Fics: Unburthened and Essence
Title: Unburthened
Author: Maya
Genre: Slash
Rating: PG
Summary: It had been a long day.
Word Count: 2243
Prompt: The Wake Up Call
Author's Notes: Thanks to lucifers_toy for the beta. And to crimsonquills, teddibear and nilahasi for the Gibbs/Tony-A-Thon itself.
The door swung open and the living room light came on with a soft click. Gibbs shut the door behind him and leaned against it wearily. It had been a long day.
He let himself sag against the door for all of a few seconds before pulling off his coat and wrapping it over the hanger, slotting his shoes in line with the others, and stowing his gun and badge in the drawer of the low table by the door, and then marching into the kitchen and straight to the fridge. He pulled out vegetables and stacked them in piles on the counter, before he found a cutting board and a knife and attacked the piles one after another.
Half an hour later a stew had taken more or less taken shape, and was simmering gently in the too-big saucepan. Gibbs spooned it out as soon as it was ready, and carried it, steaming and too hot to eat, over to the table. He didn’t actually get more that half of it down, and put the rest away, alongside the leftovers from last night, and the night before, and Tuesday. At least he hadn’t cooked on Wednesday, choosing to eat Monday’s leftovers instead.
And it was still only ten twenty.
Gibbs took the stairs two at a time up to the bedroom, where he changed into sweats and a T-shirt, and descended into the living room armed with a rag and a frown that boded ill for the very few dusty surfaces in the room. After he’d finished wiping down all the surfaces that needed it, as well as all the surfaces that didn’t (there were a lot more of those) he sat down on the couch for a minute, staring at the door to the basement before he shook his head and headed back upstairs to the bedroom where there were clothes he could fold and put away.
In the bedroom, he noted the time (five to eleven) before dragging the laundry basket over to the bed and folding shirts and pants and towels and stacking them into neat piles, and if the piles had to be perfectly stacked and look like they’d come out of a mould, that was something Gibbs found very easy to ignore.
He picked up the pile of T-shirts, took it over to a drawer and began putting them away, still in piles whose organisation made perfect sense to him no matter what anyone else might think. Picking up a grey T-shirt, he lifted a couple on top of the pile to place the grey one under them.
And then the T-shirts fell unheeded to the floor, because the shirt underneath was Tony’s.
Gibbs found himself kneeling by the drawer, hands gripping the sides tightly, staring at the shirt. Not too many of Tony’s clothes had made it over to Gibbs’ place; they hadn’t been - well, whatever they were - for too long. A month, maybe? Yeah, about that long. Not long enough.
He did not reach into the drawer to pull out Tony’s shirt and do anything ridiculous like smell it: for one thing it would smell more like detergent than Tony, and for another thing Gibbs had no trouble remembering what Tony smelled like. No trouble at all.
Gibbs pushed the drawer gently shut and sat down heavily with his back against it, ignoring the shirts he’d dropped on the floor and closing his eyes. Six months. Six months.
Six months since he’d last seen Tony; six months since Fornell had asked for the man who was easily the best undercover agent at NCIS; six months since Gibbs had raged and railed and made his displeasure known in no uncertain terms, and tried and failed - failed! - to somehow insinuate NCIS into whatever operation it was, and tried - and failed again - to extract a promise that he would be updated on Tony’s situation (too sensitive, Fornell had said); six months since Gibbs had gripped Tony by the shoulders, surely hard enough to bruise, and locked eyes with him and told him that he’d better watch his six or there’d be hell to pay and Gibbs would absolutely hold Tony responsible if he went and got shot or cracked his skull open; six months since Tony had met his desperate gaze and said, very gently, that he’d be fine.
Six months since he’d last seen Tony. God.
For the first two months he’d been (perhaps) more abrasive to the rest of the team; he’d sought refuge by grousing to Abby, staying at work as late as he could, and working on the boat while trying to ignore the fact that Tony wasn’t sitting at the foot of the basement stairs, snarking or making conversation or just watching. Fornell was still being infuriatingly obdurate, never telling him anything other than Tony’s fine, Tony’s all right, which, sorry, Gibbs didn’t trust because he didn’t exactly trust Fornell’s version of fine. And Abby not being able to ‘find out’ where - and how - Tony was had only made Gibbs even more pissed off, because Abby could find anything, and how bad was this, how deep was Tony if even Abby couldn’t pull anything for him?
When the two months turned into three, four, five, and there was still no word from Tony, Gibbs’ relative composure dissolved, and became a spike of fear every time he looked at Tony’s desk and Tony wasn’t there, or when he couldn’t feel Tony at his left when they went on a raid, or when he woke up at three fifteen and Tony wasn’t pulling on his pants and whispering apologies for waking Gibbs up, but they had to work in the morning. He stopped spending his nights in the basement, because the feeling of Tony’s absence was so powerful that working on the boat was becoming painful.
Gibbs thought about Abby telling him he was panicking in slow motion, and smiled humourlessly. If he could just know he’d be able to regain some measure of composure and content himself with snarking at people and drinking a little (a lot) more coffee every day till Tony was back.
Or not. Maybe he just needed to see Tony again. Gibbs screwed up his eyes fiercely, and then opened them, blinking rapidly a few times. He wasn’t going to get much rest, but he knew perfectly well that he needed to sleep if he wanted to function effectively, and he was not going to let any case get short shrift because he didn’t know how to take care of himself.
He pushed himself off the floor, put the shirts away (not without running his fingertips over Tony’s shirt, surreptitiously, as if someone were watching), put the rest of the folded clothes away, and went to bed. And slept, sort of.
