Marathon
Second Race
Thus can my love excuse the slow offense
Of my dull bearer when from thee I speed.
Shakespeare Sonnet 51
Some days he'd kill to wake up dead.
The headache, which pounds with the fury of dueling brass bands, promises to be the kindest part of the day. There's little incentive to open his eyes. To view the world beckoning beyond the window is to accept everything that is destined to go wrong once Tony DiNozzo steps blindly into it. Besides, moving takes energy and that precious commodity is on backorder. Yet even through the steep haze of a hangover he can sense that something is amiss and the investigator instinct shoves past frat boy eyelids to grab a glance. He's instantly sorry.
Blinking through the painful rays of an evil sun pouring across his face, Tony takes in the empty space to his right and notes the mildly crumpled sheets, the telltale indent. Someone had been there. But the identity remains fuzzy, owing to the early hour and what had likely amounted to an unsafe quantity of alcohol.
He's never denied being an emotional drinker.
Waking to the evidence of an accidental sleepover is hardly abnormal; one night stands a standard ploy the shrinks would call habitual-loneliness-defeated-by-faceless-sex. Vices are, after all, what separates man from pond sludge. Barely. With an effort hampered by a lack of coffee, Tony can't summon a single feature of last night's preoccupation. Judging by the faint dip she'd made in the mattress, it was clear she'd been narrow, bordering on slight. But the state of the sheets, basking now in obnoxious yellow streaks and carrying no particular scent, indicates a decidedly cautious, almost tidy romp. No face, no markings, no trace. The light stiffness in very specific muscles declares that he'd had some form of sex, though it apparently hadn't been dramatic because the woman made absolutely no impression.
Except for her theft of the hot water.
A frosty shower drags him ungratefully toward full consciousness, bringing with it an immediate dislike of whoever dared to rob him of warmth. A cursory inspection reveals no bite marks or bruising. God, he hates dainty sex. After a quick tousle of gelled hair and a fresh suit, he sails into a morning already in progress, only to be halted by the Mother of all Traffic Jams. According to the barely perceptible AM station, someone had tried to imitate the Jetsons but against all unreasonable expectations, the car didn't fly. Tony's shoulder angel assures him that this delay is a gift meant to give him time to think. Angels should be throttled and presents like this deserve re-gifting. And Gibbs will grant little grace to his forever-tardy senior agent.
The throbbing at Tony's temples is in no way aided by the attempt to retrace the events of his evening. It comes in shredded pieces as he swings from lane to lane in search of forward progress. A cancellation. A substitution. A session on his counter. He sees a knot of blond hair tangled in his hand just before the jumbled chorus of honking steals him back from the teetering ledge of recollection and makes his fingers itch. The rush hour population should fear a federal agent with a loaded weapon and short-term memory loss.
Mornings should be staggered by patience level.
The stop and go of a crowd starting their day all at the same time becomes a reenactment of Office Space's opening scene. A swerve to the left lane ensures that the line freezes. A scoot back to center and the lanes on either side move without him. The right lane is a notorious haven for senior citizens who forget the location of their gas pedal and the inevitable broken-down, rear-ended or over-heated. Yet this line will move with NASCAR speed the moment he abandons it. He's in a marathon with equally eager runners to gain an extra inch of asphalt and they'll all fight to the detriment of their transmissions to get ahead.
It's like chasing down luck.
The gum-gnawing pilot. Somewhere between nodding off behind the wheel and nearly trading paint with a tractor trailer, Tony's mind finally supplies the woman and a pretty face swims into his inner vision. Every good agent needs a contingency plan and she'd been it. Only, as back-up plans go, this one had been disappointing; all tease, no endurance. The number of empty bottles in his kitchen attests to his solution to the problem of weak women, though the source of the Nesher Malt still eludes him.
Like a Mentos in Coke, traffic shoots past the bottleneck wrought by flipped cars and more ambulances than a single hospital could possibly store. There's a taste of freedom quickly snuffed by waiting patrol cars and because this morning is already a plague among men, Tony isn't spared from the snag-and-grab operation. As a former beat cop, he understands quotas better than most. Fortunately his badge still holds just enough shine to impress someone. But misfortune usually follows close behind as he realizes too late that a ticket might have acted as a pass for a gruff hall monitor. Not that it will matter much, the tiny paper a thin shield against the wooden ruler he's heading for.
He didn't start the day dead, but he might finish that way.
…………
It wasn't just a blond.
Oh, he definitely spent a chunk of time lodged inside a blond at some point in the night, but something in the movement of the brunette in the bullpen is violently sticking a pushpin through an image that defies clarity. Ziva's back is turned, the loose fall of chocolate curls catching his attention and some minor thread of his memory. And a cold sweat flushes across his skin. However promiscuous Tony may be, he's always been careful. While still contending with the first woman, he must now grasp the reality of a second. He berates himself through the trace collection, the interrogation and the paperwork.
What the hell did he do?
Rummaging through the dense cobwebs, he takes a mental tour of his room to recall if there had been any condom wrappers in sight. Nothing. Had there been any used latex in the trash? Nope. Even while drowning in the familiar torrent of liquor, DiNozzo knows better than to enter a foreign battlefield without protection. His boys are soldiers screaming for armor but he's been a neglectful general.
An uninvited shiver runs the length of his spine, a version of spidey-sense particular to the guilty. Looking up, he finds an amused Ziva watching him, the grin smug enough to warrant forceful removal. Only McGee's oblivious presence keeps Tony from snapping at her, as there's little worse than having to apologize with an audience. With her report complete, the Israeli gives into apparent boredom and begins questioning his evening. The tone is innocent, a bothersome skill. It's hardly her business that he can't remember and he pulls the pee-break card to dodge further inquiry. That they both end up in the men's room shouldn't surprise him. But her hair tangled in his fist does.
She's last night's brunette.
Noting his rising panic, she tacks on a sinister smile and asks how he liked the malt she'd brought. It's an Israeli specialty, non-alcoholic and thoroughly not to blame for his current predicament. Which now includes her questing hand. With an indecent squeeze, she assures him that they did nothing that would earn them lashes from Gibbs. That will only change, she says, if he stops running long enough for her to catch him. He is ordered to be sober when she and a case of Nesher arrive tonight. Given the price of the last bender, he's prepared to swear off alcohol and blonds for the balance of eternity.
On the way home, he buys condoms.
I thought this one needed continuing. If you agree/disagree, feel free to voice it!
