Author: Revanche
Disclaimer: Navy NCIS is owned by CBS, or at least TPTB.
Rating: PG-13
Feedback: As always, would be much appreciated.
Spoilers: 2 x 17, or possibly 2 x 19. The one with Paraguay . . .
Tony's good at not falling apart.
In Mexico City the lights whirl and flash, pinpricks of white-hot life against the smoke-tinged sky and sea beyond. In Mexico City they have hotels with air conditioning and terraces overlooking genteel streets. They have Hermes and Christian Dior and nightclubs frequented by A-list celebrities. In Mexico City, he's heard, if you can survive the smog, you can have a damned good time.
But they're not in Mexico City, which might explain a lot. They're not even in Mexico. They're in Paraguay, capital of absolutely nothing, where there might be night life but he can't go outside because the chance of getting shot, stabbed, or otherwise killed for the contents of his wallet, or just because he's a gringo completely out of his element, is exponentially high. It's midnight and he's stuck in this crummy hotel, watching the blades of the ceiling fan circle too slowly, and their flight's not for another eight hours. He wonders if Gibbs thought he was doing them a favor by letting them stay for the night or if he just couldn't arrange a flight out sooner.
So they caught a crime-ring leader with pedophile tendencies, saved a woman's life, and then found that as a result of bureaucracy and sleight-of-hand, the scumbag was going to walk free. A little while later, said scumbag's brains were spattered across the road, already attracting flies, and Gibbs had been unusually terse, explaining hardly anything. Like why or how or who, any of which would have been nice. McGee, attempting to play peacemaker, hadn't done much better in the few seconds before Gibbs cut him off and ended the call all together. And now he's waiting, trying to appreciate not having to do anything for a few hours, the chance to just be still, and it's not working very well at all.
He wants to sleep, he really does, to take advantage of the next few hours and because there's nothing else he can do, but every time he closes his eyes he remembers how badly he wishes that he'd been the one to pull the trigger and the resulting heady combo of adrenaline and rage makes sleeping really, really difficult. So he breathes this stale miasma of stale air, humidity, flesh-on-flesh, that seeps in around the window, and cheap, incredibly bad Mexican -- Paraguayan -- beer and tries not to think about what this will mean. The reassigning of priorities, new enemies -- going home's going to be hell, and somehow, he thinks, it'll still be better than this. The television plays black and white soap operas and static. It doesn't get anything other than these foreign-language tragedies, their words incomprehensible but the actors' expressions universal. He knows. He's tried.
The wallpaper, such as it is, is peeling, faded and stained. He wonders who else has stayed in the room. Who's died here, probably. He's lying fully-clothed on the bed, the sweat on his shirt long since cooled, because of a not-entirely-irrational fear about what may be living in the linens. He envisions Kate next door, wearing silk pajamas and applying something fruity and green to her face in the interest of wrinkle-free skin and vigorous whatever the hell it is. They didn't talk much on the way to the hotel, because there wasn't much to say. The important stuff happened in Purcell's room, knowing that she had his back, and at headquarters, when he saw his disgust mirrored in her eyes. There's nothing you can really say after that, because "awful" and "terrible" and "unfair" don't even come close to explaining the wrongness. He's an adult and he's not naive and he knows that bad things happen, that shit happens, but that doesn't make it any better.
He crosses his arms behind his head, feels the cheap cloth scratching at his skin and remembers the first kid case he worked. It'd been cold, some dark December day, frost beading the windows and his breath crystallizing in the air. He'd broken down the door with his infinitely-more-experienced partner, experienced true revulsion as he cuffed the guy, greasy, sweat-slick skin twisting in his grip. He remembers how hard it had been to just cuff him, to read him his rights and not shoot him there, claim self-defense to his superiors. He remembers this, and he remembers turning around to find Harris standing over the cot. He remembers seeing, for the first and only time, the guy who'd practically taught him the art of black humor standing there with tears in his eyes because Christ, she was only eight years old and nobody should have to go through that, no matter what their age, but she was only eight and she'd liked baseball, and the destruction, the perversion, was so utterly complete and so incredibly final.
There's no satisfaction after those cases, he thinks. Just regret. Sadness and disgust and some really bad nights followed by blinding sunrises. Tonight -- this morning --, he thinks, is probably going to be one of those, but he's finding it hard to do anything to avoid that eventuality.
Tomorrow will be better, he decides, because it has to be. It's right now, the immediate aftermath, that's killing him.
