Gibbs turned to face Tony and watched as he wiped a sleeve across his damp, red-rimmed eyes.
Tossing the paddle down on his living room sofa, he moved to pull the kid into the now traditional post-punishment hug. Shock sliced him like a hot knife through butter as Tony suddenly and aggressively pushed him away, an intensely strange look marring his features. Completely wrong footed, Gibbs let his hands fall by his side and tried hopelessly to find an answering response. His brain whirred as he instinctively knew something was wrong, seriously wrong. Tony was staring resolutely at the floor, his torso stiff with pent up emotion. Usually, the kid needed and appreciated the comfort of a brief hug after a spanking… so much so that he had never once refused it.
Not once in seven plus years.
Gibbs' brow furrowed as he retraced the steps that led them to where they stood. Tony had deliberately disobeyed his direct order and gone off the reservation by doing an off book and solo stake out on a dangerous suspect. When Gibbs had thought the kid was at home getting the rest he had ordered all of his people to partake in last night, he had actually been sitting outside a ruthless thug's apartment with no back up and no way of calling it in. The thug had made him and he, alongside three or four of his equally thuggish pals, had physically accosted his SiC who narrowly escaped a broken jawbone by cleverly setting off his own car alarm and scaring them off. Said thug and his crew then took a hike over three state lines having been alerted by Tony's stunt that NCIS was onto them and it took an inter-Agency effort with the Feds to track them down and bring them in.
In short, Tony had put himself in danger and blew up an ongoing investigation.
Satisfied that his memory was correct as to the actions that led them to where they were, Gibbs turned his retracing efforts to the corresponding consequences he had doled out. He searched his soul with brutal honesty and asked himself if he'd been too hard on the kid. The overwhelming response came back within a millisecond. No. He really hadn't. He'd heard him out, explained to him why what he had done was a category A shitshow and then dished out a measured, proportionate punishment. Tony had been as Tony always was until the very second he had pushed him away with that look on his face. Absolutely nothing in the kid's attitude and responses had been different to any other time until that moment.
It was as if a switch had flipped. For Gibbs, it was a very terrifying switch.
"Tony?" he eventually managed to say with a very un-Gibbsish softness. "What's wrong?"
The green eyes which usually sparkled were dull and lifeless as they stared resolutely over his head.
"Nothing is wrong, Gibbs," the kid replied quietly and respectfully. "May I leave now?"
The Team Lead looked his right-hand man in open chagrin. If there was ever a warning sign with fireworks attaching, it was Tony calling him Gibbs. He only ever reverted to doing so instead of Boss when they were at loggerheads and he was trying to enforce some distance between them. It was a rare occurrence but it never failed to cut the long-suffering Agent in Charge to the quick. Sighing, he scrubbed a hand across tired eyes before fixing Tony with a quizzical look.
"Gibbs?"
Tony didn't miss a beat with his answering words coated with an ice better suited to a glacier than a human being.
"You would prefer I call you Sir?"
Gibbs felt his temper rise and he quickly forced it back down with some appreciable difficulty.
"I think you know very well that is not what I would prefer, Tony," he said quietly. "There is clearly something wrong. Can you just tell me what it is? I'm not very good at guessing games and I thought you understood why you were in trouble here. Was I wrong?"
Tony shook his head with a chilling lack of emotion.
"No, Gibbs, you weren't wrong. I fully understand why I was reprimanded but now that reprimand has been given, I'd really like to get home. May I leave?"
Gibbs took two hands and placed them firmly around the molten core of his throbbing temper.
"No, you may not leave," he growled, his panic making him less than sensitive in the moment. "What the hell is the matter with you? Why are you acting like this? You were fine and then all of a sudden you weren't. Why?"
Tony didn't react to the sharp tone of his fearless leader's voice as he usually would.
"There is nothing wrong with me," he said emotionlessly, as if explaining an overly complicated Starbucks order to a Barista in training. "I simply want to go home. It's late and we have an early start in the morning. Unless you need to dish out any further punishment for my actions last night, I am going to leave now. So, do you? Need to dish out any further punishment for my actions last night?"
Gibbs looked at his protégé with hopelessness threatening to drown him.
"Of course not," he answered slowly. "You know full well that once you've paid the price its paid. Tony, why are you being like this? Just… Jesus, will you just talk to me? There is clearly something wrong and if you would just-"
"Well, if there's nothing else you need me for tonight then I really will be heading home now, Gibbs," Tony interrupted. "I will see you in the morning. If you need anything case related before then, well, you know where to find me. Goodnight."
With that, he sharply side stepped the now open-mouthed Gibbs and marched towards the front door. He got as far as turning the handle when the older man's feet caught up with his brain and crossing the room, he held out a hand, effectively blocking the kid's escape.
"Don't even think about it," he said quietly. "You need to tell me what is going on and you need to tell me now. I am not having you driving home in this state. Get back into that living room and sit down. You need to explain to me what the hell is going on here."
He winced in mounting and acidic panic as Tony simply stared at the front door as if he hadn't heard him. Completely oblivious as to how wrong his next action was, he reached out and gripped a hold of the kid's shoulder and gave it a gentle squeeze.
And that's when all manner of hell broke loose.
Throwing off his Boss' gentle hand with a terrifying snarl, Tony wrenched open the front door with such rigour that it nearly came clean off the hinges. The cool air of an otherwise peaceful night breathed into the house, freezing Gibbs' look of extreme and horrified shock in place. He watched as if paralyzed as Tony dragged his sweatshirt, which had been pulled down somewhat in the foray, back over his shoulder. When the kid turned to look at him for the last time, he could see nothing but pure and unadulterated hatred in the usually kind green eyes. The parting words, harshly spoken into the night, stayed with Gibbs long after Tony's car had screeched out of his driveway and had been swallowed up into the night.
"Don't you touch me. Don't you ever fucking touch me again."
….
A/N: Do I love an intensely angsty Tony and Gibbs just to turn them into fluffy Tony and Gibbs in the end? Yes. Will I apologise? No.
Stay tuned x
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