Title: Tony's MOAS
Word Count: 3,173
Characters: Tony, Kate
Genre: General, Drama
Pairings: None
Line: "Oh you mean like a MOAS. Like a Mother of all Secrets."- "Yeah." - "Everyone has one. I'm not telling you mine. What's yours?" - "Ha! Nice try. I'm sitting on my MOAS." - Abby and Tony, Season 4 Episode 'Suspicion'
"Special Agent DiNozzo's desk…oh. Yeah, hi," Tony said distractedly, still running background on their main suspect, "...okay. Uh-huh...wait, wait. He what?"
At his exclamation Kate looked up from the personnel file spread out in front of her. Tony's brow was marred with a deep frown and his eyes narrowed in concentration as he listened to the voice on the other end of the line. She exchanged a quick glance with McGee before turning her attention back to her partner.
"Okay, uh…" Tony closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead with a resigned sigh, "okay, yeah. I'll be there."
Tony hung up and, after taking a moment to gather his thoughts, which made Kate frown curiously, he stood from his seat. Crossing to stand in front of Gibbs' desk, he waited until he was noticed, all the while tugging at his suit jacket, adjusting its already perfect fit.
"Yeah?" Gibbs said, finally glancing up a few moments later.
"I," he cleared his throat and threw a barely veiled glance toward Kate before lowering his voice even more than it already was, "I gotta go pick up Ryan."
To Kate's surprise, Gibbs didn't ask who 'Ryan' was, which was her first question. Nor where he had to be picked up or why, which didn't really matter to her but seemed like the kind of thing Gibbs would want to know.
Instead Gibbs' eyes narrowed slightly and his pen paused in flowing over the paper in front of him, "everything okay?"
Tony's head twitched slightly to the side as he contemplated this and he clenched his teeth before forcing himself to relax, "I'll let you know when I'm through with him."
Kate's confusion was only deepened when an almost understanding smile kicked up the corner of Gibb's mouth. He sighed and looked down at his desk briefly and then back up again, "I need you here, Tony."
Kate frowned. It wasn't an order, or a chastisement…more like an apology, if she were hard pressed to describe it. But that didn't seem very likely, so she tried to imagine what else it could be.
"I know, Boss."
A silent moment of conversation passed between them, the kind of exchange that usually left her baffled and annoyed, and Gibbs nodded.
"Take the time you need."
"Thanks Boss," Tony returned to his desk and grabbed his wallet and keys and then left without a word to anyone.
Kate watched him go and then turned to her remaining teammates.
"Who's Ryan?"
McGee just shrugged and Gibbs obviously did not intend to answer so, with nothing else to do, she returned to her opened personnel file, intending to grill Tony when he returned.
---
"But I don't want to!"
Kate lifted her head from her hands at the sound of a young, plaintive voice somewhere behind her. After Gibbs left to get coffee she'd hurriedly googled 'Ryan' and 'Anthony DiNozzo' but had yielded nothing but a strange video on you tube and a leaked arrest report. Not wanting to appear off-task when he returned, she'd been following up on leads to their actual case ever since, and had been on hold longer than she wanted to talk about.
"I don't really care. You got suspended for fighting, Ryan, you're not gonna go home and watch Pokémon."
She frowned when she heard her mysteriously missing partner's voice accompanying the first. She turned toward the elevator just in time to see Tony rounding the small wall next to her desk and, with her eyebrows halfway up her forehead, watched him escort a child of no more than eight with a hand on the back of his neck, toward his desk.
"I don't even like Pokémon anymore," the boy, a round faced, freckled kid with olive skin and dark eyes, crossed his arms stubbornly over his chest and glared at his shoes.
"Whatever," Tony sat the child in his own desk chair and quickly closed a few files and put them under his arm, then shoved the rest into one of his drawers and locked it. "You're gonna sit here and do your homework. Got it?"
"But Dad-"
"No buts, Ryan. Fighting is not okay," Tony took a deep breath and knelt down to be at eye-line with the obstinate and frustrated looking boy, "you know that."
"But you fight the bad guys all the time. That's all I was doing."