***
Gibbs’ first thought was what the fuck?, and then who the fuck? as the pounding on his door grew louder. He half-rolled out of bed, noted the time (one fifteen) and made his way as quietly as possible out of the bedroom, towards the door and the drawer where he kept his gun. Halfway down the stairs he stopped dead.
Shannon… Shannon telling him she hated to be woken up at night by the doorbell only because she never knew if it would be someone come to tell her that something had happened to Gibbs.
No. No, it’s got nothing to do with Tony and I’m being an ass and I should just go and see who the hell that is and flay them for waking me up. Because Tony’s ‘fine’, after all.
When he finally got to the door he didn’t pull out his gun after all, just stood and listened, and then he grasped the door handle and turned it and opened the door and stopped breathing.
Because it was Tony.
Tony, standing at Gibbs’ door and smiling slightly. “Your doorbell doesn’t work, Gibbs.” Then he shut up and just looked at Gibbs, and Gibbs looked back for all of three seconds before he reached out and grabbed Tony’s arm and hauled the man through the door and into his arms. And just held him there, tightly enough for it to probably hurt, but Tony didn’t seem to care because he was holding on tighter still, face pressed against Gibbs’ shoulder so that Gibbs could feel his breath across the skin of his neck, and Tony was here. Gibbs closed his eyes and buried his nose in Tony’s hair and breathed in the scent he’d tried to recall for so long, and so often, that the memory had worn threadbare. Tony made a small muffled noise and tried to burrow into Gibbs and Gibbs’ hands were finally moving, reaching behind Tony to shut the door before pulling away, very slightly but just enough to lift Tony’s head and frame the face with his hands, his hands that were shaking just a little because Gibbs was shaking. Just a little.
And then, finally, he said, “Tony.” And it was all he wanted to say really, just to reaffirm that he was here.
A small smile curled Tony’s lips. “Gibbs,” he returned, in a voice that sounded as shaky as Gibbs’.
He was much thinner - almost gaunt, really; the cheekbones were more prominent. There was a tired look in his eyes, and a small scar on his right cheek, that hadn’t been there when he’d left. Gibbs felt like he’d lived years since then, and Tony looked it.
Tony had been working an undercover op for the FBI for six months.
“Tony,” Gibbs said at last, “how… I mean, you’re…”
Tony smiled, a little sheepishly. “It’s -it’s over. I got into DC a little over an hour ago. I…” - and here he couldn’t quite meet Gibbs’ eyes - “I wanted to - I mean, I wanted to see you…” he trailed off, as if he was only now realising that it was late and that Gibbs had probably been asleep. He bit his lip. “I, uh, I sort of missed you.”
Gibbs pulled him into another hug. “Yeah,” he said quietly. “Me too.” He let himself smile, a little. “You have no idea,” he added softly. Another muffled sound from Tony.
They stood there clinging to each other in the hallway, Tony brushing tiny kisses against Gibbs’ neck and Gibbs just soaking in the feeling, the presence of Tony against him, until he realised that Tony had looked exhausted, and that he wasn’t exactly fresh himself. He disentangled them, took Tony’s hand and led him up to the bedroom.
While Tony was getting rid of his pants Gibbs saw another scar, a larger one, on his shoulder. “What happened?” he asked quietly, brushing his fingers against it.
Tony shrugged. “I got a bit careless,” he said equally quietly, but Gibbs saw that that was all it was.
“Yeah?” Gibbs reached up and touched the one on Tony’s face. “And that?”
Tony actually flinched away from Gibbs’ touch. He took a step back, and sighed and met Gibbs’ questing, concerned gaze with eyes that were dark and infinitely more tired than earlier. “I don’t… I don’t want to talk about it,” he said quietly. “Not tonight.” He swallowed. “I-” He shook his head and held out his arms to Gibbs in a gesture that was both uncharacteristic and heart-wrenching.
Gibbs moved into the embrace and tucked his arms around the other man, rubbing his thumbs in (hopefully) soothing movements along Tony’s back. “Okay,” he murmured. “Okay.” He brushed a kiss against Tony’s hair. “Let’s get some sleep, hmm?”
Tony pressed a very gentle kiss to Gibbs’ throat. “Yeah,” he mumbled. “Haven’t slept properly in… months…”
Gibbs tugged him toward the bed. “Me neither.”
***
It’s five twenty. In a little while Gibbs will have to get out of bed and go to work, but for now he can lie here and watch. He strokes gently through Tony’s hair and the younger man lets out a deep sigh that would probably have been a hum of pleasure if Tony had been awake. Gibbs smiles. It’s been so long…
Reluctantly he gets out of bed, knowing that waiting for the discordant shrill of the alarm will only mean Tony waking up too, and Gibbs can see he needs the sleep. Which is weird, because Tony can get by on less sleep than almost anyone Gibbs knows (Abby excepted), and it’s one more thing they can thank the FBI for.
He dresses quietly, slips downstairs for coffee, and comes back to the bedroom for his watch. He can’t resist brushing a kiss to Tony’s forehead when he actually has to leave. Of course, Tony being Tony, this wakes him up, slightly.
“Mm,” he says, eyes at half mast. “You lea’ing?”
“Yeah,” Gibbs says softly, carding his fingers through Tony’s hair, brushing it back a little. “I’ll tell Abby you said hi.”
Tony gives a sleepy smile. “Mm,” he says again. “Cook dinner, if you like…”
Gibbs’ lips twist into a grin. “You don’t need to,” he says. “Plenty of stuff in the fridge.” He pats Tony’s cheek. “Just… sleep. You need the rest.”
