A/N: Just more yabba about Tony's feelings after 'Singled Out'. A bit of rambling while I try to sort out my next chap for Unconditional!
Gibbs didn't like it. It was afternoon in the NCIS bullpen, and it was quiet, and Gibbs didn't like it. But if anyone had asked his team, particularly DiNozzo, Gibbs didn't like much of anything anymore, and let everyone know it in no uncertain terms. Consistently. Particularly DiNozzo.
Tony could feel the stink eye on him from every direction, but ignored it. He was doing nothing wrong. He couldn't possibly be doing anything wrong. He was sitting at his own desk, doing his own work, minding his own business, and keeping his own mouth shut. He figured he'd covered all the bases.
So why the hell were they still annoyed with him?
Tony fidgeted some and found a weeks-old package of crackers in his desk drawer, then proceeded to open them—as quietly as possible, so as not to disturb, agitate, exasperate, vex, or otherwise provoke his teammates. Because he seemed to be doing that a lot lately, and if he didn't stop, they were going to swarm him and leave nothing behind but picked-over bones for Abby to try to identify.
When he was a kid, and he realized that he was causing his parents, or later, parent, untold distress, he would retreat into his room and read or watch movies for untold hours at a time in an effort to stay out from under foot. Maybe that's how they got into the habit of ignoring him, and then forgetting about him altogether. Like the Maui Hilton. Or the company daycare. Or...whatever place he had been once again left behind in the pursuit of life, happiness, and liberty from a fractious kid. Now his favorite team was doing the same thing to him years later.
But Tony couldn't go up to his room now. Although he knew by the grim looks, impatient grunts, and all-out angry glares from Gibbs that his boss was lately wishing for a room to send him to. Like maybe Principal Shepard's office. Or Superintendent Fornell's bullpen. Or best of all of them, Rota.
Tony could speculate night and day as to why he was being singled out like an old or sickly lamb by a circling wolf, for the betterment of the flock and the appetite of the wolf. But he just couldn't put his finger on it yet, couldn't grab that thread amongst the tangled knot of emotions and reality and all the crappy baggage he'd been dragging around with him for most of his sorry life.
But he did come to put his finger on one very important thing…he had invested way too much of his heart and soul on what used to be his mentor and team. Because they weren't anymore. Ziva and McGee never really had found much to like or respect in him as friend or colleague, and certainly not as a boss. And Gibbs, well, Gibbs had nothing left to offer him except anger and clearly shown disappointment.
After three decades of trying to crawl out of that landfill of paternal toxicity, Tony found himself tossed into it again. But now he was old enough to be affected by its poison, and he knew he'd best find some superpowers from it or die a slow, agonizing death. And while Anthony DiNozzo Junior may have been lacking in many coping mechanisms, poor self-preservation skills weren't among them.
So he'd backed off from them all, trying to distance himself from—and eventually break—the bonds that he'd made with them all.
He wasn't going to quit the team; he knew it'd be the same for him wherever he went, so he would just stay put, protect his people, and do his job to the best of his ability like he always had. Always wondering, like he had in Peoria and Philly, if they would have his back in a shit storm of bullets, or if they would actually have his back with a bullet of their own. Friendly fire, hushed up, with no family to question or rage or bring lawsuits against them.
He just didn't know anymore. And more often than not, he didn't care. Didn't have the out-of-control self image McGee had picked up at a self-help conference sale table somewhere. Or the can-do-no-wrong attitude of a Mossad agent let loose with legal, lethal weapons on American soil. Or the bull-headed bastard my-way-or-hit-the-highway ego that Gibbs had turned up to eleven on the Spinal Tap amplifiers.
Tony was still on the team, just not part of it anymore. A fifth wheel, counting Abby. He didn't think he'd been on her team since Gibbs had taken the Mexican hike, like somehow it had been Tony's fault he'd left, or that Tony hadn't done enough to make him stay. All the time Gibbs was gone, Tony was just one, big glaring reminder that Gibbs wasn't there, and probably wouldn't be again, because where Tony was, Gibbs wasn't usually too far behind. He was Gibb's scapegoat, while Gibbs himself had just plain escaped.
Every time they looked at Tony, they saw betrayal and pain and abandonment mirrored in his eyes. If they'd bothered looking past their own feelings even once, they would have seen a man laid open like Chris Pacci, but still alive and walking around. Sometimes Tony felt like a windshield from one of their accident investigations - shattered, and the pieces being held together by God only knew what. Magic, maybe. Magic and a good dose of DiNozzo and Paddington stiff upper lip genetics.
And the worst part of it was, Tony stayed because he truly loved them more than he loved himself. Especially Gibbs, and he knew that; no matter what Gibbs thought of his abilities now, no one could or would even toleratehim like Tony could, much less watch his six. He did it for them just like he'd kept himself out of his parents' hair, then dealt with his father's foul moods and drinking. Because somehow, somewhere deep inside, he believed they'd need him afterwards. To make them laugh, to fetch their booze, to be the crap magnet for all of their bad energy. They needed him…didn't they?
