I was just thinking about what if Kate and Tony were together but still argued all the time and how everyone else around them would react to the relationship, and this is what I came up with. It was originally about three paragraphs but it grew a bit lol. Oh well.
Disclaimer - I don't own NCIS or the characters, because if I did, Sasha Alexander would currently be living chained to Michael Weatherly so she couldn't leave and Tate would have been FORCED to happen. And if she really, really, really had to leave, I wouldn't have killed her.
More than almost anything else, Kate liked sitting on the sofa with Tony with her legs over his lap and her arms around his neck, having him wrap one arm around her to stop her falling backwards because she was really too big to sit on someone's lap. She liked it because it made her feel safe, like when she was a little girl and her dad or her big brothers would lift her up and cuddle her, and she liked it because when her face was centimeters from his own, Tony found it impossible not to plant quick kisses onto her lips every few minutes.
She loved kissing Tony – more than she loved holding his hand or snuggling up against his chest. He normally tasted like beer and salty crisps, but underneath he still tasted like Tony. Like liquorice and gummy bears and something far more masculine as well. Kate liked the way Tony always tasted of sweets and ice cream and all the bad stuff she refused to eat because it was poisoning her inside and expanding her outside. It meant if she was craving something unhealthy and sweet she could just kiss Tony, and she got all the tastiness of it without any of the consequences.
Tony was like that.
She was a good girl, she always had been and she most likely always would be. Tony wasn't good – far from it. He was bad with a capital B. They balanced each other out. Kate could do all the rebellious things she wouldn't have the guts to do without Tony by her side, and in return she pointed out the line between 'fun' and 'destructive' that Tony never seemed to see until it was too late.
Abby said they were like magnets – polar opposites getting drawn together by some invisible force field that you couldn't see but you knew was there.
It was why, Abby said, all Kate's 'good boys' had failed miserably in the boyfriend stakes, and why Tony's 'bad girls' never made it into an actual relationship.
Opposites attract. Like sides repel.
Kate got a kick out of breaking the rules, and Tony enjoyed being serious for once.
At least, that's what Abby kept telling them.
To be honest, neither Kate nor Tony really cared why their relationship worked. They only cared that it did.
Kate didn't care that, according to Abby's theory, Tony was nothing more than her own personal rebellion. She didn't care that he was untidy and cocky and immature. She just cared that he was there when she wanted or needed him.
Tony didn't care that all his friends considered Kate to be uptight and stressy, or that she was irritable and snappy when things didn't go her way. It didn't bother him that she could be twice as moody as any other girl he'd ever dated – he was just glad that, of all the men she could have chosen to yell at, she had chosen him.
They were, according to Abby, made for one another.
According to Gibbs, they were a mess of hormones and lust, a disaster waiting to happen.
When Kate was actually on speaking terms with Tony, she often told him that he was the person she loved most in the whole world.
When Tony wasn't afraid to speak for fear of repercussions from Gibbs (because they were at work) or Kate (because he'd made her mad yet again) or Ducky (because Kate had told him what he'd done), he often said that of all the women he'd ever been with, she was by far the one he cared about the most.
They fought all the time – more than they had before they started seeing each other, because now they spent more time together. At work, Kate would go down to Abby or Ducky and dissolve into tears at least twice a week because of something Tony said or did. She'd cry on their shoulders that she hated him and that she didn't want to see him or be near him ever again.
Just as often, Tony would complain to McGee that Kate was driving him insane and he couldn't stand her, and that he never wanted to talk to her again.
Within an hour, Kate would be on Tony's lap sobbing into his shirt that she was sorry for being mean to him, and he'd be stroking her hair and begging her to forgive him for treating her badly.
They never, ever broke up. McGee said they were like him and Abby, but without the on again/off again, and with more tears.
One time, Tony made Kate so mad she slapped him.
Another time, Kate made Tony so afraid she was going to leave him that he cried.
Ducky said it was the most volatile relationship he'd ever seen. He said he'd never seen two people who switched between love and hate so quickly and so intensely, or were so competitive and aggressive with one another about every little thing. He'd never known a couple with whom he had to tread so carefully, for fear of turning one against the other and causing (yet another) fight.
He also said he'd never seen two people who loved each other as much as they did.
McGee said he was never so terrified as when he was – either physically or metaphorically – between the two of them. Nothing would make him run for cover faster than when they were glaring at one another across the bullpen and he was standing in the middle. Likewise, when they were both trying to get his support for their side of whatever argument they were currently in, he often feared he'd end up getting drawn in and then they'd both turn on him, directing their combined fury away from one another and towards him instead.
Gibbs said it drove him crazy that they didn't care about things like each other's exes phoning or emailing incessantly, asking to get back together, but things like taking each other's pens or moving their folders would send them into screaming fits of furious temper that lasted until someone – usually him – told them to snap out of it and get a grip. He'd never seen them bicker so much. Nor had he seen them so happy.
Sometimes, they disliked each other. Always, they loved each other.
They fought more often than they got along, but like Abby said, they were always going too. It was how they were. It meant they loved each other, because no matter what they said, they always gave each other a second chance. And a third, and a fourth.
Maybe they did shout and scream and make life miserable for one another.
But they also loved each other so deeply that it hurt to look at one another, and they made the other one's lives so much better simply by existing that even Gibbs had to say that when they weren't in the middle of a heated dispute over who moved whose stapler first, they were happier and more contented than he'd ever seen them before.
And, despite what he said about them 'having no respect for the rules' and being 'completely incapable of seperating work and their personal lives', it was fine by him.