AUTHOR'S NOTE: So the formatting DELETED the lines seperating the different sections. Just noticed this morning... so if you were having a HUH? moment, I totally understand. Anyway, welcome to my sleep-deprived, Nutter-Butter-fueled wild tangent of the Season X premiere. The episode was good, but it could have been better. By the way, I am not necessarily a "Tiva shipper." I just follow wherever I feel the characters are going

Must Be Nice
by K9LASKO

I.

"It must've been nice," Tony says, "Must've been nice to have somebody to talk to."

Yeah. Must've been nice. Right? Must be real nice.

And then he just stares at Gibbs. Stares and waits for an answer. No, not just an answer. An affirmation because, damnit, it must be nice. But Gibbs just stares right back, looks at Tony as if he's fallen off his rocker. It's confusion mixed with a bit of sadness. Pity.

The phone rings or something. Tony doesn't remember anymore.


The boss used to know everything. He used to be all seeing, too. Now he's just like everybody else, and Tony knows this, challenges it. The mystique de Gibbs has faded away long ago. Now the Boss was just a boss, just Leroy Jethro Gibbs, an old man driven by habit and circumstance and an insane drive to protect.

Tony doesn't know that Dr. Ryan or whoever ran off at the first waft of danger. Doesn't know that Gibbs hasn't spoken to her since that day.

What Tony does know is that Tony's doing something very bad. Very bad and very forbidden. He also knows it feels good, in a muted sort of way.

Must be nice, right?

His guilt is now a constant force.


Tony keeps himself company when he's not at work and when he's not at Ziva's. He stays home. He doesn't go out. He doesn't accept calls. He doesn't even open the blinds. He surrounds himself with DVD's, his laptop, his iPod, a Jenga tower, year old magazines. He looks around at the emptiness, his emptiness, and he smiles. It's painful and forced.

Nobody knocks on his door. He's thought of visiting Gibbs' house fifteen times in the span of two weeks, but he's only grabbed his keys three times, only opened the door twice, only driven the hour to the boss's neighborhood once.


Gibbs has been seeing a lot of faces in his basement.

Before he killed Dearing, he'd wanted to build another boat. He had measured and remeasured. He wanted something bigger and better than the last one, something that could withstand another Moby Dick, but not anymore. The urge has gone. Now he just spends his time staring at the empty space while whittling away a block of soft wood. Shavings drop to the concrete floor. Dust drifts into his quarter-filled glass of bourbon, sitting on the floor next to his chair leg. He doesn't mind the taste of wood. By now, he's probably got splinters stuck between his teeth.

He wants to think, needs to think. Gibbs has never minded being alone.

Although he thinks now…

Maybe it would be nice. DiNozzo said that it must be nice. So sure, it would be nice, Gibbs agrees. Would be nice to rehash the day's events to somebody who isn't himself, somebody who isn't sitting alone in a basement, whittling a piece of wood to nothing.

He thinks of Fornell, of Vance and of Ducky. Thinks of everybody and everything, even thinks of the piece of glass sticking out of McGee's belly.

It reminds him of what he did to Dearing, the way he'd stabbed and ripped and killed. So calm, so cold. How beautiful and justified it was. How fucking good it felt to have hot blood on his hand, how it slid to his wrist. How good it felt to tell Abs that Dearing would no longer be a problem, that she needn't lose anymore sleep.

He hears his front door snap shut. His hands still for a moment before the pads of his fingers start running over the wood, checking for imperfections. There are always imperfections. Always.


"Tobias?" He hears Gibbs call.

Tony almost pauses, almost turns around and leaves. Why had he come here anyway? What was he looking for?

An affirmation.

"No," Tony replies, voice unusually quiet and soft. Reserved. Shy. "Just me."

Guilty.

There is silence during which Tony gnaws on his own lip. He approaches the stairs, puts one foot in front of the other.

"Tony," Gibbs finally says. His voice is also soft. Tired. He is looking up from where he sits, blue eyes sharp as ever.

Tony hesitates. Tony never hesitates.

So Gibbs urges, "C'mon." He even gestures, with just one finger. Tony does as he's told, moves stiff-leggedly down the stairs, gingerly sets himself on the second to last step.


Ziva gets up at oh dark thirty, every day. She creeps around the room, dresses in sweats and a t-shirt. Pulls back her hair, splashes water on her face. Grabs her wallet, her cell phone, her keys. She never looks towards the bed.

Tony only stirs when the door clicks shut, when she locks the deadbolt from the outside. He watches her in the dark, every day, when she thinks he's still sound asleep under the comforter. They never speak in the morning, only at night. The morning is guilty; the night is often soaked in booze and stale cigarettes.

At work it's unusually quiet. McGee throws himself back into it all. He's avoiding his father. Tony also throws himself back into work. He plays Pac Man and Minesweeper and disjointed games of solitaire. Secretly, Tony wishes his father would call, just so he could choose to ignore the man. Choose to be ignored. Or something.

Ziva says nothing. They look at each other a lot, her and Tony. They start going out for lunch; they forget to invite anybody else.


Abby is a mess. She shies from her own shadow. She's paranoid and irritable. She leaves the music off, says she's detoxing from Caf-Pow. Tony worries about her. He sits with her more often now, watches her work, notices when she forgets to put her makeup on. Notices when she comes in wearing jeans and a v-neck tee and a white lab coat.

Somewhere things have gone wrong. Things have gone really wrong.


"So is it nice, DiNozzo?" Gibbs asks. He leans back in his chair, spreads his legs comfortably, work boots tied loosely. He's got a strange smile on his face. It's unsettling.

"What's nice?" Tony asks on reflex.

Maybe the boss does know something. "It must be nice," Gibbs insists. "Right?"