"Good news travels fast," observed Gibbs as he looked up from his seat on the ambulance's back step into Ducky's concerned face, not too surprised that the medical examiner had made it there before the PD forensics team. The McGee-Abby-Ducky pipeline obviously was working at top speed.
"Anthony?" queried the older man, his gaze following the thumb Gibbs shoved toward the second ambulance's interior.
"He's trying to talk them out of the trip to the ER."
"He will do no such thing."
Ducky's flat insistence brought a slight smile to Gibbs' lips. A little taste of the ire that was sure to be poured his way as soon as the ME had satisfied himself that everyone was well enough to be lectured.
"Go lend them a hand. If I'm there he'll just –"
"Swear he's all right," Ducky finished for him, his voice a bit ... cool. "Yes. I know."
Crossing the short distance, he hauled himself up into the bright light of the ambulance interior.
"Hey Duck!"
Tony winced when one of the pair of EMTs called out the greeting. How Ducky knew every health professional within a day's radius of the DC metro area was still something he hadn't worked out, but he should have expected the medical examiner's untimely appearance. He was just beginning to have luck convincing the duo to let him go. With reinforcement in the form of the ME there was no way he was getting to go home with Gibbs tonight.
"Anthony," Ducky said solemnly, bending on one knee with a slight wince. "This was not the type of assignment we had discussed."
He waved a hand for the clipboard and studied the scrawled vitals before lifting a penlight from one of the EMT's pockets. He grasped Tony's chin to hold him still and clicked on the light.
"It will be bright," he warned before testing the pupils' responsiveness. The constriction was a bit slow but they were both equal and reactive. Popping the penlight between his teeth to free his other hand, he gently ran his hands over Tony's skull, apologizing when his fingers came in to contact with the swelling knot at the right temple.
"Kind of had a face-to-face with the parking lot," admitted DiNozzo, trying to pull away from the inquisitive touch.
"You may have a minor concussion."
"I just want to go home," snapped Tony, letting the irritation seep into his voice. "Now, I almost had these guys agreeing with me and you're not going to screw that up, Ducky."
"I am not," conceded Ducky. "As long as there are no other injuries."
"Guys?" Tony turned his best "I'll be good" look on the EMTs, hope softening his voice.
"Somebody needs to keep an eye on him."
Ducky looked out at the worried figured still crouched on the steps of the next vehicle. "Oh, that won't be a problem." He patted Tony's knee. "Give me a couple minutes with our friend Gibbs and everything will be ready."
"Sure, Duck," said one of the med techs.
He left Tony hunched over in a mirror of Gibb's own posture: elbows on knees, hands clasped, one thumb worrying over the other.
"Jethro."
Gibbs rose and squared his shoulders. If he knew one thing it was how to take his punishment like a man. McGee, who had been giving his report, took one look at their usually avuncular ME and started walking backwards, mumbling about doing just one more gird-walk on the parking lot.
"Ducky," Gibbs replied neutrally.
"We've had our differences in the past, Jethro," observed Ducky. "You sending Stan Burley on a certain ops mission comes to mind."
"Go 'head and say it, Duck. You know you're going to, anyway. Might as well put me out of my misery."
"I think not," demurred the physician. "In fact, I think I'll save our little talk for another time. Perhaps let it sink in how easily you ... we... all could have lost him."
"He did good," Gibbs retorted quietly.
"Yes, he did." Ducky agreed, putting a hand on Gibbs' very tense shoulder. "But we have yet to know the cost. MS is a very ... tricky disease. Tomorrow he may be fine. Or, tomorrow he may be worse."
"He going to the hospital?"
"No," answered Ducky. "I don't think the hospital is what Anthony needs right now. I'm not sure I quite ... approve ... but I suspect what he needs right now is you, Jethro."
Ducky watched as Gibbs crossed his arms against his chest, a surprisingly unsure gesture from the agent. "Never took you for a homophobe."
"You know I'm not. It's your stubbornness, not your gender, which has me concerned."
Gibbs nodded. Not an admission of agreement but at least an acknowledgement of the older man's point of view. "So I can take him home?"
