In the Line of Duty by Rainne

[xdawnfirex]

Title: In The Line of Duty
Fandom: NCIS
Characters: Team, Kate/Tony
Prompt: Whump
Word Count: 7640
Rating: Teen for violence
Summary: He discovered when he took her limp hand that he could not conceive of a world that did not have Kate Todd in it.
Author's Notes: Everything I know about anatomy and physiology I learned on the internets. Please to be suspending disbelief if I screwed anything up.
---


1.

It was a sight-and-sound combination that Tony DiNozzo would never forget as long as he lived.

Their suspect had been long gone by the time they arrived at his apartment with a search warrant, and Gibbs had sent his two junior agents in to canvass the neighbors for any kind of information they could get about the suspect’s possible whereabouts. It was a four-unit complex, suspect on the downstairs, so they swung upstairs first to see if anyone was home. Tony took the left-hand apartment and Kate took the right.

They knocked on the doors simultaneously, the percussive sound of knuckles on wood echoing in the concrete stairwell. Tony glanced behind him at Kate as he listened for sounds in the apartment before him. There were none; in all likelihood, at two in the afternoon on a Tuesday, the occupant was gone to work.

Kate had a bit more luck: a male voice from the other side of the door called out to her. “Who’s there?”

“Special Agent Todd,” Kate replied, holding up her badge and ID where they could be seen through the peephole. “NCIS. I’d like to ask you a couple of questions about one of your neighbors, if you have a moment.”

“You a cop?” the man’s voice asked suspiciously.

“Yes, sir,” Kate replied, “as I said, I want to ask you about -”

And that was as far as she got. The chain on the door rattled, the deadbolt clunked, the door swung open, and the sound of gunfire exploded in Tony’s ears. Time seemed to stop as he watched the force of the blast knock Kate off her feet and across the breezeway to slam into the opposite wall, leaving a trail of blood behind as she slid down to the floor.

He had his gun in his hand, a bullet through the shooter’s face, before he even knew that he had reacted. Gibbs came up the stairs at a full run, shouting into his phone that there was an agent down and emergency medical assistance was needed immediately. Tony dropped to his knees next to Kate, reached out with a shaking hand and lifted her chin up off her chest. She had to be dead; there was no way she could still be alive after that kind of hit.

Her eyes were open but glazed, and he was about to reach up and close them when she blinked and gasped his name.

Then Gibbs was there, on his knees next to Tony, pulling off his polo shirt and reaching behind her to cover the exit wound. “Tony!” he was exclaiming. “Put some pressure on!”

Tony’s mind seemed to snap back into gear at those barked words, and he pulled his own shirt off, wadding it up and applying it to the gaping hole in Kate’s midsection. “It’s gonna be okay, Kate,” he found himself saying. “You’re gonna be okay.”

It seemed like hours before the ambulance got there, though on later examination it would turn out to have only been a few minutes - minutes during which Kate’s gasps grated loud in Tony’s ears and her blood soaked through the shirts both men were holding against her. But at last they were there, and Tony and Gibbs were pushed aside in favor of trained medical personnel with actual bandages and oxygen masks and shouts about transfusions and stimulants and vasoconstrictors and gurneys.

Kate was loaded onto the ambulance, and Gibbs pushed Tony in her direction. “Go with her,” Gibbs ordered. “I’ll get things started here and meet you at the hospital.”

“On it, Boss,” Tony replied, jumping into the ambulance just as the attendant was about to close the door. The sirens were started, and Tony squeezed himself into a corner to keep out of the way of the EMTs. Kate’s eyes tracked to his face behind the oxygen and the equipment, and they never wavered until the ambulance arrived at the hospital.

She was rushed into emergency surgery and Tony made to stay behind, standing in the emergency room triage area in his undershirt, his hands stained crimson and his pants streaked rusty with her blood. He stood there, lost and bereft, staring at the doors they had taken her through, until a kind-hearted and overworked nurse directed him gently into a bathroom where he could wash up.

When he looked in the mirror, he had her blood on his face, and he leaned over and vomited in the sink. Then he soaped himself to the elbows and wiped at his cheeks so that when he saw her again, she would not see her pain writ large on his skin.

He did not see her again for six hours.

By that time, the entire team had assembled in the waiting room with him. Gibbs had handed off the crime scene to Balboa’s team, changed clothes and cleaned himself up as well as possible, though there was still a rust-colored spot in his hair that he had missed. Abby had brought Tony a set of clean clothes from the filing cabinet next to his desk; he changed into them and threw the bloodstained garments in the trash. Ducky brought coffee; he drank it without tasting it, and without taking his eyes off the doors they had taken Kate away through.