"It's not the same Rye," he snapped, took exhausted and stressed to argue with the boy right then. He stood, "look, I'm not having this discussion right now," he pulled a pencil from the cup on his desk and handed it to Ryan, "Now get to work."
Reluctantly, Ryan took the pencil and scowled at it, "I hate homework," he grumbled, almost too low to be heard.
Tony took another deep breath, "life sucks," steadfastly avoiding the openly curious/shocked stares of his co-workers, Tony turned to leave the Unit, "I gotta use the head."
After he'd gone the boy rolled his eyes and pulled his colorful 'Transformers' backpack off and started pulling crumpled papers from inside and spreading them out on the desk. But instead of starting on them, he turned a bright and disturbingly familiar grin on Kate, who'd yet to blink.
"So, you work with my Dad?" he asked her and then turned to McGee, "which one of you is Probie?"
Finally Kate shut her mouth and, throwing a polite but fake smile at the boy she stood and crossed the bullpen to McGee, who looked as surprised as she.
"Did he just say, 'Dad'?" she whispered. McGee couldn't even respond, and they both looked over their shoulders at Ryan. He'd abandoned the seat his father had put him in and was standing in front of Kate's desk.
"Ohhh. You're Special Agent Todd," his green eyes lit up, "Dad says you know the President. Think you could get me his number? I got a couple suggestions for a new school policy 'bout lunch meat," he paused, "and girls."
"Ryan, what did I just say?"
McGee and Kate both looked up, not recognizing the sharpness in their co-worker's tone. The boy winced and scrambled back across the room to Tony's desk, pulling himself into the chair and snatching up his pencil to appear hard at work.
Kate tore her eyes away from a glaring Tony at the sound of McGee's quiet but sharp intake of breath.
"Oh my God," he whispered, staring wide-eyed.
"What?" she asked, glancing back over her shoulder.
McGee lifted his eyes to hers with a look that was part horror, part disbelief, "there's two of them."
---
"Did you know Tony had a son?" Kate demanded as soon as she entered the lab. Abby looked up from a beaker on the table and snatched her goggles off her head.
"Ryan's here?"
Before Kate could answer a little voice excitedly exclaimed, "Aunt Abby!"
They both turned to face the door and Abby quickly knelt down, opening her arms to welcome the flying leap of the boy rushing across the lab to meet her.
"Hi Rye!" she giggled at his exuberance, "your dad didn't tell me you were coming."
"That's 'cause I wasn't planning on it," Tony entered a few seconds behind his son, looking less than amused and turning a bit pink at the slightly less shocked, slightly more accusing glare Kate was telegraphing at him.
Abby's eyes widened with understanding and turned back to Ryan, "uh-oh. What'd you do?"
The boy looked pouty as he answered, "I got in a fight during music class."
"Ryan!" Abby frowned, "what were you…wait. Was it that kid Dillinger?"
He nodded emphatically and Abby stood to face Tony.
"In his defense, the kid totally deserved it."
"Abby!" he looked at her disbelievingly and sighed at the look of vindication on his son's face, "fighting is never okay," he reiterated, dipping his chin to punctuate the point.
"What if someone's picking on somebody else who doesn't deserve it?" Abby asked innocently.
Tony narrowed his eyes at her and she raised her hands in surrender, taking a literal and proverbial step back. He let his eyes fall closed and silently counted to ten, not at all surprised when he opened them again and caught Abby and his son making faces at him.
"Look, Abby, I came down here to ask if you could watch Ryan for a few minutes while I pick up a witness with McGee," he glanced down at the boy, who was glancing surreptitiously at Abby's short skirt, "hey! Eyes up."
Ryan's eyes instantly snapped to Tony's, his cheeks turning pink.
Tony sighed again and mumbled, "Although I'm beginning to second guess the whole idea now."
Abby was looking at Ryan with a raised eyebrow, but answered eagerly, "of course I'll watch him, Tony. Take as long as you like," she grasped the boy's hand and led him toward her office.
Once she was gone Kate turned, only to find Tony had already disappeared. The sound of the elevator ding spurred her into action.
"Tony," she rushed out of the lab and caught Tony's elbow just before he stepped onto the lift.
"Oh great, now I'll have to wait for the next one. Are you happy, Kate?" He cried, giving the doors a disgruntled look as they closed on him.