Ducky gestured toward the ambulance. "Please do. And tell him I'll be by tomorrow morning." He gave Gibbs a warning look. "Just to check things out."
"I'm here to take him off your hands, boys."
The entrance was classic take-charge-Gibbs but Tony could see the slight hesitation when Gibbs first got a good look at him. The clear, white light of the ambulance's interior gave a hard edge to the lean body, made Gibbs more angular and sharp against the illumination.
Tony still had to squint at the fuzzy form the EMTs poked in front of him and Gibbs knelt down, taking his hand and folding it around the pen, leading him to the line he'd signed more than once in his career, waiving the ambulance company's liability should he prove later to have needed their services.
Gibbs' hand was hot around his own and Tony trembled a bit with a chill he hadn't noticed before. Now that the fight for his medical freedom was won, he could rapidly feel himself battling against the inevitable downhill slide from the adrenaline rush. He had to get out there before he drained his reserves altogether or there would be no talking Gibbs or the EMTs out of a trip with the sirens blaring.
Gibbs tightened his hold as they reached the steps and Tony felt one of the EMTs suddenly behind him, helping ease him down the two risers.
"Ducky been chewing on your ass?"
The gait Gibbs set across the parking lot was slow and careful.
"For Ducky," replied Gibbs, "that was merely a love bite."
"I'm sorry, boss. The opportunity was there and I just ... took it."
Gibbs stopped, turning to face him. "Not tonight, Tony. We'll talk about it; believe me, but not tonight."
A hand carded through the side of Tony's hair and Tony leaned briefly into the caress.
"Okay," he agreed. Then he paused. "Am I off the team?"
Gibbs frowned, starting them toward the car again. "What made you say that?"
"Fucked up pretty good there, boss."
"Not the first time," observed Gibbs softly. "For either of us."
Gibbs could tell he was, little by little, supporting more and more of Tony's weight but the car was close now. Close enough that it clicked open at his touch on the remote.
"What time is it?" murmured Tony as Gibbs guided his descent into the seat, a hand on his head to prevent him concussing himself more on the arch of the door.
"After two."
Gibbs lifted Tony's legs and helped turn him.
"Past your bedtime, Gibbs," mused Tony tiredly as Gibbs reached across and buckled the seatbelt.
"Well there's a nice big bed waiting for both of us at home."
Gibbs watched him sleep in the soft, diffuse light of the early morning. Tony was sprawled insensate; deep, even breaths causing the rise and fall of the sheet draped over the otherwise bare skin.
He had found it slightly amusing that Tony -- who would sleep nude in a spare base house at Gitmo, with Kate only a door away -- hadn't slept in less than a t-shirt and boxers from the night he'd first insisted Tony wasn't climbing the stairwell to his second-floor apartment one more time until the first night they'd shared the bedroom.
Tony's face was turned toward him, the stark white of the butterfly bandage making the swollen contusion on his forehead darker and more foreboding. There were smaller bruises peppering his chest and arms, and the magenta circular love bite Gibbs himself had deliberately put on the tender throat. The palms of his loosely curled hands were scraped raw; red patches marring the flesh where Tony had tried to catch his weight against the rough asphalt.
The ringing of the doorbell caused DiNozzo to frown and curl away from the sound, bringing his right knee up. Gibbs ran a light stroke along an upturned wrist, watching Tony mumble softly in response to the touch then he left him to sleep and went to face what would inevitably be a medical examiner in the mood to lecture.
Ducky held his black bag in one hand, a single forearm crutch in the other and a Donut Hut bag clenched between his teeth. At least it prevented any immediate homily on the ME's part. Although when Gibbs reached out, Ducky shrewdly handed him the crutch and kept the bag of doughnuts for himself.
"Duck?" he questioned as he hefted the light piece of anodized metal.
"As you have given credence to Anthony's desire to disregard Dr. Lenz's suggestion of a wheelchair, I thought, perhaps, this might serve as a compromise," explained Ducky as he brushed past him and headed for the kitchen.