A nurse had come out three different times at two-hour intervals, updating first him and then all of them on Kate’s condition. She had flatlined twice on the operating table, but the doctors had been able to revive her both times. One of her lungs had collapsed, but the doctors had been able to reinflate it. The bullet had missed all of her major organs and her spinal cord, though it had managed to nick one of her vertebrae, which would mean that she would spend some time in a wheelchair until the bone was completely healed.

She would live. She would speak. She would eventually walk. She would eventually return to work. She would not be awake for a few hours, but they could see her now if they liked, one at a time.

Gibbs went first, because Gibbs always went first. He stayed in her room for ten minutes, and what passed between him and her unconscious form would never be known to any of them.

Abby went next, and when she came out five minutes later, her face was streaked with tears. Ducky followed her, checked her charts and examined the readings on the instruments attached to her. He came out with the firm expression on his face that said everything would be fine eventually.

Tony went last, and when he entered the darkened room, at first all he could see was her pain-glazed eyes looking up at him when he thought she was dead, and all he could hear was her rasping voice saying “Tony” as she struggled to breathe. Then he blinked and shook his head, and he saw her lying there on the bed, looking pale and small in her hospital gown, an IV in her hand and a breathing tube down her throat. The steady beep of the heart monitor reassured him of her continued existence as he approached her bedside, and he discovered when he took her limp hand that he could not conceive of a world that did not have Kate Todd in it.

He sat down next to her bed, her right hand in his right hand, and reached up with his left to smooth back her hair. “You’re gonna be okay, Kate,” he said softly. “All the doctors say so, and Ducky says so, and so does Gibbs. And you know how he gets when we don’t jump if he says to. So you better wake up soon, because he wants your report.” He swallowed hard, stroking her pale hand with his fingers. “I thought you were dead,” he whispered. “When you said my name… I thought you were dead. You can’t die on me, Kate. Who would I tell movie scenarios to, or throw food at when Gibbs isn’t looking?”

That he was babbling pointlessly occurred to him. He didn’t really care. He sat there anyway, speaking in a low voice, remembering cases they had worked together, lunches they had shared, times they had teased each other. That he was weeping did not occur to him until his voice broke as he recalled the time Ari Haswari had held her hostage with Ducky and Gerald in Autopsy. He had feared that she might die then, too.

When his voice broke, so did the dam holding in his emotions, and he laid his head down on the side of her bed and wept like a child, clutching her hand like his only lifeline and begging her to wake up, to speak to him, to be all right.

Within moments, Abby was by his side, helping him out of the chair and leading him out into the hallway. Gibbs took his place in the chair and Abby drew Tony by the hand down the sterile hallway and out the double doors, down in the elevator and then out through the lobby and into the humid August night.

There was a picnic table not far away from the doors and that was where she took him, sitting on the table and drawing him down next to her, holding him tightly and letting him spend his pain on her shoulder. When his breathing finally calmed, she sat him back up and wiped at his eyes with a lace-edged handkerchief she drew from her sleeve like a magician. Then she looked up into his eyes, searching them for something, and she smiled when she found it. “You’re in love with her,” Abby said, and suddenly Tony’s world made sense.

2.

When Kate woke, she was disoriented and hurting and there was something in her mouth that was making it hard to breathe. She raised one hand and grabbed clumsily at her throat, trying to swallow and only succeeding in gagging herself. She reached for the plastic in her mouth and was stopped short by a hand that grabbed her own, pulling it away. “Don’t,” she heard a familiar voice say. “Abby, go get the nurse.”

Kate blinked two or three times and when her vision cleared, she realized she was looking up at Tony DiNozzo, standing next to her and looking like the fourth level of hell. His eyes were bloodshot and underscored with dark circles that testified to his lack of sleep. She frowned and tried to speak, but he squeezed her hand. “Don’t try to talk yet,” he said softly.

A moment later, he was pushed away from the bed by the arrival of two nurses, one of whom removed the plastic tube while the other held a towel for Kate to cough into. They asked her for her name, the date, the name of the President, and her telephone number before being certain that she knew who and when she was and bustling out again to page her doctor. Tony came back up to the bed, and she turned to him. “What happened?” she asked, her voice harsh from the intrusion of the breathing tube.

“You got shot,” he said softly. “Do you remember? The guy upstairs from our suspect?”

Kate shook her head. “Why?”

