Falling Slowly
It may not have been the longest case of her entire career, but it certainly felt like the longest case she had ever worked and Gibbs had finally (thank God, finally) released them with a few dismissive gestures and some morale-boosting grunts of positive reinforcement before disappearing into the elevator. She knew he was probably headed towards too much booze and hours alone brooding over his boat, but she could no longer summon the energy to worry about Gibbs; everything she had left was on reserve for making it home to the glass of wine and the hot bath she'd been promising herself.
And so, when she tracked a slight impact on the crown of her head as she bent to gather her things to a thrown paper aeroplane, she found herself torn between total resignation and a murderous rage. Neither had yet won out as she raised her head to look across the office at her partner and he met her accusing gaze with a smile that was warm and tired and only a little goofy. An irrepressible wave of fondness washed over her and transformed her thunderous frown into a half-hearted pout.
Tony mimed unfolding motions and nodded encouragement, that damn endearing look only heightened by his wrinkled shirt and mildly dishevelled hair.
She turned her frown on the paper projectile, bending to retrieve it from the floor and spreading it open on her desk. As she smoothed its creases, she uncovered a note written in Tony's familiar loopy handwriting. It was pretty in abstract, but hard to read. She squinted at the sloped, top-heavy letters.
'Hungry? I am.
'A.'
Why did he sign with an A?
She lifted her head to raise an eyebrow at him but startled to find he had crossed the office and was leaning on her desk. She wondered if she would ever get used to that habit of his, only marginally less annoying than the similar- but more sinister- habit Gibbs made of materialising behind them in the instant they least wanted him to be there.
"What do you say to some hearty Italian home cooking, Agent Todd?" He smiled again and the twinkle of genuine friendliness in his eyes and the obvious enthusiasm of his grin made the exhaustion disappear from his face. She thought of the eye bags that had been staring back from her reflection since over a day ago and, not for the first time, envied him the resilience of his beauty under fire.
"I know the number for Domino's too, Tony," she quipped, feeling spiteful.
He rolled his eyes, playing innocent as always, "Funny, Kate, but I meant mine."
"You? Cook?" She grinned.
He was unperturbed, cheerfully rolling onto his heels and sliding his hands into his pockets, "I have gourmet taste and a fast food salary."
"You have terrible taste." She made a face, recalling some of the decidedly less than healthful and frankly disturbing substances she'd seen him consume.
Now he pouted, "So quick to judge! I'll have you know, refuelling for highly stressful investigative work requires the nutritional finesse, caloric diversity, and high density carbohydrates only sausage and extra cheese can provide."
Kate sniffed, neatening her desk as she finished packing her purse and stowing her pistol in its holster. "I didn't think you knew what a carbohydrate was."
"I majored in Phys Ed, Kate; it's a science degree. Did you think we studied advanced swirly technique and arm wrestling between football games?"
She looked up at his- rarely used- deadpan tone and felt a little wounded to be on the receiving end of his more vicious sarcasm. He usually saved that for perps and arguments about the case.
Recognising he'd gotten too testy by the offended curve of her lip, he rushed to fill the silence, "And I'm a Rockefeller, you recall, and here you've never mined my depths of hidden sophistication. If you come to dinner I could show you the famous family charm, and I just, you know, figured you'd be tired with the case and all-"
"Very well hidden," she interrupted, needing to put him in his place.
He rolled his eyes, but he was more smiling than not. "You coming to dinner or what?"
"Sure," she grinned toothily. "If you get take out alone again, your delivery guy will probably stage an intervention. I don't want to be there when Gibbs gets that call."
"Cute," he commended dryly.
This was how it worked with them. They could be friends and be nice to each other, but only after Gibbs had beat them up and the case had held over to the point of exhaustion and they had each carefully admitted that they had no better plans. Or any plans. Tony always bluffed until called on it, and then cheerfully acknowledged her jabs about his lonely evening were completely correct. She usually tried to make up excuses, she wasn't as blasé about being caught in loserhood by him as he was by her. She had a superior reputation to maintain, after all.
It was an unspoken pact that they would never admit these things, nor leave in each other's company in front of McGee. McGee was not to know that the cool kids were all talk. Or that they were nice to each other outside of ganging up on him.
Kate honestly couldn't tell you why they could not admit to each other or anyone else that they genuinely liked one another, but for some reason they couldn't. It just wasn't done. Warmth was only acceptable on days like this one, after dark, in solitude. The sibling rivalry Gibbs cultivated- and that they all took to as fish to water- dissipated like so much hot air. They were adults again, free to have an intelligent conversation without either of them pretending that Tony was dense or that Kate was a prude.
Although.
