FIC: Defying Gravity, NCIS, [PG-15] Part 1/6.
Title: Defying Gravity
Genre: Gen
Pairing/Characters: Tony-centric, Team Gibbs.
Fandoms: NCIS
Rating: PG-15
Summary: Everything falls eventually, no matter how hard or high you try to throw it.
Word Count: 2,625..
***Spoiler Warning: Includes spoilers for 7x01 Truth or Consequences***
Disclaimer: NCIS characters, plot etc are the property of Bellisarius and Co. No profit is being made from this story.
Notes: This started as a series of little tags to the premiere, mainly things I noticed or thought while watching it. It quickly blew out into...a whole lot of ramble this. Warning for minor swearing and some possibly controversial views/topics as things progress. And a further word of warning - I respect that other people may not share my views on certain topics, and am happy to hear other opinions/POVs, but blatant flaming for the sake of it? Is not okay. Just in case you were wondering.
Three men step awkwardly from the plane, weary muscles protesting the hours of forced confinement. They unfold stiff limbs slowly like newborn lambs finding their feet in the outside world, away from the safety of warmth and moisture and lub-dub, lub-dub .
Tony blinks in the bright light as the world spins and refocuses into something that should be familiar but somehow is not.
His shoulder throbs to an uneven staccato beat, dull and pulsing and insistent.
There are pills in his bag but he doesn’t bother to reach for them. He doesn’t like the shades of Ace Ventura they bring out in him. Painkillers and him are like Gibbs and wives. It feels good for awhile, but in the end they’re more trouble than they’re worth.
He does not speak, because in the silence he can pretend that her voice is not missing, throaty and low and distinctive in its manner. Denial is not just a river in Egypt. There are things to be said, but there will be time for that later. Reports to make and bones to pick and hot anger to spill like blood.
Angry arrows to aim at faraway targets, short and clipped and feathered on the ends.
Why. What. When. How.
They fall short. He’s no Robin Hood, and he doubts that the Prince of Thieves could shoot an arrow across oceans, even an imaginary one. Better instead to concentrate on the throb in his shoulder and behind his eyes, rather than any fair maidens that might bear rescuing. This is the 21st century, for fuck’s sake, and maidens these days wear combat boots and a little too much eyeliner and know how to disable knights with paperclips.
Maidens can just rescue themselves, anyway. He’s done.
“Tony,” Gibbs says sharply, piercing through the red haze. “Let’s go.”
Tony nods and follows Gibbs and Vance across the tarmac like a good little soldier. Left; left; left right left. Vance is whistling tunelessly, and for a moment Tony thinks of telling him to stop, because after the buzz and hum of the plane his nerves are shot and his head is whirling. He doesn’t. Instead, he falls in line and adds his whistle to Vance’s, purposely avoiding any attempt at harmony.
He almost smiles at Gibbs’ wince.
Nobody has come to meet them, and Tony is glad of the absence of familiar faces. He doesn’t feel like putting on his jester hat just now. The Charger waits where they left it, and he slides into the backseat with eyes firmly fixed on the world outside.
He refuses to look at the empty backseat where just yesterday (or maybe the day before - all the time zone-
hopping is wreaking hell on his internal calendar) she sat in stony silence, pointedly avoiding his gaze. Ziva made her choice, and he has a right to be a little angry, just as he had a right to be suspicious of her odd behaviour before the world exploded into chaos.
She might not have intended their song to end this way - an unresolved cadence of anger and hurt and loss - but it has ended nonetheless. They hang like notes suspended in the air, waiting for a resolution. The conductor (reason and training and common sense) left the stage midway through the piece and like good little performers, they wait with instruments raised and mouths open, running out of air and desperately needing a pause, a breath, an end.
He gives in and digs through his pack for the little orange bottle, pops the top and palms the little white pills, one two three.
“Two should do it, DiNozzo,” Gibbs says from the front seat without turning his head. Which - given that he’s driving - is probably a good thing.
Tony rolls his eyes and tosses back two pills with a violent jerk of his head. Oh. Not the best idea, DiNozzo. His head thuds against the headrest. It’s not as hard as Israeli concrete, but it hurts all the same.
The pills leave a bitter taste in his mouth and slide haltingly down his desert-dry throat.
Tony watches the city streets fly by. Beside him, the empty seat reminds him of what’s missing, taunting and cold.
------------------------------
“To train ze dolphin,” he says dreamily later that night to the blue-patterned armchair in Gibbs’ lounge
room, “You must zink like ze dolphin.”
It doesn’t reply. How rude.
The end table on his right speaks instead. “Whatever he’s on, I want some.”
The table sounds suspiciously like Abby. Tony blinks, and pigtails swim into view.
