Title: And the Band Kept Playing On
Author: Water-Soter
Archive: Absolutely, take, take!! Just please do contact me if you are so I'll know where you're posting it so I can add it to my author's notes.
Pairings/Main Characters: Tony and McGee mostly with bits of Abby, Gibbs, Ziva and Ducky.
Genre: H/C/Angst with a side of Humor
Series: Part 1 of 4
Feedback: Absolutely! I'm new at this, so please don't burn me at the stake. Comments, suggestions and constructive criticism are always welcomed because English is not my native language and I have several learning disabilities such as dyslexia. So please let me know if you find any mistakes. Feel free to be honest, I'm very hard to offend.
Rating/Warning: PG-13 for some disturbing imagery.
Disclaimer: I don't own any of the NCIS characters. I just love to torture them, heh.
Word Count: 12,334
Summary: Sometimes the simplest things in life are the most significant. Friendship fic.
Author's Notes: This story was a pinch-hit for the NCIS Ficathon and Diction Goddess who wanted a Tony and McGee friendship fic, with McGee helping out Tony after some sort of mishap/illness and Tony trying to figure out a way to say thanks. I'm not sure if this is what Diction had in mind, but hope you guys like it. There're spoilers for the seasons 1-5 and some for the current season. This story takes place sometime during season 5. I want to thank Val for the wonderful and fast betaing job she did, not to mention all the encouragement she gave me to finish this fic. I wouldn't have been able to do it without her (now you know who to blame!), and Greywolf Lupous for the all the hand holding. I originally had something longer planned for this, but real life got in the way. Still I hope you guys enjoy!
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The shots rang loudly in the narrow alleyway. Tony hissed sharply as the sound vibrated nastily between his outer and inner ear. He didn't move, though, and stayed wedged between the trash bin and the wall. The shadows kept him from view, but the light coming off the street lamp pinned him in place as surely as the bastard shooting somewhere above him. The thing was, he'd been lucky to have found cover at all.
Contrary to every alley south of Niagara Falls, this one was amazingly bare and clean. No weeds growing from the cracks in the concrete, no piles of garbage adorning the narrow space either visually or olfactory. Oh no, it smelled fine – no urine, no decaying whatever, no rotting food. It was unnatural. He doubted even the rats dared to trespass this unholy ground. It also gave him limited options on where to play hidey-ho from a gun toting marine.
"McGee?" He scooted closer to the edge of the garbage bin, and glanced over to check the position of the shooter and nearly got a bullet to the head for his trouble. "What's your position?"
"On the first floor and headed to the second." McGee's heavy breathing was loud over the radio. "Gibbs's here yet?"
"Still stuck somewhere in traffic." That had probably been the unluckiest thing that had happened to him since the plague. They'd found their man, but the man had also found them, him and his trusty rifle. "Watch your step up there. We don't know if this guy had a chance to set up some booby traps."
There was a pregnant pause then, "Didn't know you cared."
"I don't." He really needed to get a better fix on their suspect. "But Gibbs will have my head when he gets here and finds his probie full of holes or in multiple bits." Not to mention what he would do to Tony's other, more delicate anatomical parts.
Tony tried to peek over the top of the container and lost a nice chunk of hair in the process. Upon closer inspection – running fingers carefully through his hair – Tony only found a teeny tiny indentation in it, but nothing of catastrophic proportions. With some extra gel and the right do, it might not even be noticeable.
McGeek gave an audible swallow. Tony heard it as clearly as though he had been standing right next to him. "Do you know what floor he's on?"
Of course if McGee had been standing next to him, Tony would have head slapped him right then. "And when exactly do you think I would have figured that out, McGoo, when he blew my brains out or when I magically kept him from shooting at me long enough to get a peek at his position?" Especially since he had Tony trapped somewhere in the middle of the alley with only a trash bin between him and literally biting the bullet.
"Okay, I'll check them out on my way up." Except that Tony didn't know if they had that kind of time.
"No, go all the way up and make your way down." It was time for a change of tactics. "I'm going to try and see if I can get the gunny to give his position away."
"Tony –" He knew what McGee wanted to say before he said it, heard the words even when they weren't formed and spoken aloud.
"Let me know when you reach the roof." Tony ignored the lowly protests from his headset and checked his ammo. It wasn't the best place to do it, but Tony needed to know how many rounds he had left. He couldn't risk them running out at a critical moment. After all, he still needed to get the bastard, alive, preferably, though he doubted Gibbs would be overly disappointed if he didn't. Maybe slap him around for a bit if Tony was still breathing when this was all over and probably even if he wasn't.
