, I wouldn't be able to leave it alone."
Ziva shakes her head. "Her son is sick. She'll go to whomever can make him better. And if that's you, it's you. I'm sure she knows Helen called you."
They sit there, in the car, people walking past, looking at them curiously.
"I don't want to rip up his family. He's sick, and that's as bad as it gets for parents. I don't want to add me to the mix and make it worse, more stressful. I don't want him thinking that he was just abandoned. Don't want him thinking I found out about him and couldn't be bothered to look him up. I don't want him wondering about me, and why I wasn't around. If Jeanne's been telling him I'm an asshole his whole life… I don't know what to do."
She squeezes his hands, and then turns the car on again. "I don't know, either."
"Where are we going?"
"Home, eventually. I'm taking you to Gibbs' house."
"You think he knows what to do?"
"No. I don't think anyone knows what to do with this. But I think some quiet time with him will make you feel a bit better."
He nods. "What are you going to do?"
"Learn about bone marrow transplants and donations."
He kisses her. "Thanks."
She nods.
Ziva drops Tony off and heads away, quickly.
He doesn't really notice that because he's feeling awfully scattered.
He heads in, and it's once he's in the house that it hits him, he's alone. It's a brilliant, sunny day out, mid-70s, birds are chirping. It's everything a spring day is supposed to be. Gibbs and Ducky, and maybe Penny, are at the house, putting up masonry or something.
So he's at Gibbs house, alone, with no car.
He's about to call Ziva back, but… Actually, alone time might be a good thing. He heads to the basement, currently empty, but the bourbon's down there, and pours himself a glass. Then he heads back up.
Tony takes a sip. For a second he's fully in right now, taste of bourbon on his tongue, awareness of the room around him, the feel of his clothing on his skin, and then the next second it's washed away by this: I have a son!
He feels dizzy at it, having to sit down. He has a son, and he's missed his whole life, and he's sick and hurting and in need and probably dying and his mother and grandmother will likely never let him see that child, won't let him try for a paternity test, won't…
He rubs his face. DiNozzo men don't cry, so he's not crying, he's wallowing in the epic fuck of all fucks this is.
His son was born, and lived, and got sick, and if he's not a match, may die, and he will have never seen him, never spoken a word to him, and yesterday none of that mattered but today it does. Today it burns.
Numb falls away, replaced by scalding pain, heart wrenching failure.
His son is dying, and he can't so much as walk in and hold his hand.
Next
Wednesday, May 28, 2014
Shards To A Whole: Free Fall
McGee-centric character study/romance. Want to start at the beginning? Click here.
Chapter 329: Free Fall
Stay at home mom. Tony's nodding. He's looking supportive. Inside he's screaming in terror.
Yeah, she wasn't kidding, that's a scary fucking change.
Sure, the rational bit of his mind that is not completely flipping out at the idea, agrees that this is a fine idea. That it would solve the time issue. It would definitely allow him to run the team (but what good is the team if none of his people are on it? God, he doesn't even want to think about how much that hurts.) and still have a family life when he's not running it.
And he really appreciates her hitting him with this now, before she's pregnant, so that they're talking about it as opposed to just this is the way it's going to be. (Though the screaming part of his brain is also fairly sure that this is how it's going to be, and if this were just a discussion, like if she had said this to him before they got engaged, he'd be a whole hell of a lot less flipped out.)
She's looking at him expectantly, so he smiles, or at least lifts the corners of his lips and bares his teeth, (She flinches at that, so obviously it wasn't the comforting gesture he was aiming for.) and says, "I… just… um… thinking… Yeah. Thinking. Got to do some thinking," grabs his keys, and heads out.
Fourteen minutes. Gibbs didn't think even Ziva could make it from their place to his that fast. But that's how long passed between Ziva's call and Tony's footsteps on his stairs.
"There's nothing I can afford on my salary in a decent school district anywhere near here."
Gibbs looks up at him, puts his saw down, and points to the stools next to his work bench, two bourbons are already poured and waiting. He sits down, and so does Tony.
"Tony…" Yeah, you won't get rich on a Team Leader salary, but you can afford a decent place to live.
"They're going to force me to retire in eight years! Nine or ten if I can get McGee to pull his age erasing trick for me. I can stay on for desk duty, was planning to, because we're going to need the money. But with her on team leader salary and me on desk duty we'd be comfortable, still scrambling to figure out how to pay for college, and not looking to retire rich or anything, but I wouldn't be worried about how to pay the rent."
That makes a whole lot more sense. Gibbs doesn't know what kind of money, if any, Tony and Ziva have in the bank. His general sense was that Tony liked to live pretty close to the edge of his paycheck, if not a bit over. He's also sure Ziva's a saver. And he had kind of assumed that Eli David had some money, and that Ziva as his only heir probably got it, but… But he doesn't know that, and he knows assuming is a one way trip to wrong.
So if Tony's looking at a maximum of ten years to get as much as he can… Because post-retirement desk duty money is the kind of cash that's supposed to pay for that nice vacation, or the deck on the house, or round out the college funds. It's the money that lets you do fun stuff on your off time while your pension does the heavy lifting. It's not the kind of money you're supposed to live one.
Gibbs stands up, grabs a legal pad and a pencil, and starts writing things down. Right now, he figures that a good, solid, set plan is what Tony needs. "One problem at a time. Place to live in a good school district. Tim, Jimmy, and I can help with that."
"Gibbs, I can't take money from you guys."
"Not what I was thinking, Tony." And it wasn't, he knew there was no way Tony'd take that kind of help. "There has to be a house or condo in bad shape around here somewhere. Something foreclosed on and damaged. And I'm sure Tim can make his computer find it. And then we fix it up. This place was a wreck when we got it, and Shannon and I got it into shape. We can do the same thing for you."
"I know nothing about fixing a house. And it's not like I've got tons of downtime to work on one."
"Neither did Shannon. I doubt Palmer's any handier. And unless it's a wiring job, Tim probably doesn't know how to do it, either. But Tim knows electrical. I'm good with just about everything else. And what we don't know, we can learn. And it's not like I won't be swimming in free time come January. How low does your housing payment need to be to keep you putting enough away?"
Tony thinks for a moment. "God. Eight hundred."
Gibbs just stares at Tony, that seems really reasonable to him. Okay, sure, that's not a mansion, but any fairly decent house should be in that neighborhood.
And Tony stares at Gibbs, suddenly very aware of the fact that Gibbs hasn't been in the real estate market in more than thirty years.
"Gibbs, McGee's house went for over four hundred thousand and is worth more than six now. The only reason Jimmy and Breena could afford theirs was they got enough money as wedding presents to swing the down-payment. Your place is probably worth over five hundred thousand now. When the market went hot at the end of '14 prices jolted way back up again. If it's beat up enough for us to afford it, it'll be in pretty rough shape."
Gibbs shrugs a little. "Labor's usually the expensive part. You and Tim find something in the right place, I'll make sure it's got a solid skeleton, and instead of fighting for bootcamp, we'll make sure you can get moved in before the baby shows up."
"God." Tony slugs back some of the bourbon. "'Before the baby shows up.' She's not pregnant, yet. We're not even trying, yet."
"I know. But she's gonna be, or you two are going to adopt. I think at this point it's pretty fair to say it's going to happen."
"I hate this."
Gibbs gives him the keep talking look, and Tony is deeply relieved to see no condemnation in his eyes.
"We do this, it's all on me. I fuck it up, she's screwed. Something happens to me, she's screwed."
"She'll be dependent on you."
Tony nods, looking terrified. "Yeah. Fuck! She's got no out if we do this."
Gibbs nudges Tony's jam jar of bourbon, and Tony takes another drink, then he coolly says, "You think if you fuck up badly enough that she wants out, we aren't going to make sure she's got a soft place to land? You think if you get hurt or killed, we're not going to take care of her?"
"No… but… She'll be completely dependent on me! She's… volunteering to be dependent on me."
"She trusts you."
"God knows why."
"You're trustworthy. You have saved her life multiple times. You're not the guy you were five years ago, let alone ten years ago."