Gibbs left the crutch leaning in the hallway and followed his guest.
The ME was standing in the middle of the tile floor frowning perplexedly at the empty coffee maker. "Where is the coffee?"
"It's," Gibbs glanced at his watch, "eight-thirty on a Saturday morning, Duck. There isn't any coffee. Yet."
Gibbs pulled out the basket and opened the cabinet to get a filter. "Sit down, Ducky," he instructed when he saw the ME start to take a few steps in the direction of the hall. "He's still asleep."
"I should ..."
"Coffee, first," ordered Gibbs and the older man waved a hand in acknowledgement.
"He slept?"
"Like the dead."
"And you didn't ..." finished Ducky.
Gibbs quirked an eyebrow. "It show?"
"I've seen you got without sleep for many a case, Jethro. You get this ... look in your eye." Ducky sat down and opened the bag. "You've got it now."
"I do."
"You do," affirmed Ducky digging into the sack. "Chocolate glazed. I believe that is Anthony's favorite. For you I brought plain."
"Not hungry." Gibbs took the carafe from the still streaming coffee maker, the drops hissing on the heating plate, and poured the steaming liquid into a mug. He swallowed it hot and black.
"I think I'll go see him." Ducky gestured toward the end of the hallway.
Gibbs sat down and nursed the mug.
What Gibbs saw with a lover's eyes, Ducky took in more knowledgeable eyes. The nude form, lightly covered by the thin sheet, already showed a slight loss of muscle mass in the limbs, secondary to the disruptions in nerve conductivity. Exercise was important to keep Tony flexible, prevent spasms, and retain muscle mass, but undoubtedly not the kind of exercise the agent had gotten the night before.
Ducky laid a hand on a bare shoulder. "Anthony?"
"Go away, Ducky."
The ME smiled, shaking the shoulder a little harder and trying to keep the amusement out of his voice. "We had a deal, as I remember. You got to go home and I got to check you over in the morning."
DiNozzo opened one visible eye and squinted at him, the rest of his face still buried in the pillow. "Are you sure it's morning?"
"Quite positive." Ducky smacked the bare back lightly. "Now up with you."
With a theatrical groan, which didn't do enough to distract from the real effort Tony had to put into getting upright, the younger man pushed his way to the edge of the bed and pulled the sheet discreetly over his lap.
"I'm up. Now let me go back to sleep."
"I'm afraid the nature of our agreement doesn't work that way." Ducky moved around to the other side of the bed and sat down next to his reluctant patient. A quick glance down showed him that Tony's left leg was in spasm, the foot bowed inward, the ankle convulsively shaking.
"You have been taking your Tizanidine?"
Tony self-consciously rubbed at his trembling leg. "Made me dizzier, switched to Gaba-something."
"Gabapentin."
"Yeah, whatever," mumbled DiNozzo.
Ducky laid a hand over Tony's. "It is merely a reaction to your overexertion last night."
"Yeah, well it's probably not the only 'reaction' my overexertion is going to get." Tony turned his head toward the door. "He pissed?"
"No. Not that I can tell."
Although apparently, from the way he closed his eyes, DiNozzo would have found it more reassuring to know the senior agent was angry.
"Tony?"
Hands pressing hard into the mattress, Tony forced his way to his feet. Rufus, who had been curled on the carpet beside the nightstand, scrambled up at the movement only to move in to nose him consolingly when Tony immediately collapsed back on the soft surface, his left leg refusing to hold his weight.
"Fuck," murmured Tony, scrubbing an open palm over his eyes.
"I thought there might be ... consequences to your actions," observed Ducky. "If you would allow me," he gestured toward the brace propped in the corner.
Tony made a small sound of capitulation. His hands moving in a laconic I-don't-care gesture, but his gaze remained directed straight ahead.
Ducky buckled the plastic brace. "Stay there," he advised when he was done. "I think this morning calls for a little assistance."
Gibbs had positioned himself so that he could see down the hall and Ducky gave him a brief wave as he crossed the opening to retrieve the crutch from its resting place. He could see Gibbs frowning when he saw the hardware but the ME shook his head at him warningly.
