Too Late - 2: Jethro
Author's Note: This is a fic I wrote a while back, a little before "Bounce" aired that was reflecting my dislike about the direction the show was taking in regards to Tony and Ziva. It is pure angst in four parts, though there is definitely a ray of sunlight at the end.
With the second chapter, I was just trying to get into Gibb's mindset here and this reflects one of my gripes about "Bounce" (which I actually kind of liked) - the fact that both Ziva and McGee screwed up big time on that investigation yet seemed perfectly content to let Tony take all of the blame for it.
And this is quite obviously AU.
Jethro didn’t know what to do.
It was an unusual feeling for him. Usually, in every facet of life, he followed his gut and made a snap decision without giving much if any thought to what the ramifications might be down the road. It was better to seek forgiveness than ask permission anyway. Rule 18.
The problem troubling him at the moment, however, was one that he didn’t know how to address properly without having a conversation he desperately wanted to avoid. If he didn’t act soon, he suspected there was a very good chance that, in the very near future, he would lose the best senior field agent he’d ever had. Tony was displaying all of the signs of someone considering a permanent change of scenery, and Jethro had spent far too long turning him into a good agent to let him go yet. I’m not training a partner, he’d once told Ducky while explaining why he put up with so many of DiNozzo’s foibles, I’m training a replacement.
Tommy Lee Jones, the old Tony would have said, Men in Black. Good flick, Boss.
Draining the last of his coffee, Gibbs tossed the empty cup into the trash can beside his desk and pretended to look at the monitor before him. As discreetly as he could manage, he studied the profile of the young man he’d grown to love like a son and wondered exactly what the hell was going on in Tony’s head. Jethro knew the angst revolved around Ziva somehow and the awkward distance that had sprung up between the two, a distance the thrice-divorced Gibbs recognized all too well.
Tony was silent today, his attention tightly focused on the large stack of case files before him. All were old cases that DiNozzo had closed during Jethro’s Mexican … sabbatical, and Tony was studying them as if they held the secrets of the universe in them. It wasn’t a surprise - the discovery that the team had screwed the pooch with the Renny Grant investigation several weeks earlier had hit DiNozzo hard, and he appeared to have spent all of his off-duty time double and triple-checking their old cases to make sure that he hadn’t made another careless mistake. A flash of anger swelled within Jethro’s belly and to his surprise, it was all directed toward the late Jenny Shepard; would Tony have screwed up on the investigation if he hadn’t been distracted by that damned Benoit operation?
Somehow, Gibbs doubted it.
Even more frustrating, though, was the fact that none of the other members of the team seemed to really notice or even care about any potential errors they may have made. During the Grant investigation, it hadn’t escaped Jethro’s notice that Tony accepted the responsibility for any and all mistakes made, despite the fact that it had been a team effort. DiNozzo had clearly taken to heart the old maxim that the team got the credit for successes and the leader took the blame for the errors. Never before had Jethro been quite as proud of his surrogate son as he had been in those moment.
Ziva’s phone rang, and Gibbs could see Tony immediately tense. The perpetual scowl DiNozzo had taken to wearing in recent weeks darkened as she answered it and began speaking softly in Hebrew. It was a short conversation - barely a minute long - but somehow managed to utterly destroy Tony’s concentration.
Jethro sighed. Since Ziva’s return from Israel several months ago, there had been a steadily increasing tension between the two partners, an invisible discomfort that was made even worse by Ziva’s rather obvious attempts to put distance between herself and DiNozzo and establish a more professional relationship. At first, Gibbs had thought that the two might have been violating his ‘no dating co-workers’ rule and were trying to hide it from him, but the lingering anger and hurt he could see in Tony’s eyes every time Ziva rebuffed or flatly ignored his attempts to interact outside work had convinced him otherwise. DiNozzo’s obvious assumption that she was romantically involved with someone in Mossad matched Jethro’s gut feelings on the matter, but the younger man’s reaction surprised him.
To Gibbs’ surprise, Tony had followed her lead, abandoning his usual attempts to pry private information out of her. Their banter, something Jethro had actually grown to enjoy listening to when they weren’t supposed to be focusing on an investigation, had dwindled away to almost nothing. Occasionally, Tony would make a half-hearted effort to engage Ziva in a conversation that wasn’t work-related, and just as rarely, she might make an equally unenthusiastic response, but for the most part, they worked in tense silence.
And Jethro hated it.