Tony looks about to take another drink, but he just stares at the liquor in front of him. "My mom was dependent on my dad like that."
"And he screwed it up, didn't he?"
"Yeah."
"You're not him. Look, I know you, and I know your dad, and you are a vastly better man than he ever was or will be."
"Thanks."
"And it is normal to be scared by this. It is sane to be scared of this. Kids are scary. Having your whole life change is scary. A new team is scary. Having the future you were expecting ripped away from you is scary."
"I'd just gotten to… I don't know. Still scared but, ready, I guess. You know that feeling where you're looking over the edge and about to shit yourself, but you're still going to jump anyway because you know it's the right thing to do?"
"Yeah, I know that feeling."
"Now I feel like I just looked over my shoulder and my parachute's not packed right."
Gibbs nods. "Part of being a parent. You feel that way a lot."
"I hate feeling this way."
"Yeah. I do, too. Feel it a lot. Feel it when we're in the field and suddenly everything's fubar. Felt it when I was a Marine, especially every time I got transferred to a new unit. Felt it all the time with my Kelly. Felt it when my mom was sick. It's always there, Tony. The only time it goes away is when you stay so stuck in your routine that nothing changes. That… holding pattern we were in for eight years between Ziva joining us and Jimmy getting married where we all stayed nice and snug in our little cocoons of safe, unchanging habit."
"I take it seeing Rachel's been helping," Tony says dryly, but he catches the slight tightening of Gibbs' jaw. "Is it not helping?"
"Helped just fine. Just, over now."
"Really?" And then why Gibbs has been a bear makes perfect sense. "Oh. So, no romancing Doctor Kate's Sister?"
Gibbs glares at him.
Tony holds up his hands. "I know. She's married. And your therapist. It's apparently really common, though. Called transference."
Now Gibbs is flashing his you know this how look.
"Our first two sessions with our counselor were one on one. I went first. I told her that besides the occasional psych eval, I'd never done this before. So she gave me a counseling primer and that was part of it." Tony shrugs at that. "You going to find someone else?"
"Not right now. Maybe if I get stuck again. I'm good at stuck." He brings it back around to what they had been talking about. "Spent a long time stuck. So did you. It's not scary, but nothing really good happens."
"My dad said that when we got married. Something like it. That she was going to want things that would scare the shit out of me, but if I trusted her, and went with it, I'd find joy, instead of just happy."
Gibbs smiles at that. "Even your dad's learned a thing or two over the years."
Tony takes another drink, and Gibbs follows, enjoying the sweet burn of the bourbon.
"You remember that case… We worked it with Borin… Would have been just about when Tim and Abby got together. Ziva was pissed because we were playing that game without her..."
Gibbs nods, he remembers that.
"Borin asked me why I was still with your team."
"And?"
"And I said I couldn't find better people. My people are leaving. If she goes, too… it'll just be a job."
"You remember being down here, Christmas-time six-seven years ago, and me telling you to learn from my example, not follow it?"
"Yeah."
"It's okay to have a job, Tony. NCIS doesn't have to be every single moment of our lives. In fact, it shouldn't be. I don't want any of you to get to my age and be afraid of retirement. I want you to have lives and loves and hobbies and passions, and stuff beyond this. Go, build your family and life with Ziva. And you run the team, and you do the work, but when it's done, you go home. You spend time with the people who make you happy. You don't keep hanging around that office, picking at dead cases, running every detail through your head over and over, looking for the splinter of evidence you missed, like I did.
"Maybe it won't be the 'best' team anymore. Maybe you won't solve them as fast. But it doesn't have to be. You don't have to ruin your life and your family trying to quiet my ghosts. It'll be your team, Tony. You'll run it however you see fit. No one looking over your shoulder. No one comparing you to anyone else. It's an almost complete fresh start. No more rules, no more slaps, no more… anything you don't want. And just because I couldn't stand the quiet moments alone in my own head, just because I had to work until I dropped, and I dragged all of you along for the ride, doesn't mean you have to do that."
Tony sits there quietly, absorbing that. Thinking. And though he heard it when Gibbs had said to learn from his example before, it didn't much soak in. So much of his own life was upside down and unsatisfactory, and Gibbs looked like he had it together. So he heard, but, it didn't mean anything. Just like when McGee spouts computer-talk, sure he hears it, but it's gibberish.
Not being like Gibbs was gibberish.
But now, it's soaking in.
Now, it means something.
He thought the shift was going from being second-in-command to team-leader. And that was part of it, that was the start. But he's getting it now. Getting that along with McGee's 'you're replacing Gibbs.'
It's his team. But it's not just his team. That's the real shift. It's not second-in-command to team-leader, it's NCIS-is-life to Tony DiNozzo-is-life. He is not the job. And if he wants any decent shot of joy, he cannot be the job.
All of this together, happening at once, it's for a reason.
This is his life. And it's time to start living it for him, and for Ziva, and-he feels the edge he's looking over, takes a deep breath, and jumps-for the child, children they're going to have.
Next
Chapter 329: Free Fall
Stay at home mom. Tony's nodding. He's looking supportive. Inside he's screaming in terror.
Yeah, she wasn't kidding, that's a scary fucking change.
Sure, the rational bit of his mind that is not completely flipping out at the idea, agrees that this is a fine idea. That it would solve the time issue. It would definitely allow him to run the team (but what good is the team if none of his people are on it? God, he doesn't even want to think about how much that hurts.) and still have a family life when he's not running it.
And he really appreciates her hitting him with this now, before she's pregnant, so that they're talking about it as opposed to just this is the way it's going to be. (Though the screaming part of his brain is also fairly sure that this is how it's going to be, and if this were just a discussion, like if she had said this to him before they got engaged, he'd be a whole hell of a lot less flipped out.)
She's looking at him expectantly, so he smiles, or at least lifts the corners of his lips and bares his teeth, (She flinches at that, so obviously it wasn't the comforting gesture he was aiming for.) and says, "I… just… um… thinking… Yeah. Thinking. Got to do some thinking," grabs his keys, and heads out.
Fourteen minutes. Gibbs didn't think even Ziva could make it from their place to his that fast. But that's how long passed between Ziva's call and Tony's footsteps on his stairs.
"There's nothing I can afford on my salary in a decent school district anywhere near here."
Gibbs looks up at him, puts his saw down, and points to the stools next to his work bench, two bourbons are already poured and waiting. He sits down, and so does Tony.
"Tony…" Yeah, you won't get rich on a Team Leader salary, but you can afford a decent place to live.
"They're going to force me to retire in eight years! Nine or ten if I can get McGee to pull his age erasing trick for me. I can stay on for desk duty, was planning to, because we're going to need the money. But with her on team leader salary and me on desk duty we'd be comfortable, still scrambling to figure out how to pay for college, and not looking to retire rich or anything, but I wouldn't be worried about how to pay the rent."
That makes a whole lot more sense. Gibbs doesn't know what kind of money, if any, Tony and Ziva have in the bank. His general sense was that Tony liked to live pretty close to the edge of his paycheck, if not a bit over. He's also sure Ziva's a saver. And he had kind of assumed that Eli David had some money, and that Ziva as his only heir probably got it, but… But he doesn't know that, and he knows assuming is a one way trip to wrong.
So if Tony's looking at a maximum of ten years to get as much as he can… Because post-retirement desk duty money is the kind of cash that's supposed to pay for that nice vacation, or the deck on the house, or round out the college funds. It's the money that lets you do fun stuff on your off time while your pension does the heavy lifting. It's not the kind of money you're supposed to live one.
Gibbs stands up, grabs a legal pad and a pencil, and starts writing things down. Right now, he figures that a good, solid, set plan is what Tony needs. "One problem at a time. Place to live in a good school district. Tim, Jimmy, and I can help with that."
"Gibbs, I can't take money from you guys."