“Okay…” And just like that, Tony is asleep again. Gibbs tucks the covers a little more securely round him, and twitches the curtains shut so the morning sun won’t hit Tony in the face. He pauses at the door, looking at Tony for a long moment before he leaves.
-fin-
Title: Essence
Author: Maya
Genre: Slash
Rating: G
Summary: The essence of emotion isn't something you can label.
Word Count: 2024
Prompt: "Friendship is Love without his wings!"
Author's Notes: Not betaed, for which I apologise. Also, I think this turned out to be a lot more random than I intended. *cringes*
Tony
Tony, not-sleeping at his desk. Tony, engaging in an impossibly meandering conversation with the bartender and coming back with an almost full description of their fugitive, from the location of his stepfather’s farmhouse to his favourite brand of whiskey to his last girlfriend’s favourite song.
Tony, gorging on Cap’n Crunch at half past seven in the evening. Tony playing Bob Dylan, very badly, on a borrowed harmonica. Tony, trying to explain the nuances of some movie or other to Ziva, eyes shining and hands flying all over the place. Tony, watching Gibbs with a small amused smile, until Gibbs snaps “What?” and Tony shakes his head, even as the smile widens to a full-blown grin.
Tony after a bad case, singing show jingles, his face wreathed in big smiles that don’t reach his eyes. Tony, getting in Gibbs’ face and telling him that Gibbs isn’t going alone unless he intends to walk through Tony. Tony, talking about his car.
Tony, still in dogged pursuit of their slime ball of a witness, right hand clamped over bleeding left arm. Tony, taking Abby out for ice-cream after a bad day. Tony, feigning shock at McGee coming up with a good idea. Tony, vociferously enumerating McGee’s good qualities to the Director after McGee has gone home, chastised and crushed. Tony, nicking pens from Gibbs’ desk for no reason that Gibbs can fathom. Tony, subsisting through thirty-six hour days on donuts, candy bars and seemingly inexhaustible reserves of energy. Tony, making bad jokes to get the team to laugh in the middle of a long case - even if they’re laughing at him.
Tony, standing up to Gibbs when the rest of the team is giving him a wide berth. Tony laughing. Tony spending his birthday evening watching black-and-whites and not talking. Tony loudly denouncing McGee’s taste in music.
Tony facing down an armed suspect with an empty gun and fire in his eyes. Tony throwing pillows at Gibbs. Tony eating ice-cream. Tony snarking at McGee. Tony, asleep, lying on his stomach and spread over three-fourths of the bed.
Tony - well, not quite, but enough to begin with.
Relief
Gibbs’ phone bleated and he lunged for it. “Gibbs,” he said briskly.
“There was a third guy, Boss.” McGee sounded out of breath. “He was in the basement.” He paused. “He, uh, he ran.”
Gibbs ground his teeth and refrained from sending a volley of curses down the phone. So much for FBI surveillance. “DiNozzo gone after him?” he asked instead.
“Yeah, Boss.” Suddenly, very clearly, in the background, Gibbs heard gunshots. McGee hung up abruptly, but not before Gibbs heard him say, distinctly, “Shit! Tony!”
Gibbs called him back seven times, but he wouldn’t answer, and Gibbs waited in horrible suspense for another two minutes until Tony called himself, to tell Gibbs that their surprise houseguest was the brother (now that was unexpected) and to add, petulantly, that his jacket was ruined forever.
Gibbs wanted so badly to smack Tony upside the head for that.
And in the naked light I saw
Tony knows it’s a little clichéd, and that he’s probably not the first person to do this, but he likes watching Gibbs work on his boat. At first that was all he did, watch, because somehow the silence with which Gibbs worked seemed to demand it. Tony would sit on the third-from-last step of the basement stairs, sometimes with food or drink and sometimes without, and watch in silence as the tension of the day sliced away from Gibbs with every stroke of the sanding block. He never said much, perhaps because he felt he was already intruding enough on Gibbs’ private space.
But then he got comfortable with being there, and Gibbs got used to having him there, and now Tony sits on the third-from-last step of the basement stairs just to spend time with Gibbs. Even now, though, when he talks to Gibbs - about work, about the team, about sport, about Tony’s paranoid neighbour - he almost subconsciously pitches his voice a little lower than usual.
He can’t help thinking of the boat as an extension of Gibbs’ personality, and he knows that’s a little clichéd too. But the wood seems to glow a little in the dim light, looking its best in the yellowish tint - rather like Gibbs, who looks his most relaxed, his calmest, down here in the basement. Tony even fancies that he can see Gibbs’ taut physique in the boat’s bare, slender frame.
Tony wonders how Gibbs sees his boat. The strokes of the sanding block are as good as caresses, and the look on Gibbs’ face, tightly focussed yet almost… tender… it makes Tony catch his breath sometimes, when he gets a full view of Gibbs’ face. So Tony has a fairly good idea what place the boat and its predecessors had in Gibbs’ life for the past how-many-ever years, especially because Gibbs gets that look at other times: with children; with cats; and, when he thinks Tony’s asleep, with Tony.
Tony has come to appreciate the silence he was once almost afraid to break.
Date
Tony was still grinning when McGee came back with Gibbs’ coffee. He set the cup on Gibbs’ desk, and returned to his own desk and the search that would hopefully have turned up something by now. When he looked up Tony was still looking like his birthday had come early, so he finally gave in and asked.
“Tony? Uh, what are you grinning about?”