"Happy? Am I happy?" Kate repeated, almost too angry to think clearly, "no I'm not 'happy' DiNozzo. Because apparently I'm the only one who didn't know you had a son. I'm supposed to be your partner, Tony. How could you keep something like this from me?"
"That's not true," he said, his voice calm and deceptively uninterested. He pressed the call button for the elevator again to avoid looking at her, "McGee didn't know."
"Oh that's so touching," Kate said sarcastically, "I'm in the same category with McGee now."
"Hey," Tony said with feigned offense, "you be nice to Probie." He turned to enter the elevator as the doors opened.
"Tony-," Kate stuck her hand in to stop the doors from closing between them, "that's not what I-" she stopped suddenly, surprised by the seriousness in his eyes when he finally turned to face her. By how tired he looked. How haunted.
"Look, I'm sorry I didn't tell you, Kate. Okay?" he said quietly, his gaze traveling over her shoulder to rest on Ryan, "it's not really something I like to talk about."
She shook her head, not understanding. Her voice went soft with concern, "Tony, he's your son…why wouldn't you want to talk about him?"
Tony licked his lips and dropped his gaze. He reached out to pry Kate's hand off the door and jerked his chin back toward the lab.
"Ask Abby."
And with that, the doors shut between them.
---
"Abby," the doors swished open in front of Kate as she approached the office and Abby looked up. Upon seeing the look on her friend's face, she glanced at Ryan.
"And that is how you calculate bullet trajectories. You wanna give it a go?"
He nodded enthusiastically, "they let you play video games like this all day long, Aunt Abby? This job rocks!"
She merely smiled as she gave up her chair and ruffled the boy's hair as she crossed behind him, hooking her hand on Kate's and pulling her back out into the lab.
"Okay, so Tony told you?"
"Told me to ask you," Kate said, crossing her arms almost challengingly, "how could you not tell me Tony had a son."
"Kate, it's not that simple," Abby looked conflicted for a moment and, grabbing her arm again, pulled her friend until they were completely out of sight of her office, "Tony didn't even tell me."
"What? Then how-"
"It was an accident. We were out drinking one night a few years ago and we drank a little too much, which Tony never does. Never ever. So I knew something was up. I asked him about it and in a slurred and drunken state he…kind of revealed everything," she looked slightly pained at the memory and pressed her fingertips together in front of her.
"Well?" Kate asked, impatiently, "What is it?"
Abby sighed, "Tony wasn't always the 'love 'em and leave 'em' type. About nine years ago, in Pittsburg, he fell in love with a girl named Michelle. They dated and were supposed to get married but…" Abby bit her lip, "she got cold feet. She left him at the Altar."
Kate's eyes widened, "oh my God. Tony? Our DiNozzo…the guy who makes fart jokes and shows his chewed food to people and talks about movies like some people talk about the weather…married?"
Abby nodded, "yeah. Well, almost. See, when she didn't show, it totally broke his heart. He requested a transfer the next day which is when Boston enters the picture. But it turns out Michelle was pregnant at the time. She didn't even tell Tony about him until Ryan was almost two. Some kind of religious awakening, hell if I know," Abby sounded slightly bitter and she frowned, "She got a job in DC around the same time Tony moved to Baltimore. It was great because, after some…negotiation, he finally got to see his son regularly. When Gibbs offered the job at NCIS, Ryan was one of the reasons he took it."
Kate sighed, her heart heavy with everything she'd just learned and she turned to glance over her shoulder at Ryan, who was concentrated on something on the computer screen, his fingers poised over the arrow keys and space bar and his tongue sticking out of his mouth on one side.
"But, why all the secrecy," she turned back to Abby, "why wouldn't he tell me."
"Because he doesn't tell anyone, Kate," Abby said, earnestly, wanting her friend to understand, "Gibbs knows because he's Gibbs, I know because Tony can't control his mouth when he's wasted. He's just not in the habit of bringing it up. I mean think about it, Kate. The number of criminals who could go after Rye if they knew about him? Not to mention Daddy DiNozzo who made Tony's life a living hell growing up. He doesn't want that man anywhere near his son."
Kate's shoulders slumped, finally beginning to understand.