"Not what I was thinking, Tony." And it wasn't, he knew there was no way Tony'd take that kind of help. "There has to be a house or condo in bad shape around here somewhere. Something foreclosed on and damaged. And I'm sure Tim can make his computer find it. And then we fix it up. This place was a wreck when we got it, and Shannon and I got it into shape. We can do the same thing for you."
"I know nothing about fixing a house. And it's not like I've got tons of downtime to work on one."
"Neither did Shannon. I doubt Palmer's any handier. And unless it's a wiring job, Tim probably doesn't know how to do it, either. But Tim knows electrical. I'm good with just about everything else. And what we don't know, we can learn. And it's not like I won't be swimming in free time come January. How low does your housing payment need to be to keep you putting enough away?"
Tony thinks for a moment. "God. Eight hundred."
Gibbs just stares at Tony, that seems really reasonable to him. Okay, sure, that's not a mansion, but any fairly decent house should be in that neighborhood.
And Tony stares at Gibbs, suddenly very aware of the fact that Gibbs hasn't been in the real estate market in more than thirty years.
"Gibbs, McGee's house went for over four hundred thousand and is worth more than six now. The only reason Jimmy and Breena could afford theirs was they got enough money as wedding presents to swing the down-payment. Your place is probably worth over five hundred thousand now. When the market went hot at the end of '14 prices jolted way back up again. If it's beat up enough for us to afford it, it'll be in pretty rough shape."
Gibbs shrugs a little. "Labor's usually the expensive part. You and Tim find something in the right place, I'll make sure it's got a solid skeleton, and instead of fighting for bootcamp, we'll make sure you can get moved in before the baby shows up."
"God." Tony slugs back some of the bourbon. "'Before the baby shows up.' She's not pregnant, yet. We're not even trying, yet."
"I know. But she's gonna be, or you two are going to adopt. I think at this point it's pretty fair to say it's going to happen."
"I hate this."
Gibbs gives him the keep talking look, and Tony is deeply relieved to see no condemnation in his eyes.
"We do this, it's all on me. I fuck it up, she's screwed. Something happens to me, she's screwed."
"She'll be dependent on you."
Tony nods, looking terrified. "Yeah. Fuck! She's got no out if we do this."
Gibbs nudges Tony's jam jar of bourbon, and Tony takes another drink, then he coolly says, "You think if you fuck up badly enough that she wants out, we aren't going to make sure she's got a soft place to land? You think if you get hurt or killed, we're not going to take care of her?"
"No… but… She'll be completely dependent on me! She's… volunteering to be dependent on me."
"She trusts you."
"God knows why."
"You're trustworthy. You have saved her life multiple times. You're not the guy you were five years ago, let alone ten years ago."
Tony looks about to take another drink, but he just stares at the liquor in front of him. "My mom was dependent on my dad like that."
"And he screwed it up, didn't he?"
"Yeah."
"You're not him. Look, I know you, and I know your dad, and you are a vastly better man than he ever was or will be."
"Thanks."
"And it is normal to be scared by this. It is sane to be scared of this. Kids are scary. Having your whole life change is scary. A new team is scary. Having the future you were expecting ripped away from you is scary."
"I'd just gotten to… I don't know. Still scared but, ready, I guess. You know that feeling where you're looking over the edge and about to shit yourself, but you're still going to jump anyway because you know it's the right thing to do?"
"Yeah, I know that feeling."
"Now I feel like I just looked over my shoulder and my parachute's not packed right."
Gibbs nods. "Part of being a parent. You feel that way a lot."
"I hate feeling this way."
"Yeah. I do, too. Feel it a lot. Feel it when we're in the field and suddenly everything's fubar. Felt it when I was a Marine, especially every time I got transferred to a new unit. Felt it all the time with my Kelly. Felt it when my mom was sick. It's always there, Tony. The only time it goes away is when you stay so stuck in your routine that nothing changes. That… holding pattern we were in for eight years between Ziva joining us and Jimmy getting married where we all stayed nice and snug in our little cocoons of safe, unchanging habit."
"I take it seeing Rachel's been helping," Tony says dryly, but he catches the slight tightening of Gibbs' jaw. "Is it not helping?"
"Helped just fine. Just, over now."
"Really?" And then why Gibbs has been a bear makes perfect sense. "Oh. So, no romancing Doctor Kate's Sister?"
Gibbs glares at him.
Tony holds up his hands. "I know. She's married. And your therapist. It's apparently really common, though. Called transference."
Now Gibbs is flashing his you know this how look.
"Our first two sessions with our counselor were one on one. I went first. I told her that besides the occasional psych eval, I'd never done this before. So she gave me a counseling primer and that was part of it." Tony shrugs at that. "You going to find someone else?"
"Not right now. Maybe if I get stuck again. I'm good at stuck." He brings it back around to what they had been talking about. "Spent a long time stuck. So did you. It's not scary, but nothing really good happens."
"My dad said that when we got married. Something like it. That she was going to want things that would scare the shit out of me, but if I trusted her, and went with it, I'd find joy, instead of just happy."
Gibbs smiles at that. "Even your dad's learned a thing or two over the years."
Tony takes another drink, and Gibbs follows, enjoying the sweet burn of the bourbon.
"You remember that case… We worked it with Borin… Would have been just about when Tim and Abby got together. Ziva was pissed because we were playing that game without her..."
Gibbs nods, he remembers that.
"Borin asked me why I was still with your team."
"And?"
"And I said I couldn't find better people. My people are leaving. If she goes, too… it'll just be a job."
"You remember being down here, Christmas-time six-seven years ago, and me telling you to learn from my example, not follow it?"
"Yeah."
"It's okay to have a job, Tony. NCIS doesn't have to be every single moment of our lives. In fact, it shouldn't be. I don't want any of you to get to my age and be afraid of retirement. I want you to have lives and loves and hobbies and passions, and stuff beyond this. Go, build your family and life with Ziva. And you run the team, and you do the work, but when it's done, you go home. You spend time with the people who make you happy. You don't keep hanging around that office, picking at dead cases, running every detail through your head over and over, looking for the splinter of evidence you missed, like I did.
"Maybe it won't be the 'best' team anymore. Maybe you won't solve them as fast. But it doesn't have to be. You don't have to ruin your life and your family trying to quiet my ghosts. It'll be your team, Tony. You'll run it however you see fit. No one looking over your shoulder. No one comparing you to anyone else. It's an almost complete fresh start. No more rules, no more slaps, no more… anything you don't want. And just because I couldn't stand the quiet moments alone in my own head, just because I had to work until I dropped, and I dragged all of you along for the ride, doesn't mean you have to do that."
Tony sits there quietly, absorbing that. Thinking. And though he heard it when Gibbs had said to learn from his example before, it didn't much soak in. So much of his own life was upside down and unsatisfactory, and Gibbs looked like he had it together. So he heard, but, it didn't mean anything. Just like when McGee spouts computer-talk, sure he hears it, but it's gibberish.
Not being like Gibbs was gibberish.
But now, it's soaking in.
Now, it means something.
He thought the shift was going from being second-in-command to team-leader. And that was part of it, that was the start. But he's getting it now. Getting that along with McGee's 'you're replacing Gibbs.'
It's his team. But it's not just his team. That's the real shift. It's not second-in-command to team-leader, it's NCIS-is-life to Tony DiNozzo-is-life. He is not the job. And if he wants any decent shot of joy, he cannot be the job.
All of this together, happening at once, it's for a reason.
This is his life. And it's time to start living it for him, and for Ziva, and-he feels the edge he's looking over, takes a deep breath, and jumps-for the child, children they're going to have.
Next
Thursday, May 8, 2014
Shards To A Whole: Chapter 320
McGee-centric character study/romance. Want to start at the beginning? Click here.
Chapter 320: A Week
On Monday, before going to the Bullpen, Tim went down to the basement, unplugged the old coffee machine, poured out the scorched battery acid that was masquerading as coffee, set the drip pot under the counter, and then set up the Keurig, put the box of assorted flavor cups next to it along with a whiteboard and a dry erase marker.
He wrote on the board, What kind of coffee do you like? and left plenty of room for them to add their favorites.