Tony’s grin, if possible, got even wider, but he only shook his head and went back to his work. McGee frowned. Now that was unusual - Tony was usually only too ready to spread the joy around, even when it made no difference to anyone but himself.
The mystery only deepened when Gibbs walked in and paid no attention to Tony’s obvious cheerfulness - well, that was normal enough. The little half-smile that Gibbs was sporting, however, was not. And McGee didn’t think it had all that much to do with the (surely lukewarm by now) coffee on Gibbs’ desk.
McGee watched the two of them banter that day, and wondered if they knew something he didn’t.
Lightening
Tony watched Gibbs from his desk. Damn it, he hated these cases, the cases that brought back just enough shadows from Gibbs’ past to remind him of the shadows he couldn’t remember. He bit his lip and watched as Gibbs hammered at his keyboard doing heaven alone knows what, his face tight.
Finally, after he’d watched Gibbs assault his keyboard for about half an hour, he decided that enough was enough, and walked over to Gibbs’ desk. He planted himself in front of the computer, where Gibbs would see him despite the seemingly blinkered gaze focussed on the monitor. “Gibbs, go home,” he said gently, trying to make it sound like an eminently sensible suggestion.
Gibbs, predictably, went on pounding at his keyboard without giving any indication that he’d heard. Tony sighed and went to stand at Gibbs’ side. Three years ago he would felt like he was taking his life in his hands, but he’d learnt a thing or two about Leroy Jethro Gibbs since then - like sometimes the man didn’t understand the concept of letting go, even if it was only for a night, to preserve his own sanity.
Tony grasped the arms of Gibbs’ chair, and swivelled the thing around, so that Gibbs’ hand scraped along the keyboard, leaving a scattering of rubbish on the screen. Gibbs fixed him with a glare and a tightening of the jaw that anyone at NCIS would tell you was a Very Bad Thing.
Tony didn’t even flinch. “There’s nothing you can do anymore, Gibbs,” he said softly. “We’ve closed the case. You need to sleep.” The angry blue gaze didn’t soften a jot. Tony sighed. “Get some sleep. You’ll work better tomorrow morning. C’mon, Gibbs…” Close up, Tony could see the tired creases around Gibbs’ eyes, see the tension in the stiffness of his neck, as if everything would disintegrate around him if he let go. Tony surreptitiously moved one hand from the armrest to give Gibbs’ hand a gentle squeeze.
Gibbs just looked at him for a while, and then he visibly capitulated, sagging slightly in the chair. He nodded, closing his eyes and pinching the bridge of his nose. “It’s just… if I go home I won’t get any sleep. And if I’m not going to sleep I may as well be here.”
“Hey.” Tony dredged up a grin for him. “You underestimate me.” He waggled his eyebrows.
Gibbs answered the grin seemingly almost against his will, but he shook his head and turned back to the computer, saving his work and powering down. Tony stepped back and watched as Gibbs retrieved his bag and straightened out the stuff on his desk. “You can indulge your OCD tomorrow, Gibbs,” he said, a little impatiently. Gibbs looked up and gave Tony another glare - the harmless kind this time. “I do not have OCD, DiNozzo,” he groused, as he and Tony made their way to the elevator. “Not everyone is as much of a slob as you are.”
Tony laughed and responded in kind as they stepped into the elevator, away from the dark shadows of the squad room. The sounds of their voices and Tony’s teasing laughter died away as the elevator doors slid shut.
Wings
The room is still dark when Tony wakes up, stray breezes curling in at the window that Tony can feel skimming lightly over his hair. He knows he doesn’t need to be up for a while yet - they’re not on call this weekend - and considering the way this last horrible week has drained him, he should probably catch up on his sleep.
He doesn’t go back to sleep, however. It isn’t often that he can indulge in a whole night with Gibbs - he’s usually up and out somewhere between three and four in the morning, driving almost half-asleep back to his apartment, and trying to catch a couple of hours’ sleep there, alone, in a bed that is too cold and too big.
He can count on - well, not one hand, maybe three - the number of times they have woken up together, eaten breakfast together, fought over the paper… he smiles a little, breath hushing out in a satisfied sigh, because this is going to be one of those times.
And before morning comes there is this - a warm arm round his waist; soft breathing against his shoulder; the comfort of the lean, strong body at his back; silver hair brushing, and just shy of tickling, the skin of his neck.
Gibbs shifts in his sleep, and his lips brush against Tony’s skin. Tony closes his eyes and lets himself drown in the sudden rush of affection for the man spooned up behind him, affection he’s felt almost since they first started working together, since he first thought that maybe he’d found more than just a boss who trusted his abilities - that maybe he’d found a friend. Found… kinship. Maybe even more than that.
Maybe a lot more than that.
Eventually Tony will drop off and Gibbs will wake up before him (as usual) the next morning. Tony will open his eyes to sunlight; Gibbs, head propped up on an arm, will be watching him with that mixture of amusement and fondness and warmth that Tony loves. He will give Tony a wry ‘good morning’ and a soft kiss, and then they will argue about who makes breakfast.
They will fix that leaky faucet whose dripdripdrip costs Gibbs (so he claims) many nights’ sleep. They will go running in the evening. They will cook dinner. They will fall asleep on the couch, because they really have had a rough week. Gibbs will wake up, and he will drag Tony up to the bedroom. Where Tony will decide he’s not sleepy in the least.
But that’s tomorrow, and for now Tony just looks forward to it, lying in a warm bed with Gibbs’ arm wrapped around him and feeling, just for the moment, like he has everything.