The worst part of all this wasn't that the entire situation had fast forwarded into fubar territory before Tony had so much as taken a peek at the alley. Things like that happened, it was a fact of life like Gibbs' bad haircut, McGee's cheerful geekiness, Abby's Caff Pow's addiction, Ziva's slaughter of American idioms and Ducky's reminiscent anecdotes. Any cop worth his shield expected it, anticipated it. Tony hadn't and it could end up costing them.
Tony had five rounds left. It wasn't great, but hopefully enough to get the job done. He was about to move when his vibrating phone nearly gave him a heart attack. While that would have solved oh so many of his problems at the moment, he supposed fate hated him enough not to give him an easy way out.
Tony flipped the phone open; he already knew who it was without having to check the caller ID, "Hey, Boss, how's it hanging?" A bullet ricocheted from the bin to the wall, spraying little bits of bricks on Tony's head.
"What's your situation?" Gibbs asked briskly, lines of tension filtering through multiple cell towers and an ear piece.
Tony moved away from the wall and considered leaning against the bin, eyed the metal container – which much like the rest of the unnatural alley was freakishly clean – but decided against it. There was no telling if that aberration was transferable and he'd just bought the suit he had painstakingly chosen to wear today.
"Oh, you know, just pinned behind a trash bin while the gunny takes pot shots at me, though I gotta tell you, boss, I've seen sailors with better aim." Two rounds shafted the ground, this time near the mouth of the alley. What the gunny hoped to accomplish by wasting his ammo was anybody's guess. "I bet McGee could give him a run for his money."
And speaking of which, "Tony, I found him. He's on the third floor on the railing." Ah McGee; gotta love a geek with a great sense of timing.
"What's he doing, McGee?" A bullet wheezed past his head. Well that answered that question.
"Shooting at you," McGee deadpanned.
"Smart ass," Tony muttered before turning his attention back to Gibbs, "Boss, what's your ETA?"
"We're still thirty minutes out. Better not do anything to get yourselves killed before we get there, DiNozzo."
"Ah, Boss, you really know how to make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside." Another bullet went flying over his head, missing him by a mile.
"Oh you'll be feeling something, alright." With that, the line went dead.
Despite the situation, Tony felt an involuntary smile nearly split his face. "McGee!"
The answer was instantaneous if a bit muffled, "Here."
"Gibbs's ETA is about 30." There was another shot and damn it, how much ammo did that bastard have?
"Okay, what do you want me to do?" He could hear some shuffling across the radio.
"Just hold your position and keep on eye on the gunny. He makes a move, you let me know." There was yet another shot, this one banging off the thin space between the wall and the container. That was beginning to annoy the hell out of him, and not just because it restricted his every movement to a series of carefully thought-out maneuvers.
Tony waited until the next round came, before dishing out one of his own. He only had a vague idea where the gunny was, even what McGee's info. So he pointed his gun upward in the general vicinity of the third floor and fired, ducking back behind the trash bin.
"Nice shot, Tony." McGee let out, "He's moving away from the railing."
Not necessarily what he was going for, but beggars couldn't be choosers. "Is he coming inside?"
"No, but it looks like he's taking his rifle apart." The gunny shot at him again, but this round didn't have the kick or power behind it like the previous ones had. "He has a gun."
"Jeez, thanks, McGoo, wouldn't had been able to figure that out on my own!" He ducked instinctively when another round slammed on the tin, even though he was practically glued to the damn thing and there was no way the gunny could hit him at that angle. "What's he doing now, McGee?"
"You mean other than shooting at you?" He and McGee needed to have a serious little chat about when it was appropriate to sass his senior field agent. "Yes, McGee, other than shooting at me!"
"Hm." There was more shuffling on the other side of the radio and then McGee said, "He's packing away his rifle and Tony, he looks like he's ready to take off. Oh, crap. NCIS, put your hands up!" And Tony had thought for one moment his day couldn't get any worse.
Tony was breaking cover and walking backwards before his brain informed him what a very bad idea that was. The gunny was now facing McGee, his gun up and ready. Tony didn't waste time and shot once, then twice before the gunny went down on the railing. He kept his gun trained on him.