"DINOZZO!" Gibb's voice boomed across the bullpen. "Who'd you get to write this report, your neighbor's dog?"
And so it began. Well, he did kind of deserve it, he'd been starting to get sick when he wrote it, his hands getting shakier and his vision blurrier, and then everything went downhill from there; the next thing he knew, he was trying to finish with a mother of all headaches, and Gibbs had wanted it yesterday.
He heard Ziva's and McGee's smug laughter, over-loud and overdone to make sure he heard them.
"Do it over, now!" Gibbs bellowed. He threw the folder and its papers across the bullpen floor. None of the pages came anywhere near Tony's desk. They all waited to see what he would do. Was this a test? Mzybe they were all holding their breath for that moment they'd all been waiting for, for him to leap up from his chair, throw down his badge and weapon, and storm out of there, yelling "Go to hell, I QUIT!"
What to do? It would have been so easy, so satisfying to do the old 'take this job and shove it' routine. But why give them the satisfaction of leaving and replacing him with someone they really wanted? Better to torture them all with his presence for at least a while longer, until he could decide what he really wanted, needed, to do. Tony looked at McGee, who was looking at the Boss with a smirk on his self-righteous face. And then it hit him. This wasn't about his failings. This was about his successes. Gibbs had come back from Mexico with no doubt in his mind that the team and their case-solving record was in shambles with Tony at the helm; after all, Ziva had had to cash in her precious marker to Gibbs for help.
And then Gibbs had been shocked at what he'd found: a competent, sure-footed team leader who was making things work against all odds - surly, disrespecting subordinates, a demanding director, and emotional issues that even Ducky wouldn't begin to attempt to resolve. Gibbs didn't really remember the good things about his SFA - his brain was too futzed and his emotions too warped to get a handle on him. And frankly, he just didn't feel like trying anymore.
To Gibbs, Tony was a threat now. Taking over his team, sitting at his desk, leaving his markings all over his territory. And it just wouldn't do. Gibbs's brain may have been baby Swiss, but his basic alpha instincts were solid as year-old fruitcake. There was no room for Tony on his team. McGee would make the perfect SFA—someone who wouldn't dare stand up to him, challenge him, tell him his shit didn't stink and to get off his high-horse. Tony had become his equal. No, his better. Tony had all the right moves and a brain that hadn't been banged around like a bean in a tin can.
McGee was the perfect second-in-command for Gibbs now, rarely able to think outside of the box unless the box was a computer. He was a player, a golden child, a yes-man. And Tony was the prodigal son. What culture was it where a father and son fought hand to hand to keep or gain control of the family? Tony couldn't remember, and then decided, hell, it was probably every culture that ever existed.
The question was, were Ziva and McGee territory worth fighting Gibbs over?
Once upon a time Tony wouldn't have had to think twice to answer that. Now...now he stared down at the papers on the floor for a long time, debating, fighting down his fight or flight response. Gibbs was baiting him. They all were. They all wanted him out, at the moment anyways, for whatever reason they each had. McGee had gotten a taste of power and it was good. He wanted his Senior Field Agent job back. Gibbs wanted an SFA who would demur to him and his wild mood swings. Ziva…well, Ziva just plain thought he was an incompetent, dysfunctional boob and didn't care how, why, or where he went, as long as he wasn't on her highly strung nerves anymore.
Fornell had asked him more than once to join his team as his second. And Jenny had offered him his own team in a great locale. They deserved to have him walk away from them, now, as in, no two week's notice and in the middle of a new case, leaving them short-handed and in the lurch. They deserved a lot more than that from him.
But Tony had learned something over his tumultuous years that none of the others had seemed to. That love wasn't conditional, that you didn't hold it hostage from family and friends because they weren't behaving the way you wanted them to. Life wasn't supposed to be Christmas, with Santa withholding your toys if you misbehaved. Tony had grown up with that idiotic myth, having games, outings, hell, even meals withheld for not meeting his father's exacting standards. Not even for misbehaving. Just because he had failed to secure that A on a test, or cried when he was hurting, or any number of normal childhood disappointments.
Tony refused to become his father in the face of his team's misguided pack mentality. Or mob mentality, he wasn't really sure which it was at the moment. They would either get over it or he'd take the next undercover assignment the Director offered and get out of Dodge for a while, let them all decide where he belonged, and if it was still on team Gibbs. If not, well, he had taken the higher road.
He got up from his desk, and it looked as if he was about to pick up the papers on the floor when he changed directions and headed for the stairs.
"Be right back," he said to no one in particular. He was far past placating himself with hopes that any of them really cared where he went, or if and when he'd be back. "Director sent me an e-mail, needs to ask me about something important."
McGee and Ziva watched him go, dumbfounded. Gibbs stared at the papers on the floor, his gut sending him mixed messages like it had been for the past five months. DiNozzo was up to no good, that they could all agree on. He would need closer scrutiny than ever. He needed to be slapped down into his place.
But what the hell…his boss and team mates were up for the job.