He sighs, closes his eyes and reaches for the bottle he's left uncapped on the bedside table. His hand brushes against something that's certainly not made of glass -- it crawls away from him, antennae tickling his skin -- and he flinches, jerks his hand away and sends everything else on the table crashing to the floor. He opens his eyes, sits up and surveys the damage.
Well. At least they probably won't charge for the stain. They probably won't even notice it. He frowns at the thankfully-intact remainder of the six-pack, considers the amount of effort it'll take to clean them up, and realizes that he's got nothing else to do, anyway. The television fizzes with canned laughter and tinny music. Either somebody's about to die or about to get laid, and he really can't convince himself to be interested in finding out. There's something about knowing the real thing, being familiar with real drama and blood and death, that makes the cheap, fake stuff hurt his stomach. It's different with movies, actual films with high production costs and special effects, in which the consequences, if not exactly realistic, at least exist. In which truth, however glossy, can be found.
Soap operas, on the other hand, bother him. It's worse when he can't even understand what they're saying.
He's about to collapse back onto his bed and try again to sleep when someone raps at his door. He considers the possibilities -- good guys, bad guys, lost tourists, ha -- and decides that the odds are probably in his favor. At least it'll give him something to do.
He opens the door and she's standing there, still wearing the clothes she wore when she disembarked from the plane, and her hair's pulled up, loose strands falling into her eyes. He raises an eyebrow and she shrugs. "Can't sleep, either?" she asks.
"Why? You looking for late-night company?" he asks, but his heart's not really in it. There's a kind of desolation in her eyes, in the slump of her shoulders, that he recognizes, that's too familiar. Not a man-woman thing, a cop-cop thing. And it occurs to him that she was Secret Service and he doesn't know what she did before that, and this is very possibly one of her very first kid cases, and she's got nowhere else to go.
She rolls her eyes. "Lamp in my room's broken. I've been sitting in the dark."
He steps aside, gestures grandly for her to come inside. "I'm lucky, then. Light and the adventures of Manuela Dolores Reyes de Martinez and her array of companions."
"What?" she says, and then she notices the television. "Oh. Sex and intrigue suddenly not your thing, Tony?"
And he can't think of anything to say, then, because he can't tell her what he's been thinking, because he won't, and he doesn't trust himself to say anything else. Miss Can't-Be-Any-Worse-Than-This, you'd think she'd get it. In the background, the music swells. Something really dramatic and absurd is happening, and after what's happened today, he suddenly can't tolerate it. He reaches over to switch off the set and in the sudden quiet, they stare at each other for a long minute. He doesn't think he needs to explain, but this silence, expanding, is deadly.
"Ah," he says, searching for something to say and coming up with absolutely nothing. "Drink?" he asks finally, and she raises an eyebrow.
"You know, I've heard that people actually come here on vacation," she says, reaching for one of the newly-aligned bottles. "Funny."
"Probably get 'em on the technically-tropics thing," he says. "They just forget to mention the lack of clean beaches, sparkling oceans, hotels, hygiene . . ."
She smiles -- he thinks it's a smile, but it could be a wince -- and takes a draw. A swell of raucous laughter outside the window and he glances at his watch, wondering if he's got enough cash on hand to convince the pilot to take them home a few hours earlier.
"In the Secret Service," she says and he's not sure if he's glad that she's talking to him, or annoyed. Not in the mood for another when-I-was-elite story. "We never had to worry about that. Just about terrorists, people trying to kill the president. Whackos with stolen weapons and subscriptions to Anarchists Weekly."
And he's not sure what to say to that, because somehow he doesn't think she's joking. Congratulate her on her naivete or say that he's seen it before, worked on the streets as opposed to in the luxury of private jets and luxury suites? "You don't get used to it," he says finally, because it's true.
"Good," she says with more emotion than he'd expected. "People like that . . . they don't deserve . . ."
And this time he really doesn't want her to continue, doesn't want to hear another Catholic story. Turn-the-other-cheek, with bonus guilt and violence. "He didn't," he says shortly.
"Yeah." She sits on the edge of his bed and, not seeing any alternative, he lowers himself into the dangerously rickety chair.
"Another seven hours," he says, more by way of making conversation than to actually inform her.
"God." She closes her eyes. "He'd better not consider this a vacation," she says suddenly.
"I doubt even Gibbs'd be that cruel," he says. She chuckles, opens her eyes.
"We can hope, anyway."