He's not the Boss yet, but he can sure as hell get his Minions some decent coffee.
On Tuesday, during lunch, Tim headed down to see Jimmy. Monday night, after work, he and Abby began opening all of Kelly's christening presents, and while a few of them were cute little onesies and stuff, most of them were cards.
They were expecting greeting cards.
They were not expecting (in that most of these people are near strangers) money in those cards.
So, he pulls Jimmy out of the morgue and they head off in search of lunch, and for Tim, pointers on correct responses to this level of family generosity.
Once they were seated with food in front of them, he says, "Jimmy, everyone gave us money for Kelly."
And Jimmy nods.
"Like, a few thousand dollars all told."
And he keeps nodding.
"Is this usual?"
"Welcome to the Slater Funeral Home Family Mafia. You get in, but you never get out." Tim's just staring at him. "They take this family wealth thing really seriously. We're all supposed to add to it, help it grow, and then lavish it on the kids, making sure they've got everything they need to build the business further and keep all of us in the black. Christmas, birthdays, all the kids get little presents, and mom and dad get cash for them which is supposed to go toward making sure they get a good education or having seed money to go start a business for themselves/build onto the family business."
"That's what every baby needs a party means?"
Jimmy nods. "Something like that. All of the kids getting out of college with no debt is a big deal. I was talking about how I was able to refi and consolidate my student loans, and they all stared at me like I was talking about how proud I was of getting a good rate to finance my prostitution ring. By the end of that night Ed, Jeannie, and two of the Uncles had offered to pay them off."
"Is that a good thing?"
"It was nice... I guess. At the time I was kind of insulted, because, you know, it's mine, so paying it off is my job. Especially when Ed hit me with it first, I saw it more as a 'he didn't think I'd be able to do it' sort of thing. But the more time I'm with them, the more I get they really don't see it like that. The money, the debts, the businesses, the houses, it's all sort of ours. We hold onto the wealth for the kids, try to build it up, and pass more of it to them than we started with. So, they're offering to pay it off rather than let interest payments eat even further away at our capital." Jimmy eats a bite of his salad. "That's part of me not being son-in-law of the year material. I don't add to the wealth pool."
"You've got a job."
"Yeah, but I bring in cash. Cash on its own is useless. You've got to do something with it, make something of value that makes its own cash. Ed thinks you're a dork, too, but you write books and get royalties and whatnot, so you're higher on the value scale than I am. I get fired, I'm screwed. You get fired, your royalties keep coming and you go spend more time at the typewriter turning out more books and making yet more royalties. You're financially independent in a way I'm not."
"So, you leave NCIS and open a medical practice…" Tim leads as he cuts his chicken.
"Yeah, up to Son-In-Law-of-the-Year I go, along with suddenly having a hundred patients, a pile of seed money, and three or four accountants to make sure my books are in great shape, while a financial planner or two goes over everything and makes sure all of my assets are sheltered."
"And let me guess, if you got into hospice care..."
"I'd get the gold star to go with my shiny new Son-In-Law-of-the-Year Award," Jimmy says dryly. "Did you ever read The Godfather?"
"Million years ago."
"They don't kill people or steal stuff, but I married into the real world Corleone family."
"And now I'm part, too?"
Jimmy smiles. "Breena and I are godparents to your daughter. You're godparents to ours, so, yes."
"You couldn't have mentioned this before we got into it?"
"I figured if Ed didn't scare you off, this wasn't going to be a big deal."
"Okay, that's probably true."
"Just, don't forget thank you notes. They're a really big deal. Actual, real, on paper, in the mail, handwritten, thank you notes. Lack of thank you notes results in nagging."
"I think we can swing some thank you notes."
"Good."
On Wednesday: they worked a case. And worked some more. And then worked a bit after that. It was technically Thursday when they headed home.
On Thursday, Tony let them off early. Tuesday they worked late. Wednesday they worked early and late. So when 12:30 rolled around and they had the perp in booking, he sent them all home.
He and Ziva went home and crashed.
A nap felt good. Sex after the nap felt fantastic. Post-sex, shower-time snuggles were awesome. They made dinner together, lazy, relaxed, nibbling half of the ingredients before they got into the oven.
All in all, it was a really grand afternoon.
But, after dinner, as Ziva was curling up with a book, Tony was feeling a bit out of sorts and edgy. He also wasn't having an easy time putting his finger on why. Everything had gone just fine today. He should be warm, content, earbuds in, happily watching a movie while Ziva reads, curled up against him.
But she's not settling, either. Which is probably what's setting his senses on edge.
He can feel it. She looks settled. They're on the sofa. He's got his feet up on the coffee table. She's lying with her head in his lap, book in hand. She's still, very, very still. Which is usually a dead give-away that something is wrong. It's not that she's fidgety or anything. But when Ziva goes stock still, she's either on full alert or thinking hard, and neither of them are appropriate for a second read of her current book. (Among other things, book reading involves turning pages, which hasn't happened for at least five minutes.)
"You okay?" he asks after another tense moment.
"Yes. I'm just thinking."
"Good thinking?" That makes him nervous. He can't help it. Women "thinking" is a deeply ingrained warning sensor for him.
"Just thinking."
"Okay. Work thinking or us thinking?"
"A bit of both."
"Uh huh..." He'd really rather she just told him what was going on, but as they've talked about in counseling, making sure she's got time to get big things right in her head, before he drags them out of her, is important. So, he doesn't push. He wants to. All of his little curious sensors are tingling. But he's not pushing.
He puts his earbuds back in, unpauses the movie, and lets her think.
He didn't have to wait long. Twenty minutes, half an hour maybe. Long enough for him to begin to get sucked into the movie. But, sucked into the movie or not, he certainly notices when Ziva marks her page, rolls onto her stomach, chin resting on her hands, hands on his thigh, and looks up at him. He's not entirely sure, because it doesn't happen a lot (okay, ever) but he thinks this could be Ziva's version of puppy-dog eyes.
He pulls the earbuds out. "Done thinking?"
"For now."
"Okay. So, do I get to find out what you've been thinking about?"
"Yes." She doesn't say anything after that.
"Maybe you could say a bit more than that. You're starting to scare me."
"No. It's not bad, just..." And she pauses, taking a breath, making him more nervous, and then jumps in with what she's been thinking about. "We've been talking about a baby, and I was thinking, once we hire Gibbs' replacement, that might be a good time to start trying."
"Oh." And yeah, that's not bad or anything, it's just...
Yeah.
He's not got much of anything going through his head. The spasm of 'Holy shit, a kid!' terror didn't fire, so that was a good thing. A step in the right direction. But, when they hire Gibbs' replacement is a whole lot more concrete that the somewhat nebulous 'eventually' they'd been bouncing around before.
But, like he let her think, she's letting him think, too. Which is a good thing, because right now, he doesn't know what he's thinking.
Unfortunately, he doesn't feel like he's pulling things together. There's just this huge, vague, something, and he's not sure how to deal with it.
So, he's gently stroking her back, not saying anything, kind of wishing he was saying something, though right now rambling on like a twit probably wouldn't win him any points.
After a good ten silent minutes, he comes up with, "So, like, as soon as we hire the guy, or when he joins the team, or once we know he's sticking around?"
"I was thinking when we hired him. But if you want to wait a bit longer, make sure he's blending in well, we could do that. Say, March or April at the latest."
"Ah... Really celebrate our first anniversary?"
"I was hoping we'd know by then, but, yes."
"Okay." He doesn't exactly sound excited, but there's no dread in his voice.
"Okay?" She double checks. He has the sense she was more than half-expecting him to freak out and melt down at this.
"Yeah, okay." He nods, tries to smile reassuringly.
"Are you really sure?"
They'd been talking about honesty, and that it's all right to be vulnerable with each other, and that actually discussing fears is better than pretending they aren't there, so unlike what he would have done this time last year, he answers honestly. "I don't know."
She smiles a bit, and nods, expecting that.
"Half of me is excited. Half feels like I'm marching off to face the firing squad."