Tony had never invited her to his home before. He had never been to hers. They were people who compartmentalised. She didn't even bring dates home and she had the fairly solid conviction that he didn't either. They needed sanctuary. It was the first thing she had recognised in him that she completely understood.
It scared her suddenly, how alike they were in their broad generalities. But now Tony wanted her to come into his sanctuary and to cook for her, a skill he'd never made the slightest intimation he possessed and therefore nothing he needed to prove. In sum, she had no idea what his motives were and it bothered her how little it bothered her; not to mention how little it bothered her that his tired green eyes and crooked smile filled her with a sense of belonging.
He tapped the small of her back when he'd finished grabbing his things and his hand lingered a moment as they fell into step. The touch felt hot and sharp, hyper-real. Kate was aware of his physical presence like an aura, sensing his solid mass beside her, feeling mildly oppressed by his height. His hand slid away as they turned the corner towards the elevator and she looked up at him, her eyes barely level with his shoulder.
Sometimes she missed the secret service dress code. Boots may be more practical, but she'd kill for some really serious heels in a moment like this.
"Tony," she started, wondering if she were really going to go so far as to open up discussion of their relationship. A subject they seemed to have silently mutually agreed was best left as free from examination as humanly possible. "Why are you cooking for me?"
He didn't look at her, his eyes travelled across the elevator ceiling as if he were reading something up there, "I thought it'd be nice."
Annoyed by his utter casualness when she felt as if some enormous sea change were under way, she huffed and crossed her arms. "I see."
Tony laughed.
They took his car, Kate's was still at her apartment where he'd picked her up at three in the morning several days before. Tony had been catching up on paperwork at the Navy Yard when the call came in. No wonder he was so unhinged. She started to question whether he and Gibbs ever slept or if bad food and worse coffee had turned them into human perpetual motion machines.
The drive consisted mainly of an argument about the radio station eventually resulting in the agreement that radio basically sucked across the board. Then the CDs came out and she ended up listening to Tony sing along to Frank Sinatra, which she minded much less than she pretended she did. The old music and the lights sliding by creating an atmosphere of nostalgia that was at once so bitter-sweet and so comforting, she caught her eyes welling up.
She was just tired, she told herself, it was just the somnolence of looking out the window into the haze of darkness interspersed with flickering lights and listening to Tony's smooth tenor, whispering harmony to Ol' Blue Eyes. It was just that she was reminded of long, sleepy car rides with her father and his rat pack cassettes. It was just that she hadn't been home in a long, long time.
It was just that her life was so consumed by her job that she had no one else to spend an evening with than a co-worker who felt like a kid brother.
Except that he wasn't really like a kid or like a brother and her awareness of that fact was becoming increasingly acute.
This was why they couldn't be nice to one another, why they had to pick and poke and prod until they were both nearly insane. Why they had to act like twelve year-olds. Gibbs encouraged it by pitting them against each other for his approval, but the childishness, the meanness of it, was all their own doing.
From day one, she'd decided to have Tony absolutely pegged, that way she knew how to deal with him and put him safely in his little box. He was off limits. He could not be romanticised or given second chances, he could not be allowed to get away with anything, he would get the same beat-downs she'd given her brothers. Tony, ever so helpfully, made it easy to judge him and abuse him by living down to her most vapid generalisations. He was a genius at that. He could play in to almost any assumption and enjoy it thoroughly as long as there was a frustrated responsible person to shake their head at him. He was at least fifty percent bullshit, but she prided herself on her ability to detect which fifty.
She watched him driving, his eyes sweeping the road ahead, his full lips moving slightly as he mumbled along with the music and his right hand floating up from the stick shift to fiddle with his collar, now running through his hair as he glanced at his reflection in the rear-view mirror, and finally back down to change gears. She smiled to herself.
He was simple, immature, vain; he was correctly categorised as a non-threat. She was worrying over nothing. There was no grand intent behind the evening, it was just a gesture he'd probably ruin at the end with some pitiful double entendre and a playful, totally insincere pass. No need to get frazzled. Tony was not deep, he did not plan ahead.
She was safe.
Kate jerked awake to Tony's hand on her shoulder.
"Hey, hey, sleeping beauty." He grinned at her teasingly, "I hate to tell you this, Katie, but you snore like a-"
He didn't get to make a clever analogy, because she punched him, hard.
"Ow!" Tony shot her a wounded glare, clutching his arm, "You just totally blew your chances of getting carried upstairs."
Kate scoffed and rolled her eyes as she pushed her door open and stretched her legs. They were in a small underground parking garage with card access. She shouldn't have expected any less for Tony's most prized possession.
The apartment building itself was only a few stories, obviously pretty old, with no intercoms or security doors. There was a desk in the lobby manned by an ancient guard reading a newspaper. He peered over the edge of it as they approached.
