Dependence

Rating: Teen
Spoilers: 3.23 and 3.24 Hiatus Part 1 and 2
Summary: They'd gotten under his skin, all of them.
Notes: A huge thank you to Cha Oseye Tempest Thrain for the immediate beta. Written for the livejournal flashfiction prompt of 'compromise'.
Disclaimer: I don't own anything, not being paid.

Tony let the sounds of the movie wash over him, trying to erase the previous few days.

Gibbs in an explosion.

Gibbs in a coma.

Gibbs with amnesia.

Gibbs leaving.

For some reason, his mind kept on bringing forth memories of Peoria. It took several minutes for him to figure out why. He'd slept with one of his colleagues, and that had been a mistake. The morning after, he had seen her thought processes, plain as day, reflected on her face. Would what they had done compromise their working relationship? She'd looked at him, and it was obvious that she'd thought that it wouldn't affect him; after all, he was Tony DiNozzo, he changed who he was 'dating' so often that you couldn't even call them girlfriends. Why would he let the fact that he'd slept with her change their working relationship?

And, it hadn't, at least not on his end. What she didn't realise was that, for him, physical intimacy wasn't really that intimate; it hadn't been for years. And, while it hadn't changed how he had acted, it changed how she did. It compromised them. He learnt from that experience to never sleep with someone he was partnered with; the intimacy generated by having your life in someone else's hands was more precious to him than getting his rocks off.

But, physical intimacy wasn't required to compromise. He'd started to realise that when Kate had died, and, now, he completely understood. He'd never slept with any of these teammates. Hell, he'd barely even managed to fantasise about either Kate or Ziva naked. Kate, because, no matter what he thought, she inevitably ended up clothed again, and Ziva because his mother always appeared behind her whenever he managed to get her naked. He'd very quickly given up on trying to fantasise about that.

They'd gotten under his skin, all of them. Kate, Ziva, McGee, Abby, Ducky and Gibbs. It hadn't yet affected his work, but it had come damn close. He worried that without Gibbs, it would. Because, Gibbs' loss was already compromising him.

He couldn't do Gibbs' job.

He couldn't do this without Gibbs' hits to the back of the head, Gibbs' ability to put him back on track after one of his tangents, Gibbs' understanding of what made him tick.

He couldn't do this without Gibbs.

And that scared him. When had he become so dependent on another person? How would he ever be able to take another job, be promoted? How would he ever cope when Gibbs inevitably retired...or quit? Given time, he might be able to find a way to push past his dependence, to force himself to cope without that crutch, but he also might not.

Gibbs would be back, he had to believe that. There was no way that he could remain idle for too long, it wasn't in his nature. Gibbs would be back, and he'd have that crutch again, and things would be the way they were.

Except, they wouldn't.

Because Tony had realised that he was compromised.

And that could never end well.