“He had three kilos of coke stacked in his bedroom,” Tony explained. “We went upstairs to ask around about our guy, and he must have thought you were there to bust him. He opened the door and shot you point-blank.”

“Get him?”

Tony nodded once, his face grim. “I got him. Shot him right in his damn face.”

“Good,” she said fiercely, and he grinned at her. Then they were interrupted again by the arrival of the doctor.

Dr. Powers was taller than Tony, broad-shouldered, with skin the color of Gibbs’s coffee, sparkling eyes and unbelievably white teeth. He came in with a broad grin on his face and went through the usual aren’t-we-a-lucky-girl rigmarole before getting down to business. “You are going to be very sore for a very long time, and very restricted for longer,” he said honestly, his face turning serious. He read Kate’s chart to her, explaining the details of the injuries she’d suffered as well as the surgical complications.

“We’ve put you in a back brace,” he told her. “You’ll wear it day and night until I say you can take it off. You’ll also sit in a wheelchair until I say you can get up. And if you don’t agree to do exactly what I tell you to do until and unless I say you can do otherwise, I won’t release you from the hospital until you’ve made a full recovery. Are we clear?”

She blinked at him. “Your bedside manner could use some work.”

He grinned again. “You’re not my first cop, Agent Todd. I know how thick you people’s heads are. If I didn’t lay it out to you straight, you’d try to be out chasing perps again before I took the stitches out.” He glanced up at one of the machines when it beeped, then turned back to her.

Kate grinned then. “Kate,” she corrected him. “And you’re probably right.”

“I know I’m right,” Dr. Powers responded. He pointed one long finger at Kate. “Now, are you gonna do what I tell you? I didn’t spend six hours elbow-deep in your abdominal cavity just to have you stroll out of here and keel over in the street.”

“She’ll do it, or she’ll answer to me,” Gibbs’s voice spoke from the doorway. He entered the room, hands in his pockets, followed by Abby and Ducky, who were each carrying huge bouquets of flowers. Gibbs strolled up to the other side of the bed and Gave Kate his most intimidating glare. “Won’t you?”

Kate grinned up at him. “You don’t fool me,” she stated. “I’ve been shot.”

Gibbs raised an eyebrow. “And that negates you following orders how?”

“I don’t have to do anything I don’t want to do if I get shot. That’s the rule.”

Tony blinked. Gibbs’s other eyebrow climbed up to join the first one. “Since when?”

“Rule a hunnert’n forty-shree,” Kate replied, her eyes starting to glaze. “Got it onna pillar.”

Dr. Powers cleared his throat, looking highly amused. “You might want to ignore her at this point,” he suggested. “Her morphine drip kicked about a minute ago. You could be God right now and she wouldn’t know it.”

“High as a kite,” Kate cheerfully agreed. Then her eyes closed and her breathing evened out.

Tony grinned across the bed at Gibbs. “I’d give a million bucks for video of the last five minutes.”

“You and everybody else,” Abby agreed from across the room.

Dr. Powers replaced Kate’s chart in the slot at the end of her bed. “Does she have anybody to help her out when she gets out?” he asked. “Her mobility’s gonna be seriously restricted for the next couple of months, especially while she’s in the chair.”

“Yes,” Tony said promptly. “She does.”

Gibbs raised one eyebrow slightly but said nothing to Tony, only nodded at the doctor. “She’s got all of us,” he said, “and I’m sure her family would come down if she needed them to.”

“She’ll need someone,” the doctor replied, and explained. Because of the spinal damage, Kate would be in a back brace for at least four weeks. For at least the first couple weeks of that time, she would not be permitted to walk, and would perforce be restricted to a wheelchair. She would also not be able to push herself because of the stitches in her chest and back. Someone would have to be with her at all times to help her with bed, showers, using the toilet, cooking, dressing, and all sorts of other tasks that she would simply be unable to do for herself without a serious risk of self-injury.

“She’s not gonna like that,” Abby said, her expression worried as she studied Kate’s sleeping form.

“Well,” the doctor said, “if she’s showing the kind of progress I expect from a healthy young woman, she should be able to start walking again in a couple of weeks. So hopefully it won’t be too hard on her.” He looked around the room at them. “She’ll need her friends and family with her, especially at the beginning.”

“And she shall have us, dear boy,” Ducky replied, smiling.

“How long before she can come back to work?” Gibbs asked. “Understanding she’ll be on desk duty.”

The doctor cocked his head, studying Kate’s prone figure. “I’d say at least a week after she goes home, depending on how she’s feeling. Probably more like two. Desk duty only,” he stressed. “She doesn’t so much as leave the building until she’s out of the back brace and the stitches are out.”