She's not sure what to say to that. She knows, because they've talked about this, that he's, at best, wary about children. And he knows that she wants them.
"I just... I like our life. And, it feels really... something... to have a solid end to that."
"I understand." And she does.
"But I meant it when I said I'd do this with you. When we got married, this... kid thing, was part of it. So, yeah, I'm nervous about it, but, sure, when we get Gibbs' replacement. I'd like to make sure he gets a bit of time to settle in, make sure we're keeping him, but then, sure. We'll do this. Baby DiNozzo, show Palmer and McGee what a beautiful baby really looks like."
She half-smiles at his joke, and then sits up to kiss him.
On Friday, after they got home from Shabbos, after Molly was put to bed, Breena is kneeling on the floor, leaning her upper body against an exercise ball while Jimmy rubs her hips.
"I forgot how much I hate this part."
"Mmm..." He makes an agreeing noise, gently pressing the balls of his thumbs into her sacrum.
"I really don't think I can do forty-two weeks of this again. Everything hurts all over."
He nods.
"Hear that Anna, any time after thirty-six weeks. No hanging around forever like your sister did. When they say your lungs are done, out you come. The sooner the better."
He kisses the small of her back, fingers gently trailing down her spine.
"November 27th. That's thirty-six weeks." She says, hands rubbing her stomach. "That's when we're aiming for. Two more weeks and then out you go. Okay?"
He ripples his knuckles against her back, stroking his palms down her spine, cradling her hips in his hands and squeezing gently. "You want to flip around, sit on the ball, and I'll get your hips and thighs?"
"Sure."
He helps her get up, and seated on the ball, sitting cross-legged between her legs, gently rubbing her thighs and hips. He's resting his forehead (lightly) against her belly, feeling Anna squirming around in there.
He kisses again, lips brushing lightly above the waistband of Breena's leggings, trailing along the line from her now flat belly button to just above her pubic bone.
"Wouldn't mind a little bit longer with her on the inside." He kisses again, hands cradling her butt, and pulls back, smiling up at her. "Don't get to do this," he mouths gently over her. "For far too long once she's out."
Breena chuckles, a visible combination of exasperation (sex, now, really?) on her face as well as approval (I'm very glad you still find me sexy and attractive). "It's a good thing you're awfully cute," she says, ruffling his hair.
He smiles up at her again. "Well, you know, endorphins are good for pain, and for keeping your mood happy, and semen is supposed to help ripen the cervix. And if you want to stay on schedule for the 27th..."
"Uh huh." She's smiling, and takes off his glasses, resting them on the sofa behind him. "I don't remember that working all that hot last time."
"Obviously, we didn't do it nearly enough." He's inching her leggings off, and she stands up to make it easier.
"Obviously."
On Saturday, Gibbs had cleared out his basement and set up the band saw.
It's one of the only power tools he's willing to use. Especially on his own, especially for long pieces of wood, ripping boards is just not a good plan with a hand saw.
All of his wood is stripped. The finish is off.
He's built the guides that will keep each board straight and true as the saw goes through them.
Gibbs takes a deep breath, picks up the first of the beams that will soon be repurposed into bed legs, flips on the saw, places the board into the guide and gently pushes, feeling the saw go tearing through the wood with the sweet hum of destruction that creates.
A moment later, holding two, even, clean-cut pieces, he exhales, realizing he wasn't breathing as he cut.
And holding them, he realizes that he is ready to start to rebuild. The pain he thought he'd experience as he took blade to wood never materialized.
He picks up another of the beams, settles it into the guide, and gets to work.
Next
Chapter 320: A Week
On Monday, before going to the Bullpen, Tim went down to the basement, unplugged the old coffee machine, poured out the scorched battery acid that was masquerading as coffee, set the drip pot under the counter, and then set up the Keurig, put the box of assorted flavor cups next to it along with a whiteboard and a dry erase marker.
He wrote on the board, What kind of coffee do you like? and left plenty of room for them to add their favorites.
He's not the Boss yet, but he can sure as hell get his Minions some decent coffee.
On Tuesday, during lunch, Tim headed down to see Jimmy. Monday night, after work, he and Abby began opening all of Kelly's christening presents, and while a few of them were cute little onesies and stuff, most of them were cards.
They were expecting greeting cards.
They were not expecting (in that most of these people are near strangers) money in those cards.
So, he pulls Jimmy out of the morgue and they head off in search of lunch, and for Tim, pointers on correct responses to this level of family generosity.
Once they were seated with food in front of them, he says, "Jimmy, everyone gave us money for Kelly."
And Jimmy nods.
"Like, a few thousand dollars all told."
And he keeps nodding.
"Is this usual?"
"Welcome to the Slater Funeral Home Family Mafia. You get in, but you never get out." Tim's just staring at him. "They take this family wealth thing really seriously. We're all supposed to add to it, help it grow, and then lavish it on the kids, making sure they've got everything they need to build the business further and keep all of us in the black. Christmas, birthdays, all the kids get little presents, and mom and dad get cash for them which is supposed to go toward making sure they get a good education or having seed money to go start a business for themselves/build onto the family business."
"That's what every baby needs a party means?"
Jimmy nods. "Something like that. All of the kids getting out of college with no debt is a big deal. I was talking about how I was able to refi and consolidate my student loans, and they all stared at me like I was talking about how proud I was of getting a good rate to finance my prostitution ring. By the end of that night Ed, Jeannie, and two of the Uncles had offered to pay them off."
"Is that a good thing?"
"It was nice... I guess. At the time I was kind of insulted, because, you know, it's mine, so paying it off is my job. Especially when Ed hit me with it first, I saw it more as a 'he didn't think I'd be able to do it' sort of thing. But the more time I'm with them, the more I get they really don't see it like that. The money, the debts, the businesses, the houses, it's all sort of ours. We hold onto the wealth for the kids, try to build it up, and pass more of it to them than we started with. So, they're offering to pay it off rather than let interest payments eat even further away at our capital." Jimmy eats a bite of his salad. "That's part of me not being son-in-law of the year material. I don't add to the wealth pool."
"You've got a job."
"Yeah, but I bring in cash. Cash on its own is useless. You've got to do something with it, make something of value that makes its own cash. Ed thinks you're a dork, too, but you write books and get royalties and whatnot, so you're higher on the value scale than I am. I get fired, I'm screwed. You get fired, your royalties keep coming and you go spend more time at the typewriter turning out more books and making yet more royalties. You're financially independent in a way I'm not."
"So, you leave NCIS and open a medical practice…" Tim leads as he cuts his chicken.
"Yeah, up to Son-In-Law-of-the-Year I go, along with suddenly having a hundred patients, a pile of seed money, and three or four accountants to make sure my books are in great shape, while a financial planner or two goes over everything and makes sure all of my assets are sheltered."
"And let me guess, if you got into hospice care..."
"I'd get the gold star to go with my shiny new Son-In-Law-of-the-Year Award," Jimmy says dryly. "Did you ever read The Godfather?"
"Million years ago."
"They don't kill people or steal stuff, but I married into the real world Corleone family."
"And now I'm part, too?"
Jimmy smiles. "Breena and I are godparents to your daughter. You're godparents to ours, so, yes."
"You couldn't have mentioned this before we got into it?"
"I figured if Ed didn't scare you off, this wasn't going to be a big deal."
"Okay, that's probably true."
"Just, don't forget thank you notes. They're a really big deal. Actual, real, on paper, in the mail, handwritten, thank you notes. Lack of thank you notes results in nagging."
"I think we can swing some thank you notes."
"Good."
On Wednesday: they worked a case. And worked some more. And then worked a bit after that. It was technically Thursday when they headed home.
On Thursday, Tony let them off early. Tuesday they worked late. Wednesday they worked early and late. So when 12:30 rolled around and they had the perp in booking, he sent them all home.
He and Ziva went home and crashed.
A nap felt good. Sex after the nap felt fantastic. Post-sex, shower-time snuggles were awesome. They made dinner together, lazy, relaxed, nibbling half of the ingredients before they got into the oven.