From there, he saw McGee peek out of the window, gun first then at Tony. He nodded at McGee to go on and the probie went carefully over the windowsill, arm trained on the suspect. He knelt to what Tony assumed was to check the pulse then said over the radio, "He's dead."
Tony winced. Gibbs was going to kill him, then probably bite off McGee's head as an after dinner mint. Well, his day had just gotten better.
"Um, Tony?"
"What, McGee?" Maybe he was wondering if he needed to get out of town before Gibbs showed up. Not that it would do McGoo any good. There wasn't a place on earth where Gibbs wouldn't be able to find him.
"Did the gunny have a scar on his left cheek?"
What? "No, he didn't." And some long honed instinct had him turning before the sound of a gun being cocked had him freezing in his tracks.
"It's not him, Tony, it's not him." The voice was tiny in his ear, a pathetic second to the pounding of his heart and the blood rushing through his veins. His world narrowed to that single moment and that alleyway. The click that followed was like a bomb going off next to his head. A second later, a blast of heat on his back and the freakishly clean asphalt came up and met him face on.
*O*O*O*O*O*O*O*
Timothy tried not to stumble off the railing while pulling his gun out, aiming and shooting all in a matter of seconds. He knew that was all the time he had. The first two rounds missed spectacularly, but what they lacked in aim, they more than made up for in purpose. The man's – the gunny's – attention was diverted to McGee, and away from Tony, who was impossibly still. Tim saw the gun redirect, and he emptied the rest of his clip, managing to bring down the gunny before he could to get off a single shot.
Tim didn't lower his gun even when the gunny fell and stayed down, despite knowing that his gun had no more rounds left. All he could see was the scene playing over and over, watching the gunny walk up behind Tony, whose own weapon was trained on the railing and the immediate danger as he saw it: two sharp bursts of light brighter than anything McGee had ever seen. The sound of those two shots were loud enough to deafen, bouncing all over the small, closed off space. He didn't think he would ever be able to get that image from his mind. It was fused to his retina.
Tim moved then, probably a bad idea, but Tony wasn't moving and he needed to be down there. He pulled out his phone with one hand and said, "Gibbs, Tony's been hit, and the gunny wasn't the gunny but then the gunny shot Tony and he's not moving and the gunny and the not gunny are dead."
He was out of breath when he reached the ground floor, and practically flew toward the alley. Tim didn't think he'd ever run so fast in his life, except that time when Tony was hanging floors up in that parking garage.
He reached the alley, wanting badly to go to Tony first, check, see, but he went to the gunny, Gibbs's – and ironically – Tony's voice in his head, telling him to eliminate the threat first. So he went and cautiously – his gun held firmly on the downed body – checked for a pulse, then breathing. He found neither.
McGee didn't waste any more time on him, instead practically leapt over the body and to Tony's side. Once there, he hesitated, fingers twitching near Tony's neck. He's not moving, he thought. The noise coming from his phone seemed like miles away.
"McGee! What's your status?" He blinked, and the world kinda shimmered and lost its focus. "McGee!"
"Boss, Tony's down." His voice came out sounding so remarkably thick he almost didn't recognize it.
There was a pause then a quiet, "Is he alive?"
Tim stared at Tony's back for a long moment. There was plenty of light and from this close up, he saw the darkness of Tony's NCIS jacket, the holes where the rounds went in. His hands hovered over the jacket, "I don't –" He choked, his breath left his chest at an unbearable rate, he was hot and cold at the same time, strangely his focus became the asphalt beneath them – and wow, that looked really clean.
"McGee, Ziva's calling an ambulance," Gibbs said calmly, and Tim should had done that, but Tony was lying so still and Tim had seen him fall. Gibbs said, "We're almost there."
Except that almost wasn't there, in the alley, watching Tony be incredibly still but then his fingers were on Tony's neck. He expected icy cold, had prepared for it, but instead he met warmth.
The world faded to that one instant. He didn't notice the car skit toward the mouth of the alley, or Gibbs and Ziva rushing over to him, to them. An eternity passed, his fingers digging into Tony's neck, and then he felt a throb, and another, and another, and McGee found breath rushing into him. With his proximity, he was finally able to note the short, sharp gasps coming from Tony. And when Gibbs crouched down next to him, he was able to croak out, "He's alive."
*O*O*O*O*O*O*O*
A/N: Next part will be posted tomorrow, so review people, it might encourage me to post sooner, well, not really but you should do it anyway. Heh!
