disclaimer: I don't own NCIS or its characters...
Author's note: Yes, I'm still writing this one...although it seems like I just took the characters and ran with them. They're nothing like they're actual television counterparts... Also, I apologize as of that I am not extremely familiar with events/symptoms/things in general associated with pregnancy...
Warning: May include inaccurate use of tenses...It took me forever to figure out the tense that the flashback was supposed to be in, and it still doesn't sound quite right. And now that I've warned you, you'll definitely notice it, right?
Kate awoke, still sitting in the chair in the hospital room. A look in Tony's direction told her that he was still unconscious. The peaceful state of the room told her that he hadn't regained consciousness while she slept, either. She smiled as she remembered what she had dreamt about. She had dreamt of the day that their relationship had first started to become more than coworkers.
That day, Gibbs had assigned her to stakeout duty. Her target hadn't been their main suspect, just an associate that he might contact, so she had been sent alone. Unfortunately, her target lived in one of those weird neighborhoods where there are never any cars around. So she had had to pretend to be sitting in the park across the road reading a book. It just must not have been her day, because it had started to rain almost immediately. She had had an umbrella, for what good it did her. She remembered that she had felt really inconspicuous, sitting in a park while it down-poured. Lucky for her though, the target had been a very unobservant man. He hadn't seemed to notice his surroundings at all. It had been like he was in his own little world. Unlucky for her, she had sat there the whole day in the rain without learning any useful information.
She had arrived back at headquarters to find that everyone was packing up to head home for the day. She had embraced the idea. She had been soaking wet from her head to her toes, and down to her bones for that matter. The drive back hadn't been very pleasant either. She hadn't cared much if she got the interior of her car wet. It was more the fact that blasting the heat for the forty-minute drive hadn't warmed her up a bit. She had been shaking in fact, when she told Gibbs that she'd found nothing, and he had told her that she could file her report the next after she had gone home and gotten warm and some rest.
She had gathered her things and found that Tony had held the elevator for her on his way out. She had suddenly become very self-conscious as he stared at her in the elevator. She had deeply regretted wearing that white blouse when she was sopping wet and it was plastered to her skin. She had guessed that he could probably see everything underneath. Of course, she had been so wet that it wouldn't have mattered what color blouse she had worn. No matter what color her blouse was, she had felt there was no excuse for him to stare like he had, and she had told him so. "Do you need to stare like that, Dinozzo?" she had snapped at him.
"Not really. I always have that image from the picture of the wet t-shirt contest to ponder, if I want," he had replied. Apparently, he had noticed how badly she was shaking as well. "You don't look so good, Kate. You're lips are turning blue."
She remembered trying to brush of his concern with reassuring words. "I'm cold, not to mention wet. I'll be fine once I'm in dry clothes."
By the time they had reached the parking garage, she had been shaking worse than someone with Parkinson's disease and her teeth had been chattering loudly. Kate still thought that was as close as she'd ever get to being as cold as the grave without being dead. It hadn't taken much coaxing on Tony's part to convince her that she hadn't been well. And since she had been shivering too badly to make a forceful objection, he had insisted on taking her home.
She had seen a different side of Tony that night, one that she had never known existed. He had driven her home and had helped her up to her apartment. He probably would have refused to leave if she had pressed him to. But she hadn't. She had been afraid of passing out at any moment. He had politely waited outside her bedroom door while she had tried to change into dry clothes. She had been shaking so badly that she couldn't manage to unbutton her blouse, let alone peel it off as it tightly clung to her body. Normally, she would had never ever thought about doing what she had done next, but she had been cold and exhausted and was starting to get dizzy, and he hadn't been acting like the typical immature Dinozzo she had known.
So she had asked him to help her, praying that she wouldn't regret it later. She never did. He had given her a puzzled look over her request until he saw how violently she had been shaking. When she had almost collapsed, he had caught her and laid her gently on the floor. He had undressed her quietly and tenderly without ogling her as she had feared that he might have. He had found a pair of her warm flannel pajamas in her dresser, without snooping through her underwear drawer she had noticed, and then he had proceeded to dress her in them and tuck her into bed. He had had to ask where she kept her extra blankets before he had covered her in a pile of warm cottony bliss.