All in all, it was a really grand afternoon.
But, after dinner, as Ziva was curling up with a book, Tony was feeling a bit out of sorts and edgy. He also wasn't having an easy time putting his finger on why. Everything had gone just fine today. He should be warm, content, earbuds in, happily watching a movie while Ziva reads, curled up against him.
But she's not settling, either. Which is probably what's setting his senses on edge.
He can feel it. She looks settled. They're on the sofa. He's got his feet up on the coffee table. She's lying with her head in his lap, book in hand. She's still, very, very still. Which is usually a dead give-away that something is wrong. It's not that she's fidgety or anything. But when Ziva goes stock still, she's either on full alert or thinking hard, and neither of them are appropriate for a second read of her current book. (Among other things, book reading involves turning pages, which hasn't happened for at least five minutes.)
"You okay?" he asks after another tense moment.
"Yes. I'm just thinking."
"Good thinking?" That makes him nervous. He can't help it. Women "thinking" is a deeply ingrained warning sensor for him.
"Just thinking."
"Okay. Work thinking or us thinking?"
"A bit of both."
"Uh huh..." He'd really rather she just told him what was going on, but as they've talked about in counseling, making sure she's got time to get big things right in her head, before he drags them out of her, is important. So, he doesn't push. He wants to. All of his little curious sensors are tingling. But he's not pushing.
He puts his earbuds back in, unpauses the movie, and lets her think.
He didn't have to wait long. Twenty minutes, half an hour maybe. Long enough for him to begin to get sucked into the movie. But, sucked into the movie or not, he certainly notices when Ziva marks her page, rolls onto her stomach, chin resting on her hands, hands on his thigh, and looks up at him. He's not entirely sure, because it doesn't happen a lot (okay, ever) but he thinks this could be Ziva's version of puppy-dog eyes.
He pulls the earbuds out. "Done thinking?"
"For now."
"Okay. So, do I get to find out what you've been thinking about?"
"Yes." She doesn't say anything after that.
"Maybe you could say a bit more than that. You're starting to scare me."
"No. It's not bad, just..." And she pauses, taking a breath, making him more nervous, and then jumps in with what she's been thinking about. "We've been talking about a baby, and I was thinking, once we hire Gibbs' replacement, that might be a good time to start trying."
"Oh." And yeah, that's not bad or anything, it's just...
Yeah.
He's not got much of anything going through his head. The spasm of 'Holy shit, a kid!' terror didn't fire, so that was a good thing. A step in the right direction. But, when they hire Gibbs' replacement is a whole lot more concrete that the somewhat nebulous 'eventually' they'd been bouncing around before.
But, like he let her think, she's letting him think, too. Which is a good thing, because right now, he doesn't know what he's thinking.
Unfortunately, he doesn't feel like he's pulling things together. There's just this huge, vague, something, and he's not sure how to deal with it.
So, he's gently stroking her back, not saying anything, kind of wishing he was saying something, though right now rambling on like a twit probably wouldn't win him any points.
After a good ten silent minutes, he comes up with, "So, like, as soon as we hire the guy, or when he joins the team, or once we know he's sticking around?"
"I was thinking when we hired him. But if you want to wait a bit longer, make sure he's blending in well, we could do that. Say, March or April at the latest."
"Ah... Really celebrate our first anniversary?"
"I was hoping we'd know by then, but, yes."
"Okay." He doesn't exactly sound excited, but there's no dread in his voice.
"Okay?" She double checks. He has the sense she was more than half-expecting him to freak out and melt down at this.
"Yeah, okay." He nods, tries to smile reassuringly.
"Are you really sure?"
They'd been talking about honesty, and that it's all right to be vulnerable with each other, and that actually discussing fears is better than pretending they aren't there, so unlike what he would have done this time last year, he answers honestly. "I don't know."
She smiles a bit, and nods, expecting that.
"Half of me is excited. Half feels like I'm marching off to face the firing squad."
She's not sure what to say to that. She knows, because they've talked about this, that he's, at best, wary about children. And he knows that she wants them.
"I just... I like our life. And, it feels really... something... to have a solid end to that."
"I understand." And she does.
"But I meant it when I said I'd do this with you. When we got married, this... kid thing, was part of it. So, yeah, I'm nervous about it, but, sure, when we get Gibbs' replacement. I'd like to make sure he gets a bit of time to settle in, make sure we're keeping him, but then, sure. We'll do this. Baby DiNozzo, show Palmer and McGee what a beautiful baby really looks like."
She half-smiles at his joke, and then sits up to kiss him.
On Friday, after they got home from Shabbos, after Molly was put to bed, Breena is kneeling on the floor, leaning her upper body against an exercise ball while Jimmy rubs her hips.
"I forgot how much I hate this part."
"Mmm..." He makes an agreeing noise, gently pressing the balls of his thumbs into her sacrum.
"I really don't think I can do forty-two weeks of this again. Everything hurts all over."
He nods.
"Hear that Anna, any time after thirty-six weeks. No hanging around forever like your sister did. When they say your lungs are done, out you come. The sooner the better."
He kisses the small of her back, fingers gently trailing down her spine.
"November 27th. That's thirty-six weeks." She says, hands rubbing her stomach. "That's when we're aiming for. Two more weeks and then out you go. Okay?"
He ripples his knuckles against her back, stroking his palms down her spine, cradling her hips in his hands and squeezing gently. "You want to flip around, sit on the ball, and I'll get your hips and thighs?"
"Sure."
He helps her get up, and seated on the ball, sitting cross-legged between her legs, gently rubbing her thighs and hips. He's resting his forehead (lightly) against her belly, feeling Anna squirming around in there.
He kisses again, lips brushing lightly above the waistband of Breena's leggings, trailing along the line from her now flat belly button to just above her pubic bone.
"Wouldn't mind a little bit longer with her on the inside." He kisses again, hands cradling her butt, and pulls back, smiling up at her. "Don't get to do this," he mouths gently over her. "For far too long once she's out."
Breena chuckles, a visible combination of exasperation (sex, now, really?) on her face as well as approval (I'm very glad you still find me sexy and attractive). "It's a good thing you're awfully cute," she says, ruffling his hair.
He smiles up at her again. "Well, you know, endorphins are good for pain, and for keeping your mood happy, and semen is supposed to help ripen the cervix. And if you want to stay on schedule for the 27th..."
"Uh huh." She's smiling, and takes off his glasses, resting them on the sofa behind him. "I don't remember that working all that hot last time."
"Obviously, we didn't do it nearly enough." He's inching her leggings off, and she stands up to make it easier.
"Obviously."
On Saturday, Gibbs had cleared out his basement and set up the band saw.
It's one of the only power tools he's willing to use. Especially on his own, especially for long pieces of wood, ripping boards is just not a good plan with a hand saw.
All of his wood is stripped. The finish is off.
He's built the guides that will keep each board straight and true as the saw goes through them.
Gibbs takes a deep breath, picks up the first of the beams that will soon be repurposed into bed legs, flips on the saw, places the board into the guide and gently pushes, feeling the saw go tearing through the wood with the sweet hum of destruction that creates.
A moment later, holding two, even, clean-cut pieces, he exhales, realizing he wasn't breathing as he cut.
And holding them, he realizes that he is ready to start to rebuild. The pain he thought he'd experience as he took blade to wood never materialized.
He picks up another of the beams, settles it into the guide, and gets to work.
Next
Sunday, January 26, 2014
Shards To A Whole: Chapter 281
McGee-centric character study/romance. Want to start at the beginning? Click here.
Chapter 281: The Price
It’s really, really nice.
After all, how many times can you volunteer to let your heart have the shit beaten out of it?
Chapter 281: The Price
Make up sex is brilliant. There’s all the intensity of the
emotions of the fight. Then there’s the even more intense ‘I’m so sorry; I hate
you being angry at me; I hate being angry at you; I love you so much.’
It’s really, really nice.
The problem is, you can’t get to hot, happy, make up sex
when the last time you had the exact same argument you pretended to make up, and
then did exactly what you were going to do in the first place.
