Chapter Twenty-One: Tony and the Quitter
.
.
"Boss?" Tony stands nervously as Gibbs strides in the next morning, expression alive in a way it hasn't been since he'd returned to work. None of them are sure what to expect after his abrupt departure the night before. And, in the end, it's nothing any of them would have expected—especially not Tony. Gibbs picks up his badge, turning it over and examining it carefully, his finger rubbing at the brass. It's a thoughtful, deliberate gesture, and Tony is inexplicably terrified to see it. "Kept it clean for you while you were gone," he tries to joke, walking over to his desk and feeling Tim and Ziva's eyes on them. It feels a bit like too little, too late, and he curses the preoccupation of the last week just as much as he knows how necessary it is. They can't let Gibbs see the secrets they're hiding, know the lengths they've gone for him. That knowledge will destroy him, especially when he's already fragile.
Gibbs looks up, smiles, and, for a second, Tony thinks everything is finally going to be okay.
"You'll do," Gibbs says to him. Tony's grinning at the assumed compliment before his brain catches up to what it actually means. "It's your team now. Been your team for a while, DiNozzo." And he tosses the badge at him, Tony catching it against his chest by reflex. It's still warm.
He's gone before they have a chance to respond, and it feels like a betrayal.
.
.
The walk up the path to Gibbs' front door is a familiar one, made less so by the comforting glow of light from the front window. Tony wonders what it says about their friendship that he's come to associate a cold and empty house more with them than a warm and inviting one. He doesn't knock. He doesn't want to give his boss a chance to avoid this conversation.
"You need to leave," Gibbs says as soon as he walks in, studying him from the top of the stairs. It's unsettling, as though he's given himself the advantage of height in case of attack. Something drags at Tony's instincts, telling him to circle around and get behind the wolf.
Cats aren't the only ones who attack from behind.
"Why?" he asks, instead leaning against the wall and jutting his chin out stubbornly, letting it be clear he isn't moving without having his say. "So you can pack up and run away? Since when do Marines run away?"
"I'm retiring."
"The hell you are." Tony tries to steady his breathing, knowing that Gibbs can hear the slamming of his vampiric heart—it beats wrong, but it still beats, and, right now, that betrays his weakness. "If you run from this, you're going to spend your whole life running. It won't ever stop haunting you. You have to face it, Boss."
"Like you faced your past?"
Tony almost flinches. Almost. "I didn't run from that. My past knows exactly where I am and what I'm doing, and every day I keep doing it is another day I'm showing him that I'm not afraid of what he tried to make of me."
Gibbs settles back onto his feet and Tony releases a breath he hadn't realised he'd been holding as the tension dissipates slightly. "You don't know… You can't know what it was like," Gibbs murmurs softly, almost to himself.
"How can we if you don't let us in to help you? What would you do if this was the other way around? We can work this out, Gibbs, you just gotta snap out of it!"
This time, Gibbs does flinch, a shadow of something flickering over his face. "You need to leave. Now."
So, Tony does.
.
.
Tony is drunk. He's not entirely sure how he's so drunk, except, judging by the overwhelming aftertaste of old pennies in the back of his throat, he's pretty sure he had help. He'd forgotten how good even cheap alcohol tastes when it was filtered through someone else's blood, especially when that someone is young, pretty, and ever so keen to find out what it's like in a vampire's bed. His buzz lasts right until he pushes open the door to his apartment and finds his co-workers in his living room, Tim shuffling through his DVDs and Ziva pacing with a bored expression. She turns and wrinkles her nose in disgust, immediately scenting exactly what he's been up to. Whatever. Prude. People fuck, deal with it.
"How did you get in?" Tony slurs, shoving the door shut and stumbling in, wondering if the words sound as bad coming out of his mouth as they do in his head. Even his brain isn't forming sounds right.
"Ziva let me in," Tim stutters. Tony doesn't know why he's so nervous—Tony might stink of blood and beer with his shirt probably splattered a bit red, but it's not like Tim's got anything Tony wants. Heh. In his throat or his pants. But, his eyes rake over Tony's dishevelled appearance and take on a concerned gleam. "I came around to check on you, and she was—"
"Picking the lock on your door," Ziva finishes, smirking. "You should have better security."
"I do," Tony informs her, white teeth flashing as he bares them. "Now get the fuck out."