Hope you like.
Author: Maya
Genre: Slash
Rating: PG
Summary: It had been a long day.
Word Count: 2243
Prompt: The Wake Up Call
Author's Notes: Thanks to lucifers_toy for the beta. And to crimsonquills, teddibear and nilahasi for the Gibbs/Tony-A-Thon itself.
The door swung open and the living room light came on with a soft click. Gibbs shut the door behind him and leaned against it wearily. It had been a long day.
He let himself sag against the door for all of a few seconds before pulling off his coat and wrapping it over the hanger, slotting his shoes in line with the others, and stowing his gun and badge in the drawer of the low table by the door, and then marching into the kitchen and straight to the fridge. He pulled out vegetables and stacked them in piles on the counter, before he found a cutting board and a knife and attacked the piles one after another.
Half an hour later a stew had taken more or less taken shape, and was simmering gently in the too-big saucepan. Gibbs spooned it out as soon as it was ready, and carried it, steaming and too hot to eat, over to the table. He didn’t actually get more that half of it down, and put the rest away, alongside the leftovers from last night, and the night before, and Tuesday. At least he hadn’t cooked on Wednesday, choosing to eat Monday’s leftovers instead.
And it was still only ten twenty.
Gibbs took the stairs two at a time up to the bedroom, where he changed into sweats and a T-shirt, and descended into the living room armed with a rag and a frown that boded ill for the very few dusty surfaces in the room. After he’d finished wiping down all the surfaces that needed it, as well as all the surfaces that didn’t (there were a lot more of those) he sat down on the couch for a minute, staring at the door to the basement before he shook his head and headed back upstairs to the bedroom where there were clothes he could fold and put away.
In the bedroom, he noted the time (five to eleven) before dragging the laundry basket over to the bed and folding shirts and pants and towels and stacking them into neat piles, and if the piles had to be perfectly stacked and look like they’d come out of a mould, that was something Gibbs found very easy to ignore.
He picked up the pile of T-shirts, took it over to a drawer and began putting them away, still in piles whose organisation made perfect sense to him no matter what anyone else might think. Picking up a grey T-shirt, he lifted a couple on top of the pile to place the grey one under them.
And then the T-shirts fell unheeded to the floor, because the shirt underneath was Tony’s.
Gibbs found himself kneeling by the drawer, hands gripping the sides tightly, staring at the shirt. Not too many of Tony’s clothes had made it over to Gibbs’ place; they hadn’t been - well, whatever they were - for too long. A month, maybe? Yeah, about that long. Not long enough.
He did not reach into the drawer to pull out Tony’s shirt and do anything ridiculous like smell it: for one thing it would smell more like detergent than Tony, and for another thing Gibbs had no trouble remembering what Tony smelled like. No trouble at all.
Gibbs pushed the drawer gently shut and sat down heavily with his back against it, ignoring the shirts he’d dropped on the floor and closing his eyes. Six months. Six months.
Six months since he’d last seen Tony; six months since Fornell had asked for the man who was easily the best undercover agent at NCIS; six months since Gibbs had raged and railed and made his displeasure known in no uncertain terms, and tried and failed - failed! - to somehow insinuate NCIS into whatever operation it was, and tried - and failed again - to extract a promise that he would be updated on Tony’s situation (too sensitive, Fornell had said); six months since Gibbs had gripped Tony by the shoulders, surely hard enough to bruise, and locked eyes with him and told him that he’d better watch his six or there’d be hell to pay and Gibbs would absolutely hold Tony responsible if he went and got shot or cracked his skull open; six months since Tony had met his desperate gaze and said, very gently, that he’d be fine.
Six months since he’d last seen Tony. God.
For the first two months he’d been (perhaps) more abrasive to the rest of the team; he’d sought refuge by grousing to Abby, staying at work as late as he could, and working on the boat while trying to ignore the fact that Tony wasn’t sitting at the foot of the basement stairs, snarking or making conversation or just watching. Fornell was still being infuriatingly obdurate, never telling him anything other than Tony’s fine, Tony’s all right, which, sorry, Gibbs didn’t trust because he didn’t exactly trust Fornell’s version of fine. And Abby not being able to ‘find out’ where - and how - Tony was had only made Gibbs even more pissed off, because Abby could find anything, and how bad was this, how deep was Tony if even Abby couldn’t pull anything for him?
When the two months turned into three, four, five, and there was still no word from Tony, Gibbs’ relative composure dissolved, and became a spike of fear every time he looked at Tony’s desk and Tony wasn’t there, or when he couldn’t feel Tony at his left when they went on a raid, or when he woke up at three fifteen and Tony wasn’t pulling on his pants and whispering apologies for waking Gibbs up, but they had to work in the morning. He stopped spending his nights in the basement, because the feeling of Tony’s absence was so powerful that working on the boat was becoming painful.
Gibbs thought about Abby telling him he was panicking in slow motion, and smiled humourlessly. If he could just know he’d be able to regain some measure of composure and content himself with snarking at people and drinking a little (a lot) more coffee every day till Tony was back.
Or not. Maybe he just needed to see Tony again. Gibbs screwed up his eyes fiercely, and then opened them, blinking rapidly a few times. He wasn’t going to get much rest, but he knew perfectly well that he needed to sleep if he wanted to function effectively, and he was not going to let any case get short shrift because he didn’t know how to take care of himself.
He pushed himself off the floor, put the shirts away (not without running his fingertips over Tony’s shirt, surreptitiously, as if someone were watching), put the rest of the folded clothes away, and went to bed. And slept, sort of.