"Yeah." He wonders what Gibbs is doing. If he's looking at the clock every other minute, waiting for them to come home, or if he's lost in some boat-making trance, just glad to be home and out of the office. He hopes it's the latter, just because there's been enough misery today, but he thinks it's more likely a combination of the two.
She bites her lip, rolls the bottle between her hands. "Any idea who it was?" she asks quietly.
"Not a clue. Don't think Gibbs knows, either."
"He'll find out," she says.
"Oh, well," he says. "Things have been slow, lately, anyway. He's probably missed being obsessed."
"Right," she says. "Right . . ." She looks away and he devotes all of his attention to trying not to remember how bad it got the last time, with Ari. How much he'd wished that Gibbs would focus on anything else, anything at all. Trying not to remember this because he knows that it won't make a difference and he's got to make the best of it. There's nothing else to do.
Seems to be the story of his life, lately. The really-nice-in-a-geeky-way guy turns out to be a murderer and Tony kills him, but the important thing is that he caught a killer and he's supposed to take pride in this. Learn that somebody high up in the government knew about a child prostitution ring, catch the guy who was running it, let him go and then find out that he was killed, and that's supposed to make this all okay, too. Worth it.
"It's not fair," she says quietly.
"Life's a bitch," he agrees, because there's no point in explaining it to her and he's pretty sure she already knows, anyway. It's just that she's never had to worry about talking about it, using non-pretty, non-technical words to describe the crude things that make up real life. The psych they had her talking to after she killed the ensign a few months ago probably had her write in a journal, say affirmations, let her open up about her innermost feelings. Made her feel special and unique, which was probably really important at the time, but that's neither here nor there, and what matters is that she's not. They all do this. All go through this. It's a love-hate relationship and completely necessary, and she's going to learn that, eventually.
"And then you die?" she asks. She hums in thought, takes another draw from the bottle and then sets in on the nightstand. "See you in a few hours," she says, rising from the bed just as he stands, and the room's small enough that there's less than a foot of space between them and he's suddenly very aware of the sweat along her collarbone, the faint, still-lingering scent of her perfume, and the fact that he's not at all steady on his feet.
She swallows and he remembers why they're here, blue eyes burning in his mind as all of the other ghosts, desecrated bodies, moth-eaten and heavy, reawaken, fingers clawing at the edges. He suddenly remembers why he bribed the manager, why Lisa told him that she was never, ever going to date a cop again, why he's spent the night doing his best to actively not think about anything at all, anything that's not stupid and mundane and irrelevant. He knows what can happen, what will happen, and he knows what'll happen after that, too.
But she's looking like she could go either way and if he's not drunk, he's certainly past buzzed, and he knows that no matter what, he's got to play the grownup here.
"Don't let the bedbugs bite," he says, and her smile is shaky as she turns and heads for the door. It clicks closed behind her, not locking because the lock doesn't work and no one with stuff worth stealing would probably stay here, anyway, and he lets out a deep breath and takes her place on the edge of the bed, reclines slowly until he's flat on his back, and remembers what Harris told him, a long, long time ago.
You don't do it for yourself. You do it so that the other guys don't have to. So somebody else's kid gets to go to all her games.
And then he remembers that two months later, they found Harris in his apartment, service revolver near the body. The place had been clean. You work enough scenes, you start to learn what's efficient. How to make it easier for the people who come after.
Outside, lights blur and bobble in the slight wind that starts, the sick stirring of hot air. It's morning, but still dark, so he can pretend that it'll all be okay in a few hours. Pretend that he's slept, hide behind dark glasses, pretend that he'll miss the tropics. He closes his eyes and tries not to think. Tries to make the sleeping part a reality, and as he finally succeeds, he can't help but wonder how bad it'll be next time.
Now, though, he's escaping from the heat and this stifling stillness, all the wrong things that have happened today, the mistakes. But there's one that he didn't make, and he's glad, because he's tired of consequences.
And he knows that in Mexico City they have glamour and life, but here, there are only sultry nights and metallic-scented death, and all of it can change in an instant, bullet-quick, ballistic micro-seconds, and all they have is now, anyway. Now, comprised of everything that's happened in the past, and right before he slips away, he thinks that the people who say live in the now are wrong. You've got to live in the future, just past everything that's happened, all the people who couldn't save. All the times you were too late.
And then the thought is lost to dreams and he doesn't remember it in the morning. This is probably a good thing; he doesn't need any more regrets.
xxxxx
The End