Title- Fifty Candles and A Promise
CompleteAuthor- PTBvisiongrrl
Part- 1/1
Date- 6/28/11
Rating – K+
Pairings/Characters- Tabby
Warnings- It's a little morose.
Spoilers- None.
Disclaimers- Unfortunately, I don't own any of these characters, and make absolutely no profit from taking them out to play…
Author's Note: This was inspired by Neil Young's song Heart of Gold, for a challenge I have since lost. Found it on the flash drive and wanted to post it.
He felt the years in the gray hair, not as peppered as Gibbs's hair had been when he had started at NCIS, but going there. He felt the years in the ache of his knee in the cold DC winters. He felt it in the list of fallen fellow agents, in the ghosts he saw when he looked around the office. He felt it in the years of seniority he had built up, the team lead positions he had turned down before MRCT was his, the number of probies he had run through or trained.
Their courtship has been slow—almost unconscious. Good friends consoling one another after strings of bad relationship and worse choices. A drunken vow, ten years earlier, at McGee's wedding—if they were still single at 50, they would marry each other. If they were still friends by then, it would be a longer relationship than either of them had ever managed to maintain before. Quite frankly, neither was actually sure that they'd make it to that point in time.
There had been moments of doubt, after all, here and there. A date or three, a stalker or two between them. There had been women here and there after Jeanne—none as serious, but several close. Tony had never been able to commit to more than his job, a fact that had cost him Ziva when she decided to marry and then left to have children.
Until there was only him and Abby left, fifty candles on a birthday cake, and their promise.