Posted originally on the Archive of Our Own at /works/27330058.

I do appreciate Vance, but he's a bit of a dick in Judgement Day given Jenny just died. It's not intended as bashing, just as a little look at how together Tim is that episode

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"So you haven't done anything?"

If he were a braver man, he would've started talking, at that. He would have gotten angry, damn the consequences, same as Tony, same as Gibbs, same as Ziva. If he'd had an hour less sleep, he wouldn't have been able to hold this all in, so it's a good job that hour of sleep is still in the tank. As much as this sucks, he does value his job.

If he were less of a coward though, he would be justified in arguing.

Nobody else except Abby can properly work a computer, let alone do anything vaguely complex with one, so he didn't mean Vance any slight by trying to dumb his process down. It's not his fault that all control of his language shuts off in times like this, and he falls back into the norm.

Point B: the director is dead, the woman who helped them clear Kate's death and brought Ziva into their family, who came probably the closest to filling the space of a mother in their strange dysfunctional not-quite-a-family. She never really thanked him, but who does? Jenny Shepard categorically didn't mean as much to him as she did the others, which is probably why Vance is pushing him on this, but her death still hurts.

The third point he'd raise would be that he's been trying to pick up the pieces of everyone else, which is tricky when nobody but Abby will let him even come near them, not with a ten-foot fucking pole. He's actually only just started the work because he'd been down in the lab, trying to help Abby without cracking himself. He's not even sure how much he helped, given she was still crying when he left. He hasn't seen Tony or Ziva in a while, and he would call. He will, in a minute. Once Vance is gone.

Even if he wasn't a coward, though, he'd never raise the last point, that he's been basically keeping the MCRT afloat for the last few days, with Ziva and Tony away and Gibbs off doing god knows what, and he is exhausted. Even now, he's the only one in the bullpen, and he hasn't moved other than to Abby's lab in the last...well. However long it's been since he showed up to a freaky Friday situation. It could have been a week ago, given the ache behind his eyes. He's pretty decent at compartmentalising, and that's the only thing keeping him together, splitting everything into boxes before it can shatter and pierce him. He's refusing to cry, to let this affect him, and he's only barely holding that back.

"You call me when you have."

Vance leaves. He enters the code again, different search parameters, on autopilot. He can cry now, can break. Nobody will see. Everybody's busy with other things right now, and it's selfish of him to wish for someone to help him bear the load.

Isn't it?

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seriously though can y'all imagine if Tim actually let himself express emotions? how wild would that be?

title from cigarette ahego by penelope scott, for no other reason than it was what I was listening to when I wrote this and it's a bop