Gibbs nodded. “She’ll want to know,” he said. “I want to be able to tell her.”

Dr. Powers nodded, then shrugged. “I’ll be back by.” He ducked out of the room then, and the team arranged themselves around the room, conversing quietly and waiting for Kate to wake up again.

Tony dozed off in his chair several times, refusing every offer to take him home to get some sleep. He wasn’t going anywhere with his partner - with Kate - in that bed. “I’m staying,” he said firmly every time Abby or Ducky suggested that he go home. Finally, Gibbs told them both to lay off him and instead to go home and get some sleep themselves.

They went reluctantly, and Gibbs looked at Tony across the bed. “DiNozzo,” he said, his voice low, “I’m gonna say this once. Don’t do anything stupid.”

Tony stared back at him and nodded. “I won’t.”

“Good.” Gibbs stood. “I’m going home, too. I’ll be back up later.”

Tony watched him leave, then turned his attention back to the still form on the bed. Gibbs’s voice rang in his ears. Don’t do anything stupid. No. He wouldn’t.

Letting her die without knowing that he really cared about her would be stupid. Having to stand over her coffin and realize that he never told her how special she was would be stupid. Spending the rest of his life bouncing from girl to girl because the one real woman he’d ever met, the one woman who never took his shit, who always stood up to him and gave as good as she got, was gone - that would be stupid.

Telling her that her brush with death had made him realize he didn’t want to spend another day without her? That was suicide.

3.

Kate’s mother flew in from Indiana the day after Kate was shot and stayed with her during the two weeks she was confined to the wheelchair. Abby dropped by Kate’s apartment on her lunch hour the day after she was released from the hospital and came back to the office to report that Kate was growing impatient, itchy and irascible - in other words, she was feeling better already. They took turns dropping by to see her, at least one of them coming to visit every day, and it happened to be Tony’s turn to visit on the Thursday afternoon that she was finally cleared to get out of the wheelchair. She answered the door when he knocked, and he utterly failed to resist the impulse to hug her carefully.

She hugged him back enthusiastically, and reported excitedly that she had been cleared to return to work - driving a desk, but anything was better than nothing - the following Monday. Her mother was reluctantly going home on Saturday. Tony pointed a finger at Kate. “You can’t drive yet,” he pointed out.

“We’ll take a cab,” Kate said in the tone of someone who is addressing a small child or an imbecile.

“Nope. I’ll come get you. We can go have late lunch after we drop your mom off.”

Kate studied him suspiciously, searching for the tease or the joke. “Why?”

He was too tired for anything but honesty. “Because I’ve barely seen you in two weeks and I’m still having trouble with you not being dead. Because I’m tired of waking up in a cold sweat from nightmares where I kneel down next to you and he’s put a hole in your head instead of your chest. Because contrary to what you may think, Katie, I actually do like you and I’d like to take you out to lunch. Okay?”

She continued to look at him as though he’d grown another head, but finally nodded. “Okay,” she drawled. “Whatever you say.”

He gave her his best shit-eating grin. “We’ll have fun.”

“Somehow, DiNozzo, I never trust anything you say with that look on your face.”

Saturday morning came quickly and Tony was at Kate’s apartment by ten-thirty, carrying her mother’s bags and doing his dead-level best to be as charming and gracious as he could. He did charming and gracious very well, if he did say so himself. He parked in the short-term parking and carried Mrs. Todd’s bags to the check-in desk. Mrs. Todd insisted that Kate sit and rest while she got her boarding pass, so when she turned to Tony after he put her bags down, Kate could see them but not hear what they were talking about.

“Caitlin has told me a great deal about you, young man,” she began, and Tony swallowed hard. He could just imagine what Kate would have said to her mother about him. Mrs. Todd studied him carefully. “I can certainly see the traits she’s mentioned. You’re quite full of yourself, aren’t you? And you’ve definitely got an inflated sense of your own attractiveness.”

Tony felt his heart sink. “Mrs. Todd, I -”

“I’m not finished, young man.” She gave him a piercing look, one that he was sure had quailed the hearts of all three of her sons. It was certainly quailing his. “I can also see a fierce loyalty in you, and reading between the lines of the things she says, I can say with a fair amount of certainty that you are probably a good man with a good heart. Caitlin is my youngest child, Anthony, and the apple of her father’s eye. I can assure you that if you hurt her, your days will be extremely short in number and miserable in existence immediately thereafter. Do I make myself clear?”