He needed Tony to accept the assistance. Which meant he needed Gibbs to stay where he was. Tony would listen to him, accept his advice, but only if he didn't think it was diminishing his stature in the eyes of the man fretting in the kitchen.
"I think this will help." Ducky handed him the cuffed end of the long metal shaft. "Use it with your right hand." Ducky reached down and retrieved Rufus' harness, the big dog coming obediently to his call. "You'll hold on to the harness with your left. It will provide stability and you can take some weight off your leg."
For a moment he thought DiNozzo would refuse, but after a pause, Tony took hold of the handgrip and Rufus and hauled himself up, locking the brace. The first couple of steps were tentative, but then Tony got the hang of the rhythm. He got all the way to the door before he stopped, unwilling to reveal what Gibbs would already know.
"It's all right, Tony. You may not need it tomorrow." Ducky stepped out into the hallway. "And I brought doughnuts; you wouldn't want to miss that, would you?"
"Chocolate glazed?"
"If Jethro has not consumed them in our absence."
Tony stuck his head out the door, leaning just a bit on the doorframe. "Hey, Gibbs, you didn't eat my doughnuts, did you?"
A reassuringly gruff, "No, DiNozzo, I didn't eat your doughnuts," drew him out further.
"Better not have," muttered Tony.
"Hey, I heard that," resounded from the kitchen and Ducky could see Gibbs had played his own part in their little act, getting up to get coffee so his back was to the door.
Taking the opportunity given to him, Tony slipped into the kitchen and sank down at the table, leaving the crutch leaning against the wall, in sight, but not in use. A kind of large, gray elephant propped in the corner that everyone saw and just as pointedly ignored.
Which was about all Ducky could hope for.
Tony waited, but even when Ducky departed, Gibbs did not bring up the either the crutch Tony was using to drag himself around the house, or the other apparently forbidden topic hanging with heavy silence in the strained air – one thoroughly blown undercover operation gone to shit in a dark parking lot.
He didn't bring it up, but it was the obvious cause of Gibbs' curtailing of all his usual Saturday activities, his perpetually remaining within some internal, Gibbs-defined radius that was almost, but not quite, close enough to be called "hovering."
For his part, Tony was stiff and sore and, basically, bored out of his head.
"Movie?" he finally begged when he couldn't take being circled any more.
Getting Gibbs to a Cineplex was generally a kind of isometric exercise. The more you pulled, the harder he dug in his heels, but Tony sensed that a hovering Gibbs might be a more easily manipulated one.
"What's on at the Rialto?"
"They do make new movies," reminded Tony, glad that the topic had at least caused Gibbs to settle next to him on the couch.
"Not as well." Gibbs' hand settled on Tony's thigh, as close to an actual caress as he'd had since Gibbs' had pressed him against the side of the van in the Onion's parking lot.
"I suppose we could find ... something to do here." Tony ventured, squeezing Gibbs' knee, protests of his scraped palm ignored as he brushed his hand upward along the soft, worn leg of Gibb's jeans.
"Yeah?" questioned Gibbs softly. "You up for that?"
Tony leaned in, his forehead tickled by Gibbs' short, straight hair. "Move that hand a little and you'll see how 'up' I am for it."
"Bedroom," murmured Gibbs, sweeping a soft kiss against the willing lips, pulling the younger man to his feet, one hand locking Tony's around the grip of the crutch. The feel of the plastic and metal jerked Tony back into the unwelcome territory of his body's weaknesses. But Gibbs returned to concentrating on the more responsive parts of his body, distracting him.
"Come on," Gibbs breathed warmly against his lips. Almost by rote, his other hand was placed on Rufus' harness, Gibbs' real attention elsewhere. He leaned his body toward Tony's and walked backwards, both hands palmed against Tony's jaws, dotting fast kisses along the edges of his lips.
The collision with a protruding corner only deterred him momentarily. Tony felt Gibbs' grin against his own curled lips. Then he laughed, too: at Gibbs' lack of stealth, at the pleasure of walking with Gibbs wrapped around him, even if his own movement was more a graceless, supported lurch.