"Tony, we are concerned. You left work very quickly, and we went to Gibbs' and found it…"
"Empty," Tony says, nausea raging in his gut and threatening to have him heaving up the contents of his stomach. He wonders if Ziva will panic at the sight of him vomiting blood, then figures that she'll probably just roll her eyes at him. It might frighten the probie though. He'd better contain it, it wouldn't do to frighten the probie. His probie. His probie for good now.
No frightening his probie, Gibbs won't like that. If Gibbs was here to care.
Which he isn't.
He shoves past her and slips into his room, dropping onto the bed and curling into himself to try and hold himself together. If they try to follow him, he doesn't respond. They'll go eventually. And he doesn't hear them leave but, when he wakes up in the morning with a thumping head and watering eyes, he finds a basin next to his bed with a glass of water on the bedside table.
It's a wordless reminder that Gibbs might be gone, but they still have a duty to each other.
.
.
"Internal Affairs is sniffing around."
Abby turns morose green eyes on him, Bert leaning against her leg. "Is that really what you came down here to talk about, Tony?"
Tony frowns at her. "Well, considering we're attempting to cover up a first-degree felony, yes. Yes, it is what I've come down here to talk about. Funny, that. The things we prioritise when we could be going to federal prison, Abby."
She shrugs, turning back to her work of reassembling the Gibbs Wall. Tony could have told her that she'd been hasty in dismantling it the moment Gibbs had walked back into the bullpen. Optimistic, not like him. He'd always known the return was temporary—that's why he wasn't upset by Gibbs being gone, not even a little. He's a little upset by her ignoring him though, and pouts.
Abby finally speaks: "There's nothing here for them to find. I haven't cast anything in weeks now, another few weeks and they won't even be able to pick up traces of blood magic on me. Ducky should already be clear, and it will take them longer than that to get a warrant for a magic scan—especially if I fight it on grounds of it being stupidly invasive with no basis for recommendation."
Tony sidles past Bert to glare angrily at the wall, Gibbs' face looking back at him showing the range of the man's facial expressions. There isn't much of a range, to be honest. It's a pretty boring wall. "Why are you putting that back up?" he asks shortly. "He's not coming back this time."
"You shouldn't take it so personally," Abby replies, smoothing a bent corner of a picture down with more love than the occupant of the photo deserves. "He's not doing this to hurt you. He went through hell."
So did we, Tony wants to say, but doesn't.
.
.
"I'm not inviting you in." Tony pushes his door shut, swearing as Tim shoves a solid foot into the crack. "Damnit, Probie, I could have broken your foot!"
"Doubt it," he replies cheerily. "I'm harder than I look. I brought movies!"
Tony opens the door again, eyeing the DVDs. "They're all geeky sci-fi nerdathons, aren't they?"
Tim blinks. "No," he lies, holding the bag behind his back.
Tony sighs, stepping aside. "Fine. Whatever. But you better have brought popcorn. And if I see one pointy-eared elf, you're buying pizza. It's bad enough we have one in HR."
"Deal."
.
.
"I don't actually require babysitters," he's forced to say another day when he picks up his coat to leave and finds Ziva standing in front of him with a terrifyingly friendly expression.
"I am going down to the gym to work out," she says, tying her dark hair back in a loose ponytail and smirking at him. "I thought perhaps you would like to come and, what is the saying? Blow up some steam?"
"It's let off some steam, Ziva."
She smiles again. It's a dangerously hot smile—and he doesn't like his hot when it comes with a serve of 'dangerous'. He likes his trouble at work, not in bed. "Not the way I do it."
He doesn't doubt that at all.
Tony tilts his head to the side and observes her. He really doesn't feel like having his ass handed to him by a woman half his size in front of half the agency. "I'll pass. I prefer my limbs unbroken."
She actually looks disappointed, and a small kick of guilt burns in his belly. Suddenly, her face lights up and she grins. "How about the firing range then?" she suggests. "Winner buys drinks."
He laughs, the sound strange coming from his throat. He hasn't laughed in a while, he realises.
"You're on, kitty."
.
.
When Abby and Palmer show up at his house another night, he just sighs and lets them in. "Smart move," Palmer informs him, walking in under Tony's outstretched arm and craning his head back to look up at him. "When Kate died, Abby almost blew my door up letting herself in."