“Crystal, Mrs. Todd.”

And Mrs. Todd smiled her daughter’s shark-grin. “Please. Call me Alicia.”

Once they had seen her mother safely through security, Kate and Tony headed back to his car. “So,” he said as he helped her slide into the low-slung vehicle, “got any place in particular you want to go?”

“Hey, this is your rodeo.” Kate leaned her head against the glass of the window. “I’m just glad to be out of the house. I thought I was gonna lose my mind. Don’t get me wrong, I love my mother, but it’s gonna be very nice to go home to some peace and quiet.”

With a grin, Tony headed into Georgetown. “How does Italian suit you?”

“Ooh. I could go for some lasagna.”

“Lasagna it is, then.”

Over very good pasta, crusty bread, and superb tiramisu, Tony brought Kate up to speed on the state of affairs at the office. He gave her the details of the cases that had been worked in her absence, including the capture of the missing suspect who had indirectly gotten her shot, finishing up with “So he’s on his way to Leavenworth.”

“Good,” Kate replied fiercely. “I just wish I could’ve been there when you guys took him down.”

“Ah, don’t worry about it,” Tony replied breezily, smiling. “Gibbs bounced him off the pavement a couple times for you.”

After lunch, with Kate visibly tired but not wanting to go home yet, the two of them went out to the National Mall and sat on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, enjoying the sunshine and talking of various things. They’d been there for about an hour when Kate turned toward him, leaning back against the cool marble of the stair wall and studying his face. “Okay, spill. What’s with you?”

He blinked. “What do you mean?”

“You’re being different. You haven’t said anything stupid or irritating, and I don’t think you’ve referenced a movie once since you picked us up.”

“I can, if you want,” Tony began, grinning widely and gesturing out toward the Washington Monument. “This is just like that scene in In the Line of Fire when Clint Eastwood’s talking to Rene Russo and he says ‘I know things about pigeons, Lilly.’”

She was unimpressed. “What’s going on?”

He looked down at his hands, humor gone as suddenly as it had arrived, seeking words. Finding none there, he turned his gaze out instead at the tall obelisk visible in the reflecting pool. “I thought you were dead,” he finally said softly.

She blinked. “What?”

He turned to face her, and she thought she had never seen Tony DiNozzo look so serious before. The expression didn’t fit his face, and her heart clenched, wanting nothing more than to make him smile again. “When he shot you,” Tony explained, “the force of the gunshot threw you all the way across the breezeway and against the opposite wall. I knelt down next to you, and there was so much blood… I thought you were dead.”

She stared at him, words failing her. “Tony, I…”

“I know,” he cut her off. “But I thought… all I could see was myself standing over your coffin and knowing… I’d never told you.”

She swallowed hard. The air between them grew thick and electric as she reached forward and took his hand. “Told me what, Tony?”

He looked down at their clasped hands, then looked back up at her again, staring through her eyes and into her soul, his heart on his face for her to read plainly. “I’m in love with you, Kate.”

4.

Kate’s first reaction, immediately and ruthlessly smothered, was to laugh. It wasn’t something she could help; the entire situation was so surreal that she had the urge to check for alternate dimensions or mind control or something. Tony DiNozzo in love with her? The idea of Tony DiNozzo being in love with anyone was ludicrous. But here he was, sitting in front of her, gripping her hand like he never wanted to let go, and telling her he was in love with her.

She took a deep breath, wincing slightly when the movement of her chest pulled at her stitches. “Tony, I…” She paused, realizing she had absolutely no idea what to say, and settled for the truth. “I have absolutely no idea what to say.”

“Then don’t say anything,” Tony advised, a slight smile creeping out onto his face. “The fact that you haven’t kicked me in the nuts or laughed in my face is enough for right now.”

She bit her lip, knowing how perilously close she’d come to doing the latter, and studied him. “Tony…”

“Don’t.” He shook his head. “I mean it. Don’t say anything. I know this sort of came out of nowhere, and there’s no way you were expecting it. I mean, me of all people, right? I don’t blame you for being skeptical. Just… do you think you could be willing to, maybe, give me a chance?”

She studied his face. “You’re really serious,” she said softly, almost to herself. “Tony… what brought this on?”

He sighed. “I thought you were dead,” he repeated. “When that son of a bitch shot you… you went flying backward and hit the wall, and there was so much blood.” He shook his head. “I looked at your face, and I thought you were dead. And then you said my name. It was like somebody turned me back on.”