"Tony wants so badly to be a good father," Abby continued, quietly, "but he's been told his whole life that he's a screw-up. He's never had a good role model for how things should be between a father and son," she looked over at Ryan, "he doesn't even realize how good of a dad he already is."
---
Kate sat at her desk hours later, wishing she could wrangle her concentration, which had all but abandoned her since her discussion with Abby, even for a moment.
She pulled her eyes back to her desk when she found herself staring across the Unit at Tony. Again.
Trying to reconcile the man she knew yesterday, and the man she was seeing today, was taking some serious readjustment on her part. And finding a way not to be angry about it was damn near impossible.
Ryan was seated in the small space behind Tony's desk with a pair of headphones and a movie Tony had pulled from his bottom drawer, his head lolling off to one side as he fought a losing battle with sleep. Tony was bent over a pad of paper with his desk lamp on, writing furiously as he listened to someone on the phone.
Suddenly he hung up and stood to approach Gibbs' desk.
"I think I found a lead with Macklin's maid. She says she found receipts from a high end restaurant hidden in a desk drawer. I called the Manager. Says he knows Macklin, that he's a regular with a guy named Pavel Meirnachov who is, get this, on the FBI's watch list."
"Any movement?" Gibbs asked, pulling off his reading glasses.
"Nothing unusual. Doesn't look like he knows he's on anybody's radar," Tony looked up from his paper, "should I go pick him up?"
Gibbs reached up to take the paper from Tony's hands, "how long is your boy staying with you?"
Not at all phased by the seemingly abrupt change in topic, DiNozzo glanced over his shoulder, a wistful smiled crossed his features that Kate caught and she couldn't help the eyebrow that rose in reaction.
"Till Friday. His mom'll be back from her conference around 10."
Gibbs looked up at him, "you mean tomorrow?"
Tony frowned thoughtfully for a moment, and then his face fell. He'd wanted to spend more time with Ryan during the week while Michelle was out of town, maybe take him to the zoo or something, but the case had monopolized most of his time.
"Oh. Uh, yeah."
Gibbs sighed, looked down at the paper with Tony's hurried scrawl and then up at his Agent, "Meirnachov'll keep for a few more hours," he glanced over at Ryan, who was just barely awake enough to keep his head upright, "take your boy home, DiNozzo. Get some sleep."
Tony nodded and turned.
"Hey!"
The sharp call made him turn back immediately and Gibbs stood, planting his hands on the desktop and dipped his chin. Though the posture was intimidating, his voice was soft with understanding and Kate found the mix slightly disconcerting.
"I don't need to see you tomorrow."
Tony blinked at him and then glanced at Ryan, who was looking at him, bleary eyed. He nodded and then looked back at his boss.
"Thanks Gibbs."
Gibbs just nodded and both he and Kate watched silently as Tony quietly collected his son's things and slipped them into the backpack before slinging it over his shoulder.
"C'mon, buddy," he whispered, and hauled his limp body up into his arms with a grunt. He glanced at his team as he started to leave and nodded.
"See you all Monday."
Gibbs just nodded again and sat back down, Kate smiled and McGee waved.
Kate waited until the elevator doors closed before turning to Gibbs.
"Tony has a son." It wasn't said in incredulity or shock the way it had been earlier that day. More like a realization, an epiphany, as if she was suddenly seeing her partner for the first time.
Gibbs barely looked up, sparing a quick glance at the elevator, that fell on Kate before going back to his paperwork.
"Learn something new every day, eh Kate?"
A/N: Oh I loved that. I don't think I've ever read a fic where Tony was a father and I totally think he could do it. I think he'd subscribe to Gibbs' parenting style too, which I tried to convey with this. Total hardass, but totally loving being a father. Let me know if you liked this, if you thought it was IC or not, personally I think this is my favorite so far. I know there is a slight continuity issue since Kate only lasted through S2 and this quote is from S4, but I'm willing to overlook it if you are. I have some lines for Ziva but after the Season finale I don't really know what to make of her time on the show, so I'm going to leave them alone for a while and rotate through Tony, Abby and Gibbs (since I'm still very low on McGee centric lines).
Next Line: "I don't believe in Coincidences."