"I'll make you some soup to warm you up," he had told her before he had disappeared into the kitchen. He had come back a few minutes later to check on her. She had still been shaking badly despite all of the layers of blankets.
"So," she had managed to say between her teeth chattering. "You've seen me naked."
"And you've seen me naked," he had replied, a slight smile on his face despite the obvious disdain he had held for where the conversation was going. "Or don't you remember?"
"I remember," she had said coyly, despite her wretched condition. "How could I forget Anthony Dinozzo's bare ass?"
The fact that she had been trying to joke with him had seemed to cheer him up. "Does that mean that we're going steady?"
"I don't think so, Danny," she has replied weakly as she had begun to shiver violently again. She would never forget the look of concern she had seen on Tony's face, it had struck her so much.
"How do you feel?" he had asked her, serious for one of only a few times she had ever witnessed.
'I'm starting to sweat, but I'm still cold," she had replied truthfully. He must have had the dame thought she had because he had asked her where she kept her thermometer. After struggling to keep the glass tube under her tongue for a whole minute, he had informed her that she had had a fever of 101F. Being Tony, he had cracked a joke about how that must have been especially high for someone so cold blooded. That was the last thing she remembered before she had fallen into a delirious fever-induced sleep.
According to Tony, she had kept mumbling and tossing in her sleep. He also told her later that she had awoken several times and asked for a drink of water, and that her fever had topped put around 106F.
When she had awoke, he had been gone, and with him he had taken her confidence that she knew everything there was to know about the character of one Anthony Dinozzo. The whole incident must have left her more open to his advances because here she sat now, over a year later, pregnant with his child.
"What chya thinking about?" Abby asked breaking off Kate's distant look of recollection The Goth was wearing a different set of black clothing and chains, she noticed. That meant she had gone home and had come back. Kate was glad at that. She hated being a burden to anyone. Of course, that probably meant that Gibbs had kept an eye on her all night.
'Oh, nothing," Kate responded absently. She was still feeling warm and happy over the memory. The baby stirred in her belly, and with it reality came flooding back to her with pain in her back and hunger in her stomach. The discomfort reminded her of the reality of the situation she was in, and returned her attention to the reason she was sitting in an uncomfortable chair in a hospital room instead of a warm bed.
"How's Tony?" she asked, trying to pick herself up out of the chair and failing miserably. She didn't have the strength for it and felt rather faint as she let herself plop back down into the chair.
"A lot better than you look," Gibbs replied. He had, like usual, entered the room undetected. Also, as per usual, he was holding a cup of coffee. "When was the last time you've eaten?" he asked Kate with an I-already-know-the-answer voice to cover up the concern.
"Uh…I-I don't remember," Kate replied, trying to recall yesterday's events besides the emergency, which was vivid in her memory. Yesterday seemed so long ago to her.
"You should eat," Gibbs commented in the way he had of making everything sound like an order. Kate looked to Abby for help. She didn't want to leave Tony alone and unconscious, even in the hospital. Plus, she didn't really think that she could get up without expending all of her remaining energy.
"Yeah, Kate," Abby agreed with Gibbs. No help there. "You really shouldn't be skipping meals. It could hurt you as well as the baby."
"I know," Kate conceded. "And I am hungry. It's just that I…" She didn't know how to reveal how weak she felt. She didn't like people seeing her weaknesses. She barely had resigned herself to letting Tony see her when she was vulnerable. She looked at Gibbs, hoping that he'd understand.
He did. "You stay here. If Tony wakes up I know he'd rather see you then my scowling face," he rescued her from admitting her weakness publicly. "I'll get you something from the cafeteria."
He turned and left the room, leaving the two women shocked. Kate was relieved, but neither she nor Abby had ever seen Gibbs fetch something for somebody else, besides the caffeine drinks he gave to Abby. But that was somehow different. That was more of an exchange for her brilliant work, and an encouragement to keep it up. This was actually going to fetch something for someone else and getting nothing in return. Well, maybe it wasn't nothing. Gibbs had to feel useful, that's who he was. It made him feel like he was accomplishing something, especially since he couldn't order Tony to wake up or will him to be completely healed.