He sat back, running a hand through his hair. “And then I was standing there in the hospital.” He looked down at his hands, studying them like he’d never seen them before. “I had your blood on my clothes and my face and my arms, almost up to my elbows, and all I could think was it might be the last time I ever got to touch you. Your blood on my hands.”

Tony looked up at her then, his eyes haunted. Kate swallowed. He took a deep breath. “You know what’s funny? I didn’t even realize it then. It wasn’t until I broke down crying and Abby dragged me outside and made me take a break and a breath… and she’s the one who told me. Looked me in the face and said ‘You’re in love with her.’ Just like that. But as soon as she said it, I knew she was right.”

Kate made a mental note to have a very strongly worded conversation with Abby. Like her life wasn’t surreal enough already? She ran Tony’s words over in her mind again, and all unbidden, the image of him kneeling over her came into her mind. She blinked. She hadn’t been able to remember anything of being shot - her memories had stopped with going up those stairs with Tony and started again with waking up in the hospital. Now, though, she could see him kneeling over her, and the expression of anguish on his face as he raised her chin to look at her eyes.

She took another deep breath, winced again as her stitches pulled, and pulled out a small smile. “Okay, Tony,” she said softly. “You want a chance. You’ve got one.”

He blinked. “Really?”

She nodded. “Really.” She pointed a finger at him. “One.”

The undertone to her voice was very clear: Screw this up and you won’t get another. He nodded, and then smiled. “Thanks, Kate,” he said softly. “You won’t regret it.”

I hope not, she thought, smiling more broadly as the sparkle returned to his eyes. Especially when Gibbs finds out.

Then she pushed those thoughts from her mind. Today was not a day for worries; today was a day for seeing what Tony DiNozzo could do when he set his mind to dazzling a woman. She had little doubt that, if nothing else, it was going to be a wild ride. She grinned as he shifted a little closer to her, and mentally let go of the safety handle.

They sat there at the monument for another hour or so, chatting quietly about mundane things, before Tony stood. “You’re exhausted,” he stated, “and I’m taking you home. There’s no sense in wearing you out today when you’re trying to come back to work Monday.”

She made a face, but allowed him to help her stand and lead her back to his car. He stopped off on the way for takeout Thai, insisting that she would need dinner and wasn’t in any shape to be cooking yet. It was easier to give in than to argue, and she was fairly tired, so she waited in the car while he ran in and picked up the food. When he returned, the car was filled with the delicious scent of pad thai and curry. She smiled at him. “Thanks,” she said softly.

“You are welcome,” he replied, smiling back and starting the car again. When they arrived back at her apartment complex, he hurried around to help her out of the car and then gathered the food boxes from the back seat, accompanying her up in the elevator and moving to put the food in the refrigerator while she kicked her shoes off in her room and checked her answering machine. Her mother was home safe, her father was glad to hear she was mobile again, her sister wanted to know if she’d finally decided to quit that nasty job, her youngest brother was pregnant and needed a hundred bucks for an abortion. She and Tony both paused in surprise as she ran the last message back again, and then she started laughing.

“Listen,” Kate said on the third run through. “You can hear Pete in the background laughing.”

“Pete?”

Kate nodded. “His boyfriend.” She smiled slightly at the expression on Tony’s face. “What? You thought I’d be a homophobe?”

“Well, you are Catholic. Catholics aren’t famous for their tolerance.”

“I’m a Catholic who practices serial monogamy and has a very flamboyantly gay older brother,” Kate replied. “I like to consider myself a little more tolerant than maybe some other people.” Her mouth twisted slightly. “My sister, for example.”

He helped her into her favorite chair, which was cushy enough that she sank in and would need help getting out of again, then dropped onto her couch and studied her as she spoke, explaining how Ian had come out in college and their sister refused to have anything to do with him, even going so far as to pretend he wasn’t in the room if forced to interact with him at family gatherings. “It’s been really hard on my mom,” she said softly, her eyes distant as she sorted through memories he knew nothing of. “She tries really hard to keep us all bound together, but Liz just refuses to bend. She won’t even say Pete’s name; she calls him ‘Ian’s friend’ with this tone in her voice that just makes me want to slap her.”

Tony pondered that. “I guess having a big family can get pretty complicated.”

Kate nodded. “It’s hard sometimes because you have all these personalities. And I’m sure you noticed by now that none of us are the type to bend over and take anything.”

Tony laughed. “No, I kinda figured that out pretty early. If your brothers and sister are anything like you, I bet the fights get explosive.”

Kate grinned, then pointed to her entertainment center. “Go in the bottom cabinet over there, the one on the left, and get out the blue album.”