***
Gibbs’ first thought was what the fuck?, and then who the fuck? as the pounding on his door grew louder. He half-rolled out of bed, noted the time (one fifteen) and made his way as quietly as possible out of the bedroom, towards the door and the drawer where he kept his gun. Halfway down the stairs he stopped dead.
Shannon… Shannon telling him she hated to be woken up at night by the doorbell only because she never knew if it would be someone come to tell her that something had happened to Gibbs.
No. No, it’s got nothing to do with Tony and I’m being an ass and I should just go and see who the hell that is and flay them for waking me up. Because Tony’s ‘fine’, after all.
When he finally got to the door he didn’t pull out his gun after all, just stood and listened, and then he grasped the door handle and turned it and opened the door and stopped breathing.
Because it was Tony.
Tony, standing at Gibbs’ door and smiling slightly. “Your doorbell doesn’t work, Gibbs.” Then he shut up and just looked at Gibbs, and Gibbs looked back for all of three seconds before he reached out and grabbed Tony’s arm and hauled the man through the door and into his arms. And just held him there, tightly enough for it to probably hurt, but Tony didn’t seem to care because he was holding on tighter still, face pressed against Gibbs’ shoulder so that Gibbs could feel his breath across the skin of his neck, and Tony was here. Gibbs closed his eyes and buried his nose in Tony’s hair and breathed in the scent he’d tried to recall for so long, and so often, that the memory had worn threadbare. Tony made a small muffled noise and tried to burrow into Gibbs and Gibbs’ hands were finally moving, reaching behind Tony to shut the door before pulling away, very slightly but just enough to lift Tony’s head and frame the face with his hands, his hands that were shaking just a little because Gibbs was shaking. Just a little.
And then, finally, he said, “Tony.” And it was all he wanted to say really, just to reaffirm that he was here.
A small smile curled Tony’s lips. “Gibbs,” he returned, in a voice that sounded as shaky as Gibbs’.
He was much thinner - almost gaunt, really; the cheekbones were more prominent. There was a tired look in his eyes, and a small scar on his right cheek, that hadn’t been there when he’d left. Gibbs felt like he’d lived years since then, and Tony looked it.
Tony had been working an undercover op for the FBI for six months.
“Tony,” Gibbs said at last, “how… I mean, you’re…”
Tony smiled, a little sheepishly. “It’s -it’s over. I got into DC a little over an hour ago. I…” - and here he couldn’t quite meet Gibbs’ eyes - “I wanted to - I mean, I wanted to see you…” he trailed off, as if he was only now realising that it was late and that Gibbs had probably been asleep. He bit his lip. “I, uh, I sort of missed you.”
Gibbs pulled him into another hug. “Yeah,” he said quietly. “Me too.” He let himself smile, a little. “You have no idea,” he added softly. Another muffled sound from Tony.
They stood there clinging to each other in the hallway, Tony brushing tiny kisses against Gibbs’ neck and Gibbs just soaking in the feeling, the presence of Tony against him, until he realised that Tony had looked exhausted, and that he wasn’t exactly fresh himself. He disentangled them, took Tony’s hand and led him up to the bedroom.
While Tony was getting rid of his pants Gibbs saw another scar, a larger one, on his shoulder. “What happened?” he asked quietly, brushing his fingers against it.
Tony shrugged. “I got a bit careless,” he said equally quietly, but Gibbs saw that that was all it was.
“Yeah?” Gibbs reached up and touched the one on Tony’s face. “And that?”
Tony actually flinched away from Gibbs’ touch. He took a step back, and sighed and met Gibbs’ questing, concerned gaze with eyes that were dark and infinitely more tired than earlier. “I don’t… I don’t want to talk about it,” he said quietly. “Not tonight.” He swallowed. “I-” He shook his head and held out his arms to Gibbs in a gesture that was both uncharacteristic and heart-wrenching.
Gibbs moved into the embrace and tucked his arms around the other man, rubbing his thumbs in (hopefully) soothing movements along Tony’s back. “Okay,” he murmured. “Okay.” He brushed a kiss against Tony’s hair. “Let’s get some sleep, hmm?”
Tony pressed a very gentle kiss to Gibbs’ throat. “Yeah,” he mumbled. “Haven’t slept properly in… months…”
Gibbs tugged him toward the bed. “Me neither.”
***
It’s five twenty. In a little while Gibbs will have to get out of bed and go to work, but for now he can lie here and watch. He strokes gently through Tony’s hair and the younger man lets out a deep sigh that would probably have been a hum of pleasure if Tony had been awake. Gibbs smiles. It’s been so long…
Reluctantly he gets out of bed, knowing that waiting for the discordant shrill of the alarm will only mean Tony waking up too, and Gibbs can see he needs the sleep. Which is weird, because Tony can get by on less sleep than almost anyone Gibbs knows (Abby excepted), and it’s one more thing they can thank the FBI for.
He dresses quietly, slips downstairs for coffee, and comes back to the bedroom for his watch. He can’t resist brushing a kiss to Tony’s forehead when he actually has to leave. Of course, Tony being Tony, this wakes him up, slightly.
“Mm,” he says, eyes at half mast. “You lea’ing?”
“Yeah,” Gibbs says softly, carding his fingers through Tony’s hair, brushing it back a little. “I’ll tell Abby you said hi.”
Tony gives a sleepy smile. “Mm,” he says again. “Cook dinner, if you like…”
Gibbs’ lips twist into a grin. “You don’t need to,” he says. “Plenty of stuff in the fridge.” He pats Tony’s cheek. “Just… sleep. You need the rest.”