Because you can only get to the make-up sex when there’s
trust that you have, indeed, made up.
So, while there had been yelling, and talking, and crying,
and more talking, and more yelling between the DiNozzos, there hadn’t been any
make-up sex.
There hadn’t been any cuddles.
Or hugs.
Because they aren’t made up.
Right now, Tony’s pretending to be asleep on the sofa
(wasn’t allowed in their bedroom last night) while his ninja stealths around
their home.
Someone once said, that if you’re getting along, even the
smallest home has plenty of room, and when you aren’t, you can have acres of
space and it’s not enough.
So, while it’s true they don’t have a huge apartment, until
Ziva came home last night, furious, it had never seemed too small. It’s way too
damn small, now. Technically, the entire eastern seaboard may be too small
right now.
“I know you are not asleep.” She doesn’t look at him as she
says it. She’s very intently making coffee, back toward him, facing the counter.
He sighs, opening his eyes, staring at the ceiling. “I know
I’m not asleep, too.”
“Then why are you pretending?”
“I’m tired.” And he is, bone deep, every cell in his body
begging for rest, tired. “Just want to rest.”
“Then rest!” Ziva says, slamming down the coffee mugs.
He sits up slowly, rubbing his head. He’s had a headache for
two days, because of the fighting, not the concussion. “Not going to rest until
this is done.” He hasn’t really slept since the bomb, and today isn’t likely to
change that. (Also part of why his head hurts. He always gets headaches when he
gets too low on sleep.)
“This isn’t going
to be done anytime soon, so you might as well sleep. Maybe if you got some
sleep you’d be sane enough to realize you are being completely unreasonable.”
“It is not unreasonable to ask you to value your life!”
“No, it’s not. But you didn’t ask.” She whips around to face him as the sk on ask slides off her
tongue.
He just shrugs. “It’s not unreasonable to expect you to value your life.”
“I do value my life!”
“Not enough. If you’re going to…” He shakes his head, not
willing to finish that sentence.
“You are not asking me to value my life! You are trying to
make me your pet!”
“No, I’m not.”
“Yes you are. You wouldn’t have done that to McGee or Gibbs.
You respect them enough to actually tell them the truth.”
“It’s not about respect.”
“Of course, it is! You say you love me, but you don’t
respect me, not if you’re willing to do that. Making decisions for me, not
telling me about it, lying to me about it. That is not respect.”
“I knew you wouldn’t like it.” And he did. He wouldn’t have
lied about it if he thought she’d have been okay with what he was going to do.
“Exactly! You don’t pull this sort of crap on Gibbs or
McGee. If you want to do something they don’t like, you own up to it and tell
them about it. It’s completely about respect. You respect them enough not to
lie to them.”
“It’s not respect! I don’t love either of them enough…” Tony
shakes his head. “The world doesn’t stop turning if something bad happens to
them. I knew you wouldn’t like it. I knew you’d be angry. And I didn’t care
because you angry and alive is better than you dead and happy.”
Ziva’s furious again, and the coffee cup in her hand is in
serious danger of being squeezed so hard it shatters. “That’s not how you treat
people! That’s how you treat a child or a pet. You do not get to make that
decision. You do not get to just… ignore how I feel about it. You are my
husband, not my father, and no one, no
one has any right to treat me like that, not anymore. Not you, not Gibbs. I
am not a child, let alone your child, and I get to make my own decisions.”
He stands up, walks across the living room and kitchen to
her. He stares her in the eyes, tired, angry, hurting, all of it in his face
and voice. “You made the wrong one! You stop getting to make that decision when
you make the wrong one.”
Something very intense, very hot, and very not English
spills from her lips as Ziva glares at him. Then she turns, pushes past him,
out of the kitchen, and says, “This is useless! I’m going out. You sleep. I’ll
calm down. We’ll try again in a few hours.”
Sleep.
Easier said than done. But at least right now, he can lay in
their bed (more comfy than the sofa), stretch out, cuddle into pillows that
smell like her, and not sleep.
Because sleeping requires a quiet mind.
And right now his mind is anything but quiet.
Lying about it wasn’t a good plan. But he knew she wouldn’t
go for it, knew if he said, I want you on a different team, I can't take this anymore, it’d piss her off, but, if she could find out about it as
something accomplished, done and unchangeable, then she’d be pissed, but,
eventually, she’d like having her own team, and then they’d go on.
Then McGee butts his big ass into this and fucks the whole
thing sideways.
It’s his team. Not
McGee’s. Three days of running things doesn’t make it McGee’s team. He’s in
charge of who’s on it, not McGee. It’s his job to make sure it’s running right,
not McGee’s, and he gets to define what running right is. And if that’s just
the three of them, slowly adding in new people, then that’s what it is.
Except that’s crap, and he knows it’s crap, the problem isn’t
that McGee counteracted the shift. The problem was trying to move her in the
first place.
Sigh.
Part of being a friend is smacking you upside the head when
you’re being an idiot, and McGee’s being his friend.
Part of being an adult is seeing the problems that are there and taking responsibility for your part in them.
And all of being the leader is seeing the problems, facing them head on, and tackling them.
He sees it in his head again. Ziva standing next to them.
Hears her say it, ‘You go. I go.’ Gibbs has his knife out, ready to cut, and he
knocks it away, yanks out the detonator and tosses it. The most Hail Mary pass
of the history of Hail Mary passes.
He stares at the ceiling. Feeling her body under his,
hearing the almost slithering rush of the fire, how there was that second where
he could hear it before the heat poured over them, then that month-long second
between the fire and the blast.
Conversion aside, he’s not much of a praying man. He and God
have a deal, and swapping out from not overly Catholic to not overly Jewish
didn’t change that. But as the fire rushed over them, he was certainly begging
God to get her through this, and even with as loud as the fire was, and his
heart beating so hard as to drown out almost everything else, he could still
hear her say the Shema, and…
And he panicked. He knows that. Or he took a calculated
risk, but did the math wrong. Either way, letting Gibbs cut the wire was
probably the better answer.
And he’s not sure which scares him worse, that her being at
risk made him make the bad decision, or her running in to join them.
Her running in. He can (he hopes) control the panic. He can
(still hoping) control himself.
He can’t control her.
And he knows that.
And trying was stupid.
But you do stupid things when the person you love above all
others puts herself at risk. When fear reaches up, colors your world sickly
green, chokes off your breath, makes your joints go week and your stomach
clench, you do whatever you can to make it stop.
Ziva’s wildness, the fact that he couldn’t control her, that
had always interested him. That, as much as her body, got his attention at
first.
Like with Kate, the fact that she would be a challenge, that
she wouldn’t just go along for the ride, that made him want to make her want to
go along.
Be careful what you
wish for.
He did it. He got her signed on for the long haul. He won
her love and respect (at least, he’d had it up until he hit send on that email)
and then came face to face (again) with why it’s easier to keep the walls in
place.
After all, how many times can you volunteer to let your heart have the shit beaten out of it?
Of course, if he’s being honest with himself, he knows he’s
doing it back to her. She scared him so bad, and that fear hurt so much, that he’s
doing it to her, making her hurt the way he hurt.
And it’s not cool, or good, or responsible, or anything he
wants to be, but… it’s true. Maybe, beyond acknowledging the fear, it’s the
first true thing he’s thought about this.
Because you don’t just do crap like that, and all the
justifications on Earth don’t make it all right.
And by hurting her, he’s hurting himself, and on some level,
he feels like he deserves that, too.
The sound of her opening the door didn’t wake him up. Have
to be asleep to wake up.
It did stop him staring at the ceiling. He gets up slowly, heads
to the door of their bedroom, opens it, and leans against the door jam. She’s
in the living area, just standing there, looking in his direction.
“I’m sorry I lied to you.”
“Not enough.” Calming down time does not appear to have done
much to help with Ziva being pissed off.
“Right now, I’m sorry about this whole thing.”
“Yes, I know, you made that abundantly clear last night.