Tony obeyed, crossing the room and retrieving the album from the top of a stack of several similar albums. He shut the cabinet behind himself and brought her the album, dragging an ottoman over and sitting next to her as she opened the album. The first photograph was a family portrait of the Todd clan - and clan was a better word than family in a photograph that contained over twenty people. Kate stood on the right hand side, holding a toddler of indeterminate gender in a green coverall. She pointed to the image of herself. “That’s my nephew, Jacob. He’s Danny’s youngest.” She started on the right of the photo, pointing out brothers, sister, nieces, nephews, father, mother, uncles, aunts and cousins. By the time she was done, Tony’s head was spinning with names.

“Wow,” he said softly. “We had a family portrait hanging in the formal dining room at our house growing up, but it was just my folks and me. I think I was six or seven when it was done, ‘cause I was wearing one of those ridiculous sailor suits my mother always used to dress me in.” He put a finger to his lips, thinking. “I think my dad’s fourth wife threw it out.”

“That’s awful, Tony!” Kate’s expression was one of horror. “Why would she do that?”

Tony shrugged. “I don’t know; I was away at boarding school when she did it. I came home on the holiday, I think that was either eighth or ninth grade, and it was just gone. That kind of thing happened a lot.”

Kate frowned, then reached out and tentatively laid her hand on his shoulder. “Has anyone ever said that they’re sorry you had to go through that?”

He tilted his head slightly, studying her face. “No, I don’t think so.”

“Well, I am.” She squeezed his shoulder gently. “Nobody should have to go through something like that, especially a kid.”

He smiled slightly. “Thanks,” he said softly, then deliberately turned back to her photo album. “So, what else you got in here? Any incriminating pictures of a naked Katie on a bearskin rug?”

“My mother has all those,” Kate replied, laughing, and turned the page. “But this one’s from my senior prom, and you can feel free to make fun of my very 80s hair.”

5.

The next months passed in an odd combination of whirlwind speed and mind-gnawing slowness. Kate returned on that Monday as planned, under strict orders from her doctor and Gibbs to do desk work only. They kept a covert eye on her, looking for signs of fatigue and overwork, and around one that afternoon, she bit Gibbs’s head off for suggesting that she might consider making it an early day.

At six that evening, Tony lifted her out of her chair and carried her to his car because she was too tired and in too much pain to stand and walk. She did not come to work Tuesday, but she did come in for half a day Wednesday. On Thursday she made it to five o’clock and had to be helped to stand, but was able to walk on her own. On Friday she stood up by herself with only the slightest of grimaces.

A week after that she came in without the back brace. Another week later and the stitches came out. Two more weeks and she was making an appointment for her physical to be cleared for active duty. On Friday of the ninth week after she was shot, she brought Gibbs her health certification like a child bringing its first perfect spelling test home for its parents to exclaim over. He and Tony took her out to dinner in celebration.

Tony found himself graced with her company on at least three nights of any given week; sometimes simply by virtue of the fact that he was the one taking her home and then, after she started driving herself again, because she had discovered much to her surprise and chagrin that she liked spending time with him when he wasn’t actively trying to be an asshole.

That he could be captivating and charming was something she already knew. What she did not know was that he could also be sincere and sensitive. She did not know that, under the frat-boy persona, there actually lurked a decent and caring man who simply chose not to expose himself to the possibility of pain and rejection on a daily basis. Somewhere around the fifteenth week of what had become their relationship, she was lying on the couch, her head on his thigh and his fingers combing through her hair when she commented on this fact.

He grinned down at her. “I always had layers, Katie-girl,” he told her in his soft voice. “You just never looked for them before.”

“You never gave me much of a reason to,” she replied reasonably.

He paused in his movements, cocking his head slightly in thought, and shrugged with one shoulder. “You’re probably right,” he allowed. “Maybe I ought to thank that drug dealer for opening my eyes.”

She sat up, kneeling on the couch next to him, and framed his face with her hands before leaning in for a kiss. “Maybe,” she said with a teasing grin. “But there had to be a better way to go about this.”

He wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her into his lap, careful as always not to hurt her. She was still sensitive to certain types of movement, and her spine still ached when it was cold - probably always would. His hands rubbed up and down her back, warming the skin there under her tank top. “I’m sure there was,” he agreed, “but however it happened, I’m glad it finally did.”

She kissed him again. “You’re so different now,” she commented. “And I don’t think it’ll surprise you if I say I didn’t know you had it in you.”