“Where’s our fearless leader, Little Bo Peep?”
She stares at him with six reddened eyes, and he cowers, imagining scythes and black hooded figures and the smell of brimstone. From behind him, McGee says something that he can’t quite make out amid the roaring in his ears, and Abby nods, head bouncing then stilling abruptly like a marionette with cut strings.
“Basement,” she says after a long swirling pause. The word takes shape in the air and bursts wetly in a shower of rainbow bubbles.
“Ah, I see,” he replies, though he’s entirely not sure he does. “Looking for his lost sheep.” She sniffles and shifts closer to him, smelling of soap, tears and fruit punch.
“Something like that.”
“Do sheep drink bourbon?” Tony wonders.
Someone vaguely McGee-shaped swims into view and looks at him closely. He hands Tony a glass and his lips move but Tony’s not sure he’s hearing right. Either Timmy’s picked up some mad Spanish skills, or Tony’s going insane.
Nod and stretch lips back over teeth in a loose grin. Don’t mention the sudden linguistic switch, or that McGee’s face is spotted with green and blue. Blink and breathe and try for a joke.
He raises the glass and pretends that he meant for his hand to tremble. “Why thank you, Helpy Helperton.”
Abby sighs and chews on her bottom lip. “Come on, Ace. I’ll drive you home.”
------------------------------
His fractured bone heals slowly, until one day he wakes up surprised that it doesn’t hurt when he rolls heavily out of bed. Scars always heal. This, he’s learnt through bitter experience. Scars heal, and bones knit, and bit by bit they pick up the pieces and fall back into old rhythms.
His anger fades gradually, though sometimes in the moments before sleep claims him he imagines she’s sitting on the end of his bed, having appeared out of nowhere like she used to in the early years. Not moving, not speaking. Just watching him with her face twisted in grief and anger and betrayal.
“Don’t look at me like that,” he says one night into the empty air, sick of the spectre of her. “I did what I had to do, and I’d do it all over again.”
She doesn’t appear after that.
McGee loses his snark and starts to grow into his role as Tony’s partner. Familiar pounding beats greet them when they enter Abby’s lab, each time a little louder, and she starts to bounce again as though infected by the pulsing rhythm. Gibbs starts calling him DiNozzo again, but the head slaps remain a thing of the past, and sometimes he sits back and lets Tony take the lead. A miracle in itself.
It makes him wonder what the weather is like in Rota this time of year, and whether Gibbs is wondering if he’s wondering. Almost ten years now, and the urge to move on comes and goes occasionally, making him itch and pace and strain at his boundaries.
It doesn’t matter really whether he stays or goes, because a change of scenery doesn’t mean a change of heart. He who has spent his life running knows this too well. And yet he lingers as he passes the internal employment board, stating the vacant positions and the experience needed. Bahrain. Norfolk. Yokosuka.
Tony stays, and watches the cherry blossoms bloom and then wither on the trees.
By the time summer arrives, they’ve found their feet again, and he’s almost forgotten that once there was a patch of hair on the back of his head that never quite sat flat since he joined Gibbs’ team. Tony forgets the sound of her voice, but occasionally he catches himself messing up the odd idiom, and he’s never sure whether to smile or throw something just to hear it break.
One day he starts his usual hunt-and-peck on the keyboard and each strike of the keys sends odd noises ringing through the air. Cymbal, snare, glockenspiel. Bird whistles and car horns and the low pound of the bass drum with each vowel. McGee hovers hesitantly behind his desk, fingers suspended in nervous anticipation, and breaks into a relieved smile when Tony laughs out loud.
“You’re messing with the master, McSneaky.”
“You think I haven’t been paying attention for the last five years, Tony?”
Tony considers this. “Fair call. Now, work your geek magic and turn my funky sound machine back into a keyboard before the Boss appears.” He thinks for a minute. “And when you’re done, can you show me how to do his?”
Miracle of miracles, Gibbs laughs when he logs in to the sound of chiming bells and maracas, and for a moment Tony almost expects to hear Kate join in. That’s how long it’s been since they last dared to prank Gibbs.
The next morning, he brings donuts (more as a tribute to days gone by than a sign of things to come), and lets McGee choose first. They fall into a pattern of shared lunches and easy banter. It’s not quite the same, but if he had to choose anyone, he’d rather it be McGee watching his six. Well, other than Gibbs, obviously - but he won’t be around forever.
The desk opposite his remains empty, but somehow it doesn’t catch his eye quite as much as it used to.
---------------------------
One Wednesday afternoon McGee pokes his fork tentatively around in his rice, spearing individual grains and letting them fall, his mouth opening and closing every so often like someone’s hit the mute button.
“Spit it out, Probie,” Tony says finally, tired of waiting. The man in front of him has outgrown the taunting origins of the name, leaving something familiar and comforting behind, like broken-in shoes you just can’t bear to part with.
“We need another agent,” he blurts, avoiding Tony’s eyes. “I mean, when it’s quiet things are okay, but last week when we had those three cases at once… We need another set of hands.”
The junior agent flinches as he says the words - as if expecting an angry retort - but Tony just digs his chopsticks into his Kung Pao chicken and lets the words roll around in his head. Ziva isn’t coming back, and though he remembers the days when it was just him and Gibbs (and the long-forgotten and not missed Vivian, and later; Kate and McGee) in the bullpen, he can’t deny that the cases continue to flood in and he’s a little tired of the long days and longer nights.
Eventually he agrees; and so does Gibbs, and the search begins.
------------------------------
Tony stares at his cell phone late one night, not knowing what the time is in Israel or wherever in the world
she is and not particularly caring. He is drunk and suddenly angry and determined to give her a piece of his mind.
He thinks in this moment that if circumstances were reversed, he’d quite like to put his gun to her knee and ask her what the hell she thought she was doing, keeping secrets and sneaking around and not trusting him. If she’d come to him…
If he hadn’t gone to her, would he be sitting here now trying to remember what her voice sounded like?
He can’t quite see the numbers on the keypad through the bourbon haze, but his fingertips remember the familiar path that spells out Ziva.
Having long since given up on the awkward slippery surface of a glass, he tips the bottle up and takes a long pull, not taking his eyes off the screen. He’s aware enough to realise that he crossed the line between blissfully intoxicated and nasty toilet-hugging drunk about twenty minutes and six aborted attempts ago, but not quite aware enough to stop his finger from hitting the button with as much conviction as Rocky landing the first punch to Apollo Creed’s smug face.
The phone rings steadily, tinny and distant. Tony’ s not sure whether to be happy about that or not. A click and silence for a long beat. He doesn’t give her the chance to speak. The words bubble black and acidic from his lips, slurred and jumbled and he’s not even sure he’s speaking English at all.
And then he realizes that neither is she. He doesn’t speak Hebrew, but he does recognize the distinctive sound of a voicemail greeting. God knows he’s spent enough time listening to them - chasing up girls and chasing down leads. And other things.
It is her voice though, low and throaty and with a hint of a smirk. The beep comes before he’s ready for it, and it’s like a pin that punctures his earlier resolve. He deflates with an inaudible sigh and snaps the phone shut, staring at it for a long twisting moment before winding up and pitching it straight down the centre of the room.
Knocked it out of the fucking park, DiNozzo.
------------------------------
The guys in the supply room roll their eyes when Tony tells them what he wants the next day. He’s been down here more times than he can count in his time at NCIS. The formidable Gibbs-slap damages circuitry. It’s a proven fact.
Tony doesn’t want to consider what that might mean for his brain.
He doesn’t bother to correct them, just signs the paperwork with a shaky hand and heading for the elevator
in what he hopes isn’t an ‘I’ve been hit by the bourbon bus’ walk. He presses the button for the squad room floor and breathes out air so tainted with alcohol that if he was a smoker he’d set himself on fire trying to blow out the match.
“Hey, thanks a lot,” one of them calls as he tries to stay upright. Tony looks at Jake or John or Jim (not that it matters) with a raised eyebrow. Guy seems genuine enough. “You guys must be doin’ a bang-up job. Elevator’s been working great for weeks now.”
The doors close on Tony’s sickly grin. The world lurches and he wonders how Gibbs can stand the acidic
aftertaste of his poison of choice. Both of his poisons. The elevator creeps up through floors and he wonders if maybe the chemicals in coffee somehow neutralize the chemicals in bourbon. He’ll have to ask Abby.
Black coffee still makes him gag. Guess he’s not ready for the big leagues after all.
------------------------------
“What’d you say to her, Boss?” Tony asks weeks later, shaking out his fingers.
“You really wanna know, DiNozzo?”
He thinks about it, and decides he doesn’t really care. Joe at the security desk told him that Clare Connell fled the building, muttering about bastards and wanting cigarettes. Breaking your potential supervisor’s hand at the first interview isn’t a testament of your strength of character. It’s just bad manners.
“Guess everybody’s flappable.”
He tries not to think of Ziva as he says it. Angry eyes and tight mouth and a hint of tears. The memory doesn’t have the sting that it used to, though given the chance to give her a piece of his mind...
Probably best not to dwell on it.
The days trickle by in a swirl of bodies and crime scenes and paperwork. The chair remains empty.