"Are you here to make me watch awful movies as well?" Tony asks Abby warily, eyeing the bag she's holding in one hand.
She pulls out a six-pack, tossing it to him. "Nah. We're here to get plastered. I figure if we're all going to be miserable, we're going to do it together. And Jimbo is hilarious when you get him smashed."
Palmer blinks slowly. "I'm really not," he says sadly. "I get weepy."
Tony takes a beer. He's sure going to need it.
.
.
"And that stupid face he does! You know the one, where he twitches one eyebrow and furrows his forehead and looks at you like you've just disappointed his grandma or something!" Abby takes a swig of her beer and tries to replicate the look, going cross-eyed.
"Oh yeah, that fucking look," Tony slurs, imagining it perfectly even with Abby's mediocre impersonation. The world spins slowly around him, the cans of beer reluctant to empty. He has a suspicion that Abby has jinxed them but isn't actually sure if that's possible. He wants to ask but is too busy being really, really angry. "Look at me, I'm Jeh-heh-thro Gibbs and I'm going to storm around and be gruff all the time!" He's muttering to the floor, having slid off the couch at some point. "I was in Desert Storm, boy, so you better buck up and listen to me even though I never say anything! Instead, I communicate in grunts because I'm emotionally constipated!"
"And when he'd magically just show up in my lab and ask for something impossible and be like, 'I want it ten minutes ago, Abs!' God, that annoyed me! Did that annoy anyone else?" Abby pauses, her can at her mouth. "And when he'd call me Abs… and bring me a Caf-Pow. Goddammit, he doesn't even know how to turn his computer on! We don't need that in our team! Do you think he even knows what an iPad is?"
Tony ignores the weepy tone beginning to rise in her voice. "Now, DiNozzo! What am I paying you for? Grab your goddamned gear and get in the van because these are the only things I know how to communicate without grunting! I have the emotional range of your left toe, DiNo-zzo, so don't expect anything like loyalty from me even though I expect the world of you!"
Palmer sits completely silently, watching them with Echo in his lap.
"He used to hug me," Abby says in the silence that's abruptly fallen.
"I miss being head-slapped," Tony admits, leaning his chin on the couch and looking up at her.
Abby smacks him gently on the back of the head. "I can be gruff if you want," she offers. "If I can have a hug in return?" She slips down next to him as he nods and curls into his arms. Palmer's mouth seems to be twitching slightly.
"It's not the same," Tony mutters eventually.
"It's never going to be," Palmer says, draining his beer and balancing the can on a DVD rack.
.
.
"You look hungover, Anthony, my boy," Ducky tells him when Tony slouches into autopsy the next day. He's stopped whatever he was doing, sharp gaze instantly discerning Tony's motivation for being there. "But you're not here to hear about my mother's famous hangover cure, are you?"
"Is it okay to move on from this?" Tony asks after a long moment.
Ducky finishes washing his hands and takes a paper towel, thoughtfully patting them dry. "The only other option other than moving on is to stay still, and that's not something any of us have ever been good at. Jethro is doing what is best for himself. Because of you, he has that option. Moving on is what he would have wanted you to do."
"Is it though?"
A soft chuckle. "Anthony, Jethro has many good qualities. He is a man to be admired, and you shouldn't feel ashamed of your respect for him in the face of what you feel to be a momentous betrayal. But his biggest failure, and one that you are paying for right now, is his inability to express to those around him just how deeply he cares. That is his cross to bear, not yours."
"So, what do I do?" Tony is lost. He's starting to see that perhaps he might not be the only one to feel that way.
But Ducky's still there. "We move on. And we heal."
.
.
Gibbs pads up the sandy beach, the grit strange on the delicate skin of his paws. Words can't quite capture the surreal sensation of looking as a wolf to the horizon and seeing endless waves and sky, instead of a series of bars and walls.
"Never figured you out as a quitter, Marine." Franks looks down at him from the roughshod shelter he's been living in. Gibbs eyes it carefully, noting where a beam of wood could improve the structure, or a sheet could be added to stop stray gusts of wind.
"It's called retiring, Franks. I always did follow your lead."
There's almost laughter in the other wolf's voice when he responds. "We'll see. You'll be tearing out your tail in a month tops with nothing to do. You're no beach hound, Probie."