"Anthony," he saluted with his index finger.
"Ernie," Tony saluted back. He turned and wiggled his eyebrows at her before looping her arm through his and leading her towards the elevator. More elevators. Kate wondered if there were something in the structure itself which encouraged occupants to tell the truth or if it were just the power of association after sharing a ride in one with Gibbs.
Tony unlocked his door with somewhat less than his usual grace, his habitually quick, elegant fingers fumbling briefly over his keys. It was the first time since they'd left the Navy Yard that she remembered he had to be just as tired as she was, probably much more. He didn't let it show.
She followed him through the door with mild trepidation, half expecting to be beset by pungent odours and to hear the scrabbling of cockroaches the size of rats. She'd formed ideas about how a Tony DiNozzo lived at home. Somewhat anticlimactically for her well-developed mental image, they stepped into a perfectly neat, if somewhat sparsely decorated, bachelor apartment. The floors were all bare wood and tile, the only furniture in the living room a deep, black leather sofa, a cheap coffee table, and one hideous arm chair she could only assume had been pilfered from a frat house somewhere in Ohio. There was the predictable huge television and, equally predictable, every wall was covered in bookshelves and at least half of them were full of DVDs. Less predictable was that the other half was full of genuine, word-filled books, and some of those spines were awfully thick.
Tony left her to gawk and pry without a word, puttering in the tiny kitchen. He came back with two very generous glasses of wine.
"Congratulations," he said handing her one, "we survived another case with Gibbs."
"I'll drink to that." She smiled and they clinked glasses before taking long, grateful sips. Feeling three hundred percent better with a little red warming its way down her throat, Kate decided she was in a tweaking mood. "So where is it?"
Tony swallowed his toast, "Where's what?"
"Your collection!" She spread her arms, "Snapshots from the glory days, trophies, old college balls, your frat paddle, the beer helmet; where is it? I mean I guess it was naïve of me to think you could just have the shrine in the living room and not some dedicated area with climate control and special lighting."
He just watched her, patiently amused, "Is that it or have you got more?"
"I think I was done at trophies but the momentum kind of carried me." Kate was giggling uncontrollably, "I half pictured one of those cliché high school rooms in like an eighties sitcom. With team colours pined up and the baseball jersey in a frame."
Tony shook his head, "Baseball was never really my sport."
She sobered, sensing something off about his tone. It wouldn't be unheard of, when they were like this- having dinner together, being nice to each other- to sincerely ask him what the matter was, but she didn't feel brave enough to do it. She was feeling vulnerable and forthright and now he was stripping his weapon and putting it away and the flex of his broad shoulders and the attractive taper of his waist was proving a little hypnotic...
Nope. Get a grip, Caitlin.
"Here," Tony held out a hand to her and for a moment she stood flushed and dumbstruck. Catching up, she crossed his palm with her sig sauer. She wasn't really fit to be holding a loaded weapon at the moment, anyway.
He gave her an amused half-smile as he pulled the clip and checked the chamber. "You're really running on fumes, aren't you, Katie? I don't think I've ever seen you this beat."
"It'd help if you'd feed me, DiNozzo." She headed for the breakfast bar that split the kitchen from the living room and plunked herself down on a stool. "I'm waiting."
He pointed at her and made a popping sound with his mouth, "On it."
Much to her entertainment, apparently when Tony cooked, he danced around his kitchen, juggling ingredients, knives, and pans, singing to himself, "Cooking with Kaaate, where iiis the cream, nevermind I fooound it-"
"What are we having?"
"Chicken and vermicelli in sun-dried tomato and basil cream sauce," this in his best hoity-toity tone. He paused mid-chop, "Shit, I just realised, I don't really have the right wine for this."
Kate was giggling again.
Tony pointed the knife at her, "Look, these things matter. A lot."
"Sure they do."
"When you're a Rockefeller, Kate," Tony started chopping again, but his lecturing tone conveyed total, ridiculous seriousness, "wine is like seven months of extensive, boot camp level training. I have a Pavlovian response."
She just sat, staring at him, "Are you being serious right now? Is this you being serious?"
"Absolutely," he put water on to boil, "I had a manners tutor when my mother was alive."
Kate thought she was going to die, or fall off her stool, or something. She hadn't laughed so hard in years. When she got her breath back and wiped away the tears, Tony was pouting at her again.
"It's true, you know."
"I'm sorry, Tony," she bit her lip but the giggles kept coming, "it's just..."
"Yeah, yeah," he smiled and it was unusually sweet for him. "I am perfectly capable of showing off my fancy rich-people etiquette, I just choose not to."
She ran her finger around the lip of her wine glass, feeling wonderfully comfortable, "Why not?"