That you are sorry about this whole
thing starting with falling in love and ending with lying to me. You’d rather
have just stayed a gigolo.”
Yeah, so apparently mentioning that particular bit of doubt,
which he’d done as an ‘I’m so scared and in love with you and I don’t know what
to do with myself because this was so much easier before’ thing hadn’t been the
right tact.
He rubs his forehead. “I love you. I am so terrified that
something will happen to you. I hate feeling like this. I hate that I don’t
know what to do with this.”
“Just stop it!” Ziva bites out. “You are not alone. You are
not the only one feeling fear. You aren’t the only one who’s lost someone.
You’re the only one who decided to cut one of us out of the picture and act
alone. You’re the one who spent hours talking with me about our future, about
getting everything in order, about making sure we’d go on… You’re the one who
lied to me! You’re the one who cut me out!”
“I’m sorry!” he shouts that, then gets under better control.
“It was stupid, and I’m sorry.”
“I don’t care if you’re sorry! You hurt me, and all the
sorry on Earth doesn’t take it away. You cannot just make it better by being
sorry. It’s not like this was some sort of thing where you just did not know
I’d be upset. It’s not like you stepped on my toe or forgot my birthday or this
is some sort of misunderstanding. You lied to me!”
“I know. You scared the shit out of me, scared me so bad,
made me so angry… I wanted you to feel it, too!”
Ziva looks like she had been getting ready to say something,
but that stops her dead. She spends a minute thinking, then says, “So this is…
what… revenge?”
“I don’t know. It was stupid it what it is. It was panic and
pain and my balls doing the thinking and not my head. And I shouldn’t have
lied, and I may not be sorry I hurt you, because, honestly I’m still too
fucking pissed at you to be sorry about that, but I still know it was stupid.”
He steps closer to her, stopping before he can touch her, wanting to see if
she’d meet him halfway, and she does, stepping to him, staring up into his
eyes, not touching, though. “And if you want to be angry about me lying to you,
fine, I get that, I understand it, and yeah, it was stupid. But I don’t care if
you’re angry about me trying to keep you alive. I don’t care if you don’t like
my tactics.” His hands close over her shoulders, gentle, and she can feel the
slight tremors in his fingers. “I DON’T CARE if I have to lie, cheat, or steal
to do it, but you are going to outlive me, and not by minutes or seconds, but
by years, decades if I have any say in it. You say you love me, then prove it,
don’t ever run into a bomb for me again, don’t throw yourself in front of the
bullet.”
“That’s not fair.”
“I don’t care. I know which one of us is the better person,
and it’s not me.”
“Tony—“
“No! That’s the line in the sand for our relationship.
That’s the one boundary that cannot be crossed. Anything else we can talk out,
work through, forgive, but you will not throw your life away for mine. That’s
it. Love, honor, cherish, bullshit! I don’t care. LIVE! That’s your vow to me.
That’s the only one I want, and the only one that matters.
“Not once have you said you were sorry for running into the
bomb. It’s all about it’s your choice, and I don’t get a say in it, and I don’t
get to be mad about it, and I don’t get to try and stop that, and it’s fucking
bullshit! I save lives. That’s my job.
That’s all I’ve ever cared about doing for my entire adult life. That’s it. And
I will be damned to fucking hell for the entire rest of eternity if I can’t
save YOU!”
Ziva just stares at him, eyes wide, visually tracing the
path of the tears running down his cheeks. “I… just…”
He shakes his head, breathing hard, and then says quietly,
“That’s your promise to me. You want me, that’s the cost.”
She closes her eyes and sighs, then takes his hands in hers,
and pulls him along to sit next to her on the sofa. “How can we be a team if I
don’t have your back?”
He’s looking at her hands, her wedding band, then looks up
to her eyes and says, “You go home at the end of the day, and that’s all the
having my back I’ll ever need.”
She’s looking like she’s trying to find some wiggle room.
“Our job is dangerous…”
“I’m not saying avoid danger. I know the job is dangerous.
I’m not saying take a desk job. I’m not saying don’t ever go out again. But if
you run into danger when you can’t help, when there’s nothing you can do but
die… If I survive it… That’s it. You don’t think it’s fair? I don’t care. You
cannot ask me to watch you die for nothing.”
“You aren’t nothing.”
“You weren’t going to die for me. Not then. You didn’t even reach for the bomb. You were
going to die with me, and that’s… No!
That’s my line that can’t be crossed.”
Ziva says sadly, “You have said nothing about living
yourself. I don’t get to ask that of you, do I?”
Tony shakes his head again. “You don’t. And it’s not fair,
and it’s not even, and I know it. But it’s who I am. I run into the fire to die
with you, you don’t run in for me.”
“And you get to just dictate this?”
He shrugs. He knows he can make the promise, but he won’t
keep it. “I could lie about it again.”
She glares at him.
“This is it. All honesty, I get to die for or with you, you
don’t get to die with me, and if you think that’s me treating you like a child,
if you think it’s disrespectful, I’m comfortable with that. This is who I am. I’m
going out for a few hours. You think about it. And, I hope…”
He didn’t finish that sentence. He stands up pushes his feet
into a pair of sneakers, and heads out of their home.
His wedding ring is a plain gold band. He’d inscribed hers
with אתם לא לבד/you are not alone because he liked the promise
of it, liked what he meant by it, how that was the day when he saw them having
a future in a concrete sort of way.
His, though, is just blank gold.
There’s a jeweler only a few streets down from their
apartment, so he heads in that direction. He’s not sure how long what he wants
done will take, but he hopes it’ll be fast.
No one else is there. Not a lot of business at two on a
Tuesday.
The jeweler hears him and jumps to attention. “Can I help
you?”
“I hope so.” He took off his wedding ring and handed it
over. “How long would it take to get it engraved?”
“Depends on what you want.”
“Got a piece of paper?”
“Sure.” The clerk lays his ring on the counter, then pokes
around for a moment before coming up with a pad and a pen and handing them both
over.
אני אחיה. “That’s what I want.”
“Never tried Hebrew before, but…” He picks up Tony’s ring
again, checking how wide it is, looking back at the Hebrew letters. “Yeah, I
can do that. Probably about two hours. Give me some time to practice before I
do it to your ring.”
Tony nods, turns, and was half way out the door when the
jeweler asks, “What’s it mean?”
“I will live.”
He left, seeing the jeweler’s eyebrows still high.
Three hours later, he’s in the elevator heading back up to
their apartment.
He’s not wearing his ring. It’s in his pocket. The Hebrew looks
good. All the characters are right. It’s nicely centered.
And hopefully this isn’t the stupidest thing he’s ever done.
She’s at the dining room table, cleaning both of their guns.
He knows that she hears when he walks in, but she doesn’t say anything.
He stands behind her, staring at the back of her head, and
then places the ring on the table next to her left hand.
“When you can make this promise, you can put it back on me. I
want to wear it, but I can’t, not if this isn’t part of it.” Then he steps back,
heading for the door again.
She’s staring at it, hasn’t turned to look at him. “Where
are you going?”
“I don’t know.” He’s still facing the door. “McGee says his
door is always open, but I’m not sure I can take McWedded-Bliss right now. I’ve
got my phone. Call, and I’ll come.” And then he steps out, into the hall,
heading toward the elevator.
He’d pressed the button for the ground floor, but doors hadn’t
even shut when his phone rang.
She was standing outside their door, looking down the hall
at him, ring in her hand.
She crooks her finger at him, and he came to her, she’s not
smiling, or looking particularly happy with him.
He stands in front of her, watching, waiting to see what
happens next.
“You will never lie to me again.”
He nods.
She gathers her hand in his, and slips the ring back over
his finger. “Come home with me.”
He steps in.
And they weren’t done. There was still a lot of talking, and
some crying, but no more yelling. And in the end they had agreed to go see a
marriage counselor, because she’s not thrilled with the you will live
ultimatum, but she understands that’s his price, and she’s willing to pay it.
And the make-up sex, (which, granted, happened on Wednesday,
because they were both exhausted and needed the sleep after that fight) was
excellent.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)