And then he was backed gently against the bed, hands disentangling him from the hardware that kept him on his feet. Gibbs' strength controlled his fall, followed him down, covered him.
"So, I can tell Ducky you made sure I spent most of the weekend in bed?"
There had been bathroom breaks, breaks to feed Rufus, breaks to feed themselves. But the majority of the time they'd passed in slow, careful examination of each other's bodies. Though Gibbs encountered, as he had the first time he'd held Tony, ribs more prominent than they should be, a body lighter than that of the athletic man he'd hired more than two years ago. He'd ignored, as he always would, that the eyes gazing into his did so with a now-myopic squint. He accepted the fact that, when Tony inevitably failed to make out whatever he was looking for, the younger man would raise a hand and brush gentle fingers across his eyes or his lips before putting the hand to other uses.
But neither was Gibbs unaware that the body Tony held had its own frailties. That he, too, was leaner and lighter, and past the age where he could expect to find such beauty and youth in his bed.
Gibbs laid a light kiss on the man gracing his shoulder with his weight. "You telling me all this was doctor's orders? Doctor's orders," he corrected, "would be getting some sleep, which we're now going to do."
Tony's hands found his watch, the only thing he'd been left wearing after Gibbs' careful stripping over twenty-four hours before. "Almost midnight."
Gibbs murmured some wordless reply, drawing Tony closer to him. He cracked open an eye at the sleepy, "Hey, Gibbs," that was mumbled against his neck.
"Hmm?" he answered.
"So, you ever miss sleeping with the boat?"
Gibbs squeezed the relaxed body tightly causing a little whimper of indignation.
"It was just a question."
"Go to sleep, Tony."
Tony snuggled a little tighter. "Gone."
"No more field work."
Tony opened his mouth to protest only to find the opportunity cut short.
"Not negotiable."
"But, Gibbs..." Tony looked futilely around the otherwise empty conference room, realizing that Gibbs had planned all along to wait until they reached the office to spring the lecture Tony had been expecting all weekend. "Boss," he corrected, clasping his hands together on the table. "I realize I disregarded protocol."
Tony licked suddenly dry lips.
"But it's not the first time." Gibbs completed what DiNozzo wouldn't say. "And I let you get away with it because it worked."
Tony tried to focus on the fuzzy outline of Gibbs leaning forward across the table, surprised, as always, that he couldn't make out more than a blurred oval where Gibbs' face should be. He could gain little from the flat tone that only yesterday had been tender and gentle in its caress.
Gibbs was blessed with some invisible switch that he could turn on and off at will. So he could send you to sleep basking in intimate whispers and startle you awake with the cool, controlled bark of a drill sergeant. Where as Tony found he could only shrug on a variety of paper-thin masks: affection bleeding in where there should only be obedience; the lover still present where only the junior agent should remain.
"Didn't work on Friday night, though," finished Gibbs with almost cruel succinctness.
Across the table, Tony bowed his head. "Not ... directly my fault, boss."
"I know it wasn't," Gibbs conceded. "But that doesn't change anything. You don't need to be out there."
"Got the confession." This challenge, at least, was more forceful.
"Got a dead perp and a wounded Baltimore homicide detective whose tail you would have picked up ..." Gibbs hesitated.
The discomfort brought a sliver of a twisted smile to Tony's lips as he acknowledged, "Before."
"I should have picked up the tail. Only I ..." Gibbs faltered again.
"Only you were looking after me and it wasn't an 'us' thing."
"Yeah," agreed Gibbs.
Tony's hands separated and he palmed the tabletop listlessly. "An MS-thing, then."
"You're stronger than she gives you credit for."
"So, I'm strong enough for the medical profession, but not strong enough for the bad guys."
Gibbs' lips pressed together. "I won't send you back in the field."
He waited for a reaction but one never came. There was no reply. No shift in position. Tony just froze, his eyes fixed on some indiscriminate point where Gibbs was ... not.
(tbc)