He shrugged, then shooed her hand away and refilled her glass, "Most people I spend time with now wouldn't be into that kind of thing."
"I would!" Kate felt slighted that he didn't think she was worth the effort. Just because she would have turned him down flat, she didn't see why he couldn't have tried the famous charm on her. All she got were leers and comments just sexist enough to provoke anger instead of flattery. Now that she thought of it, she resented she'd never been the 'new girl' even when she was; why didn't she rate a thousand watt smile and a corny line? It would have been so satisfying to snark one directly instead of as a spectator.
"Nah," Tony was intent on slicing the chicken and missed her indignant expression. "You would have found that patronising coming from a senior agent."
"No," she started, annoyed that he thought he had her figured out.
"Yes," he drawled, "remember what you thought of Tom McAllister before you knew he worked on his own planes and walked on water or whatever?"
Speaking of patronising, Kate made a face. "Jealous?"
"Of course. He took you to New York just to have dinner, I'm still hurt you left me behind." Tony stopped stirring his sauce and met her eyes for a moment, "Whatever happened to you and him, anyway? Was he not Catholic?"
Kate spun her wine, watching the red liquid trail down the sides of the glass, "It just didn't work out."
"Are you going to give me a reason or are you prepared for me to find out on my own, because you know I will find out. And I won't take the easy road and just call Abby, either. I like a challenge, Kate." Though this promise to invade her privacy would usually have had her jumping down his throat, she was so relaxed all she saw in it was a bizarre attempt to cheer her up. Only Tony.
"It was not exciting or scandalous," she admitted with a sigh, "it was just after the case ended and we had a few dates I realised... he was kind of boring. He was so nice and accommodating I felt like I was going out with a maître d' or something."
He grinned at her, "See, I knew I was right not to use my powers of etiquette on you."
"Tony, one thing I would never, ever accuse you of is being boring." She paused, thinking of his many lecures about movies, "Actually..."
He cut her off with an expansive gesture, "Eh, eh, before you ruin the mood: dinner is served! Go sit down."
Kate took her place at one end of the small dinner table under the kitchen's only window. He'd set the table properly and she smiled to see her silverware laid out so precisely. She never bothered with the niceties living alone and she hadn't been home to a family meal in years. Tony put her dinner down between the cutlery; it was in a deep pasta plate, steaming noodles with the chicken arranged in crossing strips, sauce smothering all and basil leaves to garnish. It looked and smelled divine and she had to admit, she was impressed.
Seating himself across from her, Tony raised his wine in salute, "Buon appetito."
If it smelled good, it tasted an order of magnitude better. She found herself groaning aloud in ecstasy and flushed with embarrassment. Kate was only grateful she hadn't teased him more about his cooking, she would not have liked to follow something so tasty with a whole lot of crow.
Tony was grinning at her, but she was feeling magnanimous enough to ignore his smugness.
"Your tutor teach you to cook, too?" she asked, by way of compliment without inflating his ego any more than it already was.
He shook his head, "It's not really one of the tender sciences, if you catch my drift. Not for boys, anyway. No, I just spent a lot of time in the kitchen with the cooks growing up and... yeah. I can really only make three dishes, but it seems impressive until you've had them all." He smiled wryly.
"It's a lovely dinner, Tony. Thank-you."
He looked so boyish when he was awkward, she always almost forgot who she was talking to and often had to fight the temptation to praise him more, just to see him squirm.
"No problem," he said, so quietly it was practically a hum.
The next moment she fully registered, she felt curiously weightless and, blinking in attempt to clear her head, eventually realised she was staring at the under side of Tony's chin. She was being carried.
"Wha-?" she inquired.
He glanced down at her, surprised to find her eyes open, "We were talking, you started getting quiet and suddenly you're almost passing out face-first into your vermicelli. I figured it was the better part of valour to intervene. If that's a chauvinist pig thing you can yell at me tomorrow, but right now I'm going to carry you to the couch and then I'm going to bed. If I weren't so tired I'm sure I'd have a cheesy line perfect for the situation, but... the old wheels aren't turning so good. Hope you're not disappointed."
She giggled to herself, "No, no."
He laid her down gently on the soft leather of the oversized sofa and pulled a quilt up to her chin. "Good night, Kate."
She curled her fingers in his collar as he made to stand and tugged him back down, "Very, very good night, Tony." And the kiss with which she followed the words insisted upon itself, her lips pressed into his warmly and wetly, allowing no room for misinterpretation, no illusion of chasteness, no opening for it to be excused away.
Some full ten seconds later, Tony straightened up, breaking the contact. He hesitated briefly, but her eyes were too glazed with sleep to fully register his expression.
"Good night, Katie," he repeated, soft as a sigh.