He shook his head. “Nope.” Then he grinned. “I don’t think it’ll surprise you if I say I didn’t know I had it in me, either.”

Kate laughed. “Nope.” She leaned forward, resting her head on his shoulder, her forehead tucking into the hollow of his neck. His arms wrapped around her, holding her close. “I think the part that surprises me the most is that you haven’t even tried to get me into bed yet.”

“If you always do what you always did, you always get what you always got.” Tony pressed a soft kiss to the crown of her head. “I don’t want what I always had with you.”

“Good thing.”

Tony knew that Gibbs was watching them with narrowed eyes. The boss had known as soon as Kate returned to the office that things had changed between her and Tony, and had taken Tony aside at the first opportunity to let him know that if things fell out badly between them and they were unable to work together, it would be Tony who would transfer off the team, and he could expect a posting in one of NCIS’s more exotic locations - like, for example, the South Pole.

Tony had no intention of letting things fall out badly between them, and not because of Gibbs’s threats. Tony wasn’t going to let Kate go. He’d almost lost her once, and his own blindness and stupidity had nearly let her go never knowing how he felt. Now that she did know, there was no way in hell he was letting go of her. She was stuck with him.

Fortunately, she seemed to be okay with that.

One Thursday five weeks after that conversation, Tony found himself in the lab alone with Abby and took advantage of the situation to slip up next to her, his back carefully to the camera, and pull a small black velvet box out of his pocket. Abby raised an eyebrow as he opened it and gasped down at the contents. “Tony! For me? I never knew you cared!”

He resisted the urge to smack her. “No, Abby. Not for you.”

She took the box and examined the contents with a critical eye, then examined him with the same. “When?”

“I’m thinking tonight.”

“Where?”

He shrugged. “We’re going out - that new place in Georgetown that’s supposed to be so good. I haven’t decided if I want to do it there and risk the public rejection or save it for private later.”

She grinned at him, her eyes sparkling wickedly. “Just between you and me and the troops, Tony, I don’t think there’s much of a risk. But you didn’t hear that from me.”

His eyes widened slightly and his face took on an almost desperate expression. “You think so?”

She winked at him, then started to turn back to her microscope as he slipped the box back into his pocket. He stopped her with a hand on her arm, pulling another box out of his other pocket. “This is for you,” he said softly. “Because you opened my eyes.” And then he was gone, leaving her staring at the box on the countertop.

She opened it slowly and stared at the contents. The necklace inside, a perfectly formed loop of barbed wire in platinum, winked up at her under the fluorescent lights. It was undoubtedly a custom order and had to have cost the earth. She let out a soft sound of joy. It was gorgeous. And for a brief moment, she allowed herself to be consumed with jealousy of Kate. Then she took her collar off and put the loop on, and went back to work.

They got out of work a little after five; Tony picked Kate up at seven, helping her into the car out of gentlemanly habit rather than necessity and complimenting her dress and her hair. She raised an eyebrow at his obvious nervousness but said nothing, simply resting her hand over his on the gearshift as was their habit.

They were early for their reservation but the maitre d’ seated them anyway and they started with a bottle of wine and a shrimp cocktail, then proceeded through the entrées and into dessert, a chocolate fudge monstrosity that had Kate bemoaning the nonexistent spread of her ass even as she dug in cheerfully. Tony’s hand strayed to his pocket three times during dinner and each time, he chickened out; finally, with dessert almost over, he decided to take Abby’s advice.

He slipped out of his chair when her attention was distracted for a moment, and when she looked back, he was kneeling next to her chair, the little velvet box open in his hand. The tables in their immediate vicinity went stone silent as her eyes widened and he spoke the words in a voice that shook. “Katie,” he whispered, “I love you. Will you marry me?”

She studied him for a very long moment, her face stony and unreadable. He felt his heart begin to crumble into little pieces under the blankness of that face before suddenly the façade broke, her eyes filled with tears and her mouth curved up into that heart-stopping smile. “Yes,” she whispered back. “Yes, Tony.” He very nearly sobbed in relief when he realized she had been teasing him, and he stretched up to kiss her hard.

When he slipped the ring on her shaking finger, the tables around them that had been so silent a moment before erupted in applause. He drew her to her feet and kissed her soundly, then wrapped his arms around her and held her tightly. “I’m never letting you go,” he whispered into her hair.

“If you try, you’ll have a fight on your hands,” she whispered back.

That night he made love to her for the first time, and when he woke in the morning, she was wrapped around him, and all was right in Tony DiNozzo’s world.

--end--