Title: Alphabet Soup

Disclaimer: not my characters

Warnings: spoilers for up to season 4

Pairings: implied Gibbs/Tony

Rating: PG
Wordcount: 470

Point of view: third

Prompt: relief

Notes: twenty-six sentences for NCIS, mostly about Tony

Atlantic: He doesn't really go to the beach all that often, but it's for more than skimpy bathing-suits when he does.

Boss: Sometimes, he means as you wish when he says anything to Gibbs.

Cavalier: Despite what everyone thinks, he doesn't need both hands and feet to count his hook-ups.

Dog: He's both a son of a bitch and a loyal Saint Bernard, and it gets tiring sometimes.

Evidence: She runs every test three times, and the result is the same: Tony killed that woman and cut her up and left her like trash in the woods.

Failure: He should have taken that bullet, not Kate; he should have killed Ari, too, and made it hurt.

God: "Gotcha, Boss."

Hello: "I'm Detective DiNozzo—I'll be working with you till we catch this bastard."

Inevitable: Whenever he breathes deeply, he can almost feel his lungs weakening, and he's not sure a bullet'll be what kills him anymore.

Justice: Hurt one of mine, he thinks, choking the guard and holding a gun on the scientist, and you'll bleed.

Kate: She is smart and tempting and if anyone could turn him from this path, it'd be her—but she doesn't, and he pulls the trigger.

Labyrinthine: The masks all get confusing in his head sometimes, and his dreams don't always seem to be his.

Mighty: "You will not die."

Note: Sealed in an envelope in a safety deposit box, Tony has a seventeen page letter that Jethro never reads, but can't bring himself to destroy.

Orpheus: Ducky watches Tony watch Jethro and knows that the boy will follow his friend to Hell and back, and wonders if Jethro has any idea of the power at his disposal.

Portrait: Flipping through Kate's sketchbook, Jethro sees how she saw them and her death hits home.

Query: His response to DiNozzo, with me will always be On your six, Boss.

Relief: He'll live, the doctor says, and Tony's eyes are still closed, but Jethro breathes again.

Smile: Helping Gibbs burnt most of his bridges in Baltimore, so when Gibbs said, "We have an opening at NCIS," Tony smiled.

Trace: All his equipment can't find Tony's location, and Gibbs is snarling and pacing, and Ziva clutching her knife, and it doesn't matter because McGee can't find him—

Unwell: Tony heals after the plague, but he'll never be what he was.

Victorious: He escaped the gutter.

Wealth: "People fear you, Jethro, but they also believe in you."

Xerox: He has copies of all their files, and he's read every last word of them, but he knows that files don't tell everything and so he'll let them prove themselves.

Yes: He'll argue if it's important, but he rarely ever refuses Gibbs.

Zion: Tony could leave, get his own team, do something else—but he won't.