This is my first fic ever, so I hope you guys like it. Please R&R.
I don't own NCIS and no money is made from the use of any characters.
Warning: Spoilers for basically up to the end of S8.
He'd always told himself he'd never risk everything for love. It was never worth it. Nothing ever lasted. Everything always changed.
That was why he was the way he was—a slick coat of armor with a painted-on smile. If you've got a reputation as the happy-go-lucky, carefree one, no one ever wonders at it when you act too happy. No one ever wonders if he's trying to hide how he really feels.
He hasn't had the armor forever, though he's stopped wondering when it first appeared and when he figured out that it was better not to let people in. No one was worth heartbreak.
Even Jeanne never quite broke through. Much of that, of course, was the knowledge that everything she knew about him was a lie, that she was just an assignment. This relationship hadn't just been doomed, it had had a set expiration date. He never let himself think for a moment that they could ever have a future. Even when she left him her note, urging him to come after her, he knew he couldn't. He could never take off the armor. He couldn't risk it for love.
Most only saw him with the armor off when something hit him so hard it shattered. He rebuilt it every time, of course. After Kate's death it stopped being so slick and shiny—he realized what he'd lost by never feeling anything was worth more than total protection. Nothing ever managed to get past it for long. The armor was more like a shell now. Nothing could ever keep it from growing back.
He'd only taken the armor off once. He thought this time he'd really fallen in love. The mere fact that this was completely new for him told him that maybe that was why he'd built the armor in the first place. Maybe he never looked in the right places.
That was what he told himself to get up the courage to tell Tim how he felt, anyway. Only the armor called him McGee. To Tony he was Tim.
Tony knew he would always remember how his heart had pounded in his chest, how his throat had constricted and how he thought he was going to throw up as he saw Tim waiting where he asked him to wait. He saw Tim's look of disbelief as Tony confessed how he felt.
And—this one was burned into his retinas—he saw the anger, the disgust on Tim's face when he said no.
The armor was impenetrable now. Nothing got through. Not Ziva's supposed death, not EJ's kidnapping, nothing. He didn't have to feel anymore. The armor could pretend for him.