In recent weeks, DiNozzo hadn’t even bothered making the effort to be more than simply cordial to his partner. He spoke to her only when he had to and had started addressing her as ‘Officer David’ instead of Zee-vah or ‘my ninja’ or any of the other ridiculous nicknames he’d come up with over the years. Tony even stopped correcting her grammatical errors and no longer complained when Jethro increasingly teamed her with McGee, a conscious decision Gibbs made to avoid the distractions that always seemed to accompany the two these days.
The rest of the team clearly didn’t know how to respond. McGee tried to soldier on, to pretend like there wasn’t a six ton invisible elephant in the room, and his interactions with the two remained fairly positive for the most part. DiNozzo still razzed the junior agent, though not as often or as frequently as before, and Ziva continued to treat Tim like a younger brother, but Gibbs had overheard several of McGee’s conversations with Abby about the problem. His own discussions with the forensic specialist - or, more accurately, her comments to him - were far more elucidating.
“Tony’s got the same look in his eye that Stan had before he left,” Abby had mentioned several days earlier. “You can’t let him leave too!”
This is why dating a co-worker always ends badly, Jethro groused to himself. He knew that was being too hard on them - as far as he could tell, the only time David and DiNozzo had even kissed was on that undercover mission years ago - but it was impossible not to notice the emotions involved. Ziva had, oddly enough, been the easier of the two to read. Her worry over Tony during the Benoit op had been there for anyone to see, and the jealous pain that glinted in her eyes every time she watched DiNozzo speak to his girlfriend had actually caused Gibbs to wince. She’d recovered quickly once discovering it was a mission, and Jethro had seen a glint of sympathy in her expression when she realized Tony had fallen in love with his assignment, prompting Gibbs to wonder if she’d had a similar experience during her Mossad career. And when they’d retrieved DiNozzo from his agent afloat status, she’d been positively giddy. Since then, though, something had happened … although in retrospect, Jethro could see she had been different even before Tony rejoined the team.
As usual, Tony had been difficult to read, something Gibbs chalked up to DiNozzo’s dysfunctional and probably abusive upbringing. There was no denying that the younger agent had feelings for his partner, but it wasn’t until Ziva’s near death experience with a serial killer and her subsequent - and inexplicable - refusal to allow DiNozzo to aid her that Jethro got a glimpse of just how deep those feelings went. These days, though, Tony’s eyes were so flat and cold that he barely resembled the cocky frat boy who had first joined the team so long ago, and Gibbs had finally realized what the problem was.
Looking at Tony was like looking in a mirror.
Throughout the rest of the day, Gibbs quietly watched his team work as he struggled to find a solution that didn’t involve breaking up the best investigative unit he’d ever had. With no major crimes on the docket, they were able to focus on the ever-present backlog of paperwork. By lunch, McGee was done with his paperwork and fled to Abby’s lab under the flimsiest of pretexts, though whether it was to hide from the uncomfortable bullpen or to flirt with the forensic specialist Jethro didn’t know or care. Ziva said little that wasn’t work related all day, and didn’t bother to hide her eagerness to get out of the building once Gibbs dismissed them. Tony, on the other hand, continued to work.
“I said go home, DiNozzo,” Jethro repeated a full ten minutes after the rest of the team had left. Tony hadn’t budged from where he sat, intently studying a forensics report.
“In a minute, Boss,” the younger man replied. He didn’t glance up.
“It’s Friday,” Gibbs said, deciding to take a different approach. “Shouldn’t you have a date or something?” That was another troubling thing: anymore, DiNozzo barely mentioned a social life, and if the afterhours recordings of the bullpen were any indication, he didn’t have one. For a serial monogamist like Tony, it screamed to be noticed.
“Not tonight,” DiNozzo said absently. He closed the file he was reading, placed it on a particular stack, and reached for another. Jethro frowned, considered, and decided to take the bull by the horns.
“Is everything all right, Tony?” he asked softly.
“Not really, Boss,” came an equally soft response. Finally, DiNozzo looked up and met Jethro’s eyes. When the hell did he get so old? “But I’ll get over it, one way or the other.” Tony’s eyes returned to the report before him, and Gibbs exhaled in silent frustration. He stood there for a moment later, wondering how he could engage the younger man in conversation and possibly draw out a confession, but ultimately abandoned the notion. If there was one thing Jethro knew, it was that he sucked at emotional connections; the loss of Shannon and Kelly saw to that.
“If you need to talk,” he said hesitantly, “about anything, my door is always open.” Tony nodded, but didn’t look up, and Gibbs started to turn toward the elevator. As he did, he caught a glimpse of the background on DiNozzo’s monitor and recognized it at once.
It was Rota.
Jethro sighed and wondered if it was already too late.