“Okay…” And just like that, Tony is asleep again. Gibbs tucks the covers a little more securely round him, and twitches the curtains shut so the morning sun won’t hit Tony in the face. He pauses at the door, looking at Tony for a long moment before he leaves.
-fin-
Title: Essence
Author: Maya
Genre: Slash
Rating: G
Summary: The essence of emotion isn't something you can label.
Word Count: 2024
Prompt: "Friendship is Love without his wings!"
Author's Notes: Not betaed, for which I apologise. Also, I think this turned out to be a lot more random than I intended. *cringes*
Tony
Tony, not-sleeping at his desk. Tony, engaging in an impossibly meandering conversation with the bartender and coming back with an almost full description of their fugitive, from the location of his stepfather’s farmhouse to his favourite brand of whiskey to his last girlfriend’s favourite song.
Tony, gorging on Cap’n Crunch at half past seven in the evening. Tony playing Bob Dylan, very badly, on a borrowed harmonica. Tony, trying to explain the nuances of some movie or other to Ziva, eyes shining and hands flying all over the place. Tony, watching Gibbs with a small amused smile, until Gibbs snaps “What?” and Tony shakes his head, even as the smile widens to a full-blown grin.
Tony after a bad case, singing show jingles, his face wreathed in big smiles that don’t reach his eyes. Tony, getting in Gibbs’ face and telling him that Gibbs isn’t going alone unless he intends to walk through Tony. Tony, talking about his car.
Tony, still in dogged pursuit of their slime ball of a witness, right hand clamped over bleeding left arm. Tony, taking Abby out for ice-cream after a bad day. Tony, feigning shock at McGee coming up with a good idea. Tony, vociferously enumerating McGee’s good qualities to the Director after McGee has gone home, chastised and crushed. Tony, nicking pens from Gibbs’ desk for no reason that Gibbs can fathom. Tony, subsisting through thirty-six hour days on donuts, candy bars and seemingly inexhaustible reserves of energy. Tony, making bad jokes to get the team to laugh in the middle of a long case - even if they’re laughing at him.
Tony, standing up to Gibbs when the rest of the team is giving him a wide berth. Tony laughing. Tony spending his birthday evening watching black-and-whites and not talking. Tony loudly denouncing McGee’s taste in music.
Tony facing down an armed suspect with an empty gun and fire in his eyes. Tony throwing pillows at Gibbs. Tony eating ice-cream. Tony snarking at McGee. Tony, asleep, lying on his stomach and spread over three-fourths of the bed.
Tony - well, not quite, but enough to begin with.
Relief
Gibbs’ phone bleated and he lunged for it. “Gibbs,” he said briskly.
“There was a third guy, Boss.” McGee sounded out of breath. “He was in the basement.” He paused. “He, uh, he ran.”
Gibbs ground his teeth and refrained from sending a volley of curses down the phone. So much for FBI surveillance. “DiNozzo gone after him?” he asked instead.
“Yeah, Boss.” Suddenly, very clearly, in the background, Gibbs heard gunshots. McGee hung up abruptly, but not before Gibbs heard him say, distinctly, “Shit! Tony!”
Gibbs called him back seven times, but he wouldn’t answer, and Gibbs waited in horrible suspense for another two minutes until Tony called himself, to tell Gibbs that their surprise houseguest was the brother (now that was unexpected) and to add, petulantly, that his jacket was ruined forever.
Gibbs wanted so badly to smack Tony upside the head for that.
And in the naked light I saw
Tony knows it’s a little clichéd, and that he’s probably not the first person to do this, but he likes watching Gibbs work on his boat. At first that was all he did, watch, because somehow the silence with which Gibbs worked seemed to demand it. Tony would sit on the third-from-last step of the basement stairs, sometimes with food or drink and sometimes without, and watch in silence as the tension of the day sliced away from Gibbs with every stroke of the sanding block. He never said much, perhaps because he felt he was already intruding enough on Gibbs’ private space.
But then he got comfortable with being there, and Gibbs got used to having him there, and now Tony sits on the third-from-last step of the basement stairs just to spend time with Gibbs. Even now, though, when he talks to Gibbs - about work, about the team, about sport, about Tony’s paranoid neighbour - he almost subconsciously pitches his voice a little lower than usual.
He can’t help thinking of the boat as an extension of Gibbs’ personality, and he knows that’s a little clichéd too. But the wood seems to glow a little in the dim light, looking its best in the yellowish tint - rather like Gibbs, who looks his most relaxed, his calmest, down here in the basement. Tony even fancies that he can see Gibbs’ taut physique in the boat’s bare, slender frame.
Tony wonders how Gibbs sees his boat. The strokes of the sanding block are as good as caresses, and the look on Gibbs’ face, tightly focussed yet almost… tender… it makes Tony catch his breath sometimes, when he gets a full view of Gibbs’ face. So Tony has a fairly good idea what place the boat and its predecessors had in Gibbs’ life for the past how-many-ever years, especially because Gibbs gets that look at other times: with children; with cats; and, when he thinks Tony’s asleep, with Tony.
Tony has come to appreciate the silence he was once almost afraid to break.
Date
Tony was still grinning when McGee came back with Gibbs’ coffee. He set the cup on Gibbs’ desk, and returned to his own desk and the search that would hopefully have turned up something by now. When he looked up Tony was still looking like his birthday had come early, so he finally gave in and asked.
“Tony? Uh, what are you grinning about?”
Tony’s grin, if possible, got even wider, but he only shook his head and went back to his work. McGee frowned. Now that was unusual - Tony was usually only too ready to spread the joy around, even when it made no difference to anyone but himself.
The mystery only deepened when Gibbs walked in and paid no attention to Tony’s obvious cheerfulness - well, that was normal enough. The little half-smile that Gibbs was sporting, however, was not. And McGee didn’t think it had all that much to do with the (surely lukewarm by now) coffee on Gibbs’ desk.
McGee watched the two of them banter that day, and wondered if they knew something he didn’t.
Lightening
Tony watched Gibbs from his desk. Damn it, he hated these cases, the cases that brought back just enough shadows from Gibbs’ past to remind him of the shadows he couldn’t remember. He bit his lip and watched as Gibbs hammered at his keyboard doing heaven alone knows what, his face tight.
Finally, after he’d watched Gibbs assault his keyboard for about half an hour, he decided that enough was enough, and walked over to Gibbs’ desk. He planted himself in front of the computer, where Gibbs would see him despite the seemingly blinkered gaze focussed on the monitor. “Gibbs, go home,” he said gently, trying to make it sound like an eminently sensible suggestion.
Gibbs, predictably, went on pounding at his keyboard without giving any indication that he’d heard. Tony sighed and went to stand at Gibbs’ side. Three years ago he would felt like he was taking his life in his hands, but he’d learnt a thing or two about Leroy Jethro Gibbs since then - like sometimes the man didn’t understand the concept of letting go, even if it was only for a night, to preserve his own sanity.
Tony grasped the arms of Gibbs’ chair, and swivelled the thing around, so that Gibbs’ hand scraped along the keyboard, leaving a scattering of rubbish on the screen. Gibbs fixed him with a glare and a tightening of the jaw that anyone at NCIS would tell you was a Very Bad Thing.
Tony didn’t even flinch. “There’s nothing you can do anymore, Gibbs,” he said softly. “We’ve closed the case. You need to sleep.” The angry blue gaze didn’t soften a jot. Tony sighed. “Get some sleep. You’ll work better tomorrow morning. C’mon, Gibbs…” Close up, Tony could see the tired creases around Gibbs’ eyes, see the tension in the stiffness of his neck, as if everything would disintegrate around him if he let go. Tony surreptitiously moved one hand from the armrest to give Gibbs’ hand a gentle squeeze.
Gibbs just looked at him for a while, and then he visibly capitulated, sagging slightly in the chair. He nodded, closing his eyes and pinching the bridge of his nose. “It’s just… if I go home I won’t get any sleep. And if I’m not going to sleep I may as well be here.”
“Hey.” Tony dredged up a grin for him. “You underestimate me.” He waggled his eyebrows.
Gibbs answered the grin seemingly almost against his will, but he shook his head and turned back to the computer, saving his work and powering down. Tony stepped back and watched as Gibbs retrieved his bag and straightened out the stuff on his desk. “You can indulge your OCD tomorrow, Gibbs,” he said, a little impatiently. Gibbs looked up and gave Tony another glare - the harmless kind this time. “I do not have OCD, DiNozzo,” he groused, as he and Tony made their way to the elevator. “Not everyone is as much of a slob as you are.”
Tony laughed and responded in kind as they stepped into the elevator, away from the dark shadows of the squad room. The sounds of their voices and Tony’s teasing laughter died away as the elevator doors slid shut.
Wings
The room is still dark when Tony wakes up, stray breezes curling in at the window that Tony can feel skimming lightly over his hair. He knows he doesn’t need to be up for a while yet - they’re not on call this weekend - and considering the way this last horrible week has drained him, he should probably catch up on his sleep.
He doesn’t go back to sleep, however. It isn’t often that he can indulge in a whole night with Gibbs - he’s usually up and out somewhere between three and four in the morning, driving almost half-asleep back to his apartment, and trying to catch a couple of hours’ sleep there, alone, in a bed that is too cold and too big.
He can count on - well, not one hand, maybe three - the number of times they have woken up together, eaten breakfast together, fought over the paper… he smiles a little, breath hushing out in a satisfied sigh, because this is going to be one of those times.
And before morning comes there is this - a warm arm round his waist; soft breathing against his shoulder; the comfort of the lean, strong body at his back; silver hair brushing, and just shy of tickling, the skin of his neck.
Gibbs shifts in his sleep, and his lips brush against Tony’s skin. Tony closes his eyes and lets himself drown in the sudden rush of affection for the man spooned up behind him, affection he’s felt almost since they first started working together, since he first thought that maybe he’d found more than just a boss who trusted his abilities - that maybe he’d found a friend. Found… kinship. Maybe even more than that.
Maybe a lot more than that.
Eventually Tony will drop off and Gibbs will wake up before him (as usual) the next morning. Tony will open his eyes to sunlight; Gibbs, head propped up on an arm, will be watching him with that mixture of amusement and fondness and warmth that Tony loves. He will give Tony a wry ‘good morning’ and a soft kiss, and then they will argue about who makes breakfast.
They will fix that leaky faucet whose dripdripdrip costs Gibbs (so he claims) many nights’ sleep. They will go running in the evening. They will cook dinner. They will fall asleep on the couch, because they really have had a rough week. Gibbs will wake up, and he will drag Tony up to the bedroom. Where Tony will decide he’s not sleepy in the least.
But that’s tomorrow, and for now Tony just looks forward to it, lying in a warm bed with Gibbs’ arm wrapped around him and feeling, just for the moment, like he